What moves us

koenfucius

Jul 1

(featured image: oatsy40/Flickr CC BY 2.0)

Sometimes we follow our intuition to do the right thing, without regard for costs and benefits. But how can we know it actually is the right thing?

When little Sally climbs on a chair to get hold of the cookie jar, and proceeds to consume its contents, she is moved by the pleasure of eating the sweet, sweet delicacy. When her escapade is later discovered, her parents are likely to dish out some kind of punishment. Soon she will realize that her action involves both benefits and costs, and that sometimes the costs outweigh the benefits. Little Pete likes to watch television right up until it's time for dinner. But when he learns that if he quits this 10 minutes early and instead lays the table, he earns some extra pocket money, he realizes that while some choices are costly (giving up TV), the benefit (cash in hand) can outweigh them.

Costs and benefits rule our choices…

"I just learned there are benefits and costs involved in eating cookies" (image via Dall·E)

As Sally and Pete grow up, they will experience similar patterns in their adult lives. Giving up leisure time is costly, but the salary they get in return for spending it at work is beneficial. Driving fast is fun, but the penalty notice they receive later is distinctly unpleasant. A designer T-shirt looks cool, but it's pricey, and a more ordinary one may be quite a bit cheaper and still adequate. Just like their younger selves, they constantly weigh up the costs and the benefits in many of the decisions they make.

This phenomenon goes back to our most distant ancestors. Natural selection has favoured organisms that were not just able to recognize what was beneficial or detrimental to them, but that also acted accordingly: avoiding the detrimental, and pursuing the beneficial. Even the earliest creatures were faced with the trade-off between the energy cost of acquiring food, and the nutritious benefit of what they procured. The survivors – our entire ancestral lineage – were always those that systematically spent no more than they gained. And even though we are a little more complex than our microbial precursors, that inheritance has left its mark on our own behaviour: the balance between costs and benefits is a prominent factor in our behaviour.

And yet, sometimes we seem to act in ways that seem, if not totally contrary to this idea, then at least at odds with it. Imagine you are walking down the street and see a wallet lying in the gutter. You pick it up, and find it contains bank cards, a driving licence and over £100 in cash, as well as the owner's business card. You could pocket the money and discard the wallet. You could take the money and return the wallet to its owner, saving them the trouble of replacing the cards and the driving licence. Or you could return it with all the contents. I suspect you have no doubt which is the 'right' thing to do.

Or imagine one summer evening you are on your own in a city far away, a place you are unlikely to ever return to, having a nice meal on the terrace of a nice restaurant. It is a quiet evening, and you are the only guest remaining, enjoying an after-dinner coffee. You can hear the waiter chatting with his colleagues in the kitchen at the back. You go to the toilet, and as you return the waiter is still in an animated discussion with the chef. You could return to your table and wait for him to bring you the bill, or you could keep walking and leave, without paying. Again, I presume you know very well what would be the 'right' thing to do.

…but not all of our choices

Somehow, we seem not only to know what is the right thing, but also to act accordingly. It would feel wrong to keep the money from the wallet, or to walk out of the restaurant without paying, and it feels right to return it with all its contents, and to settle your bill before leaving. Most strikingly is that we do the right thing without seriously consider the alternative. We don't weigh up the costs (feeling bad) and the benefits (being better off). We choose to do what is right because it is right, and that is that.

This mechanism of choosing is not limited to moral dilemmas. At least one of us, for example, will avoid filling up the car at a motorway service area, and instead choose to leave the motorway, navigate to a supermarket to get the fuel cheaper, and then continue the journey. Technically, there is a trade-off to be made – several extra miles, and several extra minutes – to save a modest amount of money. But I for one never really make that trade-off. Instead, I simply decide it does not feel right to buy fuel at motorway prices.

Opportunity makes a thief – or does it? (photo: Peter Nijenhuis/Flickr CC BY NC ND 2.0)

Similarly, at work, we generally do not work out what the minimum amount of effort required is to make sure our team colleagues, our boss, or our customers are just happy enough. And we most likely do not deliberately weigh up how much respect from our fellow workers, how much brownie points in the chief's eyes, or how much extra customer loyalty any additional effort will secure. We just do what we feel is right, without giving it any further thought.

This 'feeling right' is a manifestation of what is called intrinsic motivation, and it tends to go hand in hand with intuitive decision making. We are perfectly aware of the choice we make (unlike when biases are at play). But if we know what is right, we do not need to consider the options and weigh up costs and benefits.

Is the right thing right?

However, is what feels right necessarily what is right? How can we tell if we do not consider the costs and benefits? Should we perhaps do so, and rather than simply follow our intuition, always pursue a deliberate evaluation of the extrinsic costs and benefits, even if intrinsic motivation is at play?

A classic paper by Uri Gneezy and Aldo Rustichini, A Fine is a Price, describes how introducing cost-benefit thinking alters the role of intrinsic motivation. Most parents know it is the right thing not to be late to collect their offspring from the day care centre so the staff can go home in time. But occasionally, despite their intrinsic motivation, they may not make it before closing time. In order to reinforce the intrinsic motivation with some extrinsic motivation, the centre introduces a fine whenever a child is picked up more than 10 minutes late. But what happens? Parents are now treating the fine as a price to pay, and they make a deliberate trade-off: they simply buy extra day care time.

Intrinsic and extrinsic costs and benefits often don't mix well – the latter have a tendency to overpower the former, and consequently alter behaviour in unexpected and sometimes undesired ways.

This doesn't mean that we should never test our intuitions and reflect on whether what we believe to be the right thing really is right. We can certainly verify whether we do indeed save money by leaving the motorway to fill up, if that is what our intuition is – and if it is not correct, we should update it and act accordingly. If instead we are acting out of some kind of principle rather than to save money, we can work whether it costs us money, and decide whether we are happy to make that sacrifice.

And when it concerns doing the right thing at work or being honest? Here too, it makes little sense to replace our intuition with deliberately weighing up what to do every time the question arises. But if we want to confirm that our intuition of what is the right thing is accurate, even though we may not be able to quantify the feeling we get when we do the right thing, we can still determine whether it outweighs the effort or the money foregone.

Making intuitive decisions is fine – as long as we can genuinely be sure that our intuitions are correct.

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