day 953: The Endowment Effect

"Jesus said, "I am the Road, also the Truth, also the Life. No one gets to the Father apart from me. If you really knew me, you would know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him. You've even seen him!"

I read a fascinating article on the power of incentives and how they can either motivate or demotivate a worker. This new research work done out of Harvard by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman flips the idea of the timing of when to provide incentives. They call their research the "Endowment Effect".  Basically, what they are proposing is that instead of providing incentives, like bonus payments, at the traditional timing of after the payment has been earned, that instead, the model gets flipped and the payment is made ahead of time and if the results are not achieved, then the money or the incentive would be taken away. The concept is built off of human nature and how we will pay or do more to keep something that is ours than we will to acquire it in the first place.  So, if someone is paid or given an incentive at the beginning of the earning period, then they will work harder to keep it for fear of losing it or having it taken away. I am fascinated by this thinking and also wonder if any business could be convinced to broadly experiment with the approach. It would take a lot of guts to pay out prior and then wait.  I can see the pitfalls but I can also see the power in this.  Let's try it at the Olympic Games in Rio...before the start of the race, everyone is awarded a gold medal and then after the race all but one get it taken away and see how the results are different.  Fat chance, huh?

What is so fantastic and marvelous about our God is that we don't have to earn anything from Him! All that He gives us is a gift that we only have to believe in and accept.  It doesn't get taken away or bestowed in greater amounts to one versus another.  We don't compete to get God's love given to us. We are certainly provided many incentives to accept Him and even then so many don't.  But once we do, as it is written in John, we will from then on, "Know Him".  God has indeed endowed us with an eternal life and eternal glory of living with Him forever.  There is no greater incentive or endowment than this. Let's never take this for granted or become ungrateful for what we have been given.

Reference: John 14:6 (The Message)