Diverse rewards help people increase motivation

Different types of rewards will help people get more motivated, instead of giving a big reward.

Scott S. Wiltermuth, assistant professor at the University of Southern California, said people will be more motivated if they are rewarded with different rewards instead of being rewarded in the same way.

In the experiment, participants were asked to do odd jobs, if they worked for 10 minutes they would be rewarded with an item, if they worked harder for 20 minutes, they received two items. Scientists classify rewards into two different barrels.

For the first group, if they work 20 minutes, they will be able to choose two items of the same type and in any box. The second group has the right to choose one item from one box, and if they work longer for 20 minutes they will be rewarded from another box.

Artwork: spacreators.com

As a result, only 10% of the people in the first group (who were rewarded with the same item) worked for 20 minutes, but 34% of the second group (rewarded with different items) worked for 20 minutes.

Researchers believe that dividing rewards into two different categories will give people better motivation , because they don't want to feel 'missed'.

'The fear of being missed causes people to work harder when they have two different types of rewards,' Sciencedaily said.

In another experiment, the researchers divided into 4 boxes with different types of rewards. After that, participants were allowed to choose an item from this category and an extra item from another category. This does not increase their motivation, because they feel the other two types of rewards are inaccessible, they know they will definitely 'miss' those two types.

'If there are too many types of rewards, they will feel unable to solve their fear of missing out, and therefore will not have much motivation to work ,' Wiltermuth said.

According to Wiltermuth, instead of giving a big reward, people should be divided into smaller rewards. This makes people motivated to pursue goals."If I lose 5 pounds, I can get a bonus. If I lose another 5 pounds I can get another kind of reward."