the wisdom of incentives...

barry schwartz, a professor who studies the link between economics and psychology, has been thinking about wisdom. in a recent TED talk on the subject, he weighed the effectiveness of rules and incentives in society. while it would seem to make sense that the more incentives we give people to do something, the more likely they are to do it, schwartz argues that isn’t always the case. he cited a swiss study wherein citizens were asked if they’d be willing to have a necessary nuclear waste dump located near their homes. asking the same question with the inclusion of a financial incentive produced surprising results. as schwartz says, “the introduction of the incentive gets it so instead of asking, ‘what is my responsibility?’ all we ask is, ‘what serves my interests?’”//