Thinking About "Incentives" and Why We Do Things

Why do we do certain things and not others?

I found myself thinking about the whole issue of "incentives," this afternoon.

It's an interesting topic to me because there are usually a lot more nuances involved than immediate meet the eye. It's easy enough to consider the question and leave the answer at "because we get something we want."

That "something" could be anything from money to love, to some other kind of reward. But these rewards aren't always entirely obvious.

Consider why you keep a blog on Hive. Sure, perhaps you'd say "because we get rewarded." Might be true, but it's probably overly simplistic. Indeed, the (financial) rewards are nice but they are not really why I blog. They are more like the reason I chose one venue, rather than another.

That's Where Things Get Tricky

In most cases, those things we really enjoy in life don't need to be tangibly incentivized. I'm going to write, regardless.

The same can be applied to lots of other things: I cook because I need to eat and I like good food, but there's also a strong intangible element there, simply of enjoyment.

We do things because we simply enjoy them... it might be nice to collect something and know that your collection has value, but that's not really why you collect. It might be nice to make art as an artist because you can sell the art, but that's not really the reason you create.

Similarly, there are numerous things I would still have zero interest in doing, even if I were to be handsomely rewarded for doing them.

The Great Mystery...

It's late at night, so keep in mind that my brain might not be firing on all cylinders! However, human motivation has long been of great interest to me... and particularly the great mystery of why people choose to do the things they do.

Indeed, there usually is some kind of "reward" that motivates us, but most of the time that reward is all but impossible to both describe and measure.

Certainly, some people might argue that they are logical automatons... and how they feel about something is irrelevant; they only consider tangible rewards. But when you probe that argument a bit, it often surfaces that such personalities actually do have intangible components to their reasons for doing things.

Not claiming to have any concrete answers, here... just letting my mind wander a bit in these final minutes of my day... pondering the question of how we "incentivize" things, given that people's motivations can — in essence — be all over the map, and highly unpredictable.

Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your week!

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Created at 20220727 01:35 PDT
0614/1860