Work as a Disutility

Classical economics views work as a “disutility”—a negative that requires money to entice you to undertake. In this view, work is the opposite of leisure (the more you work, the less leisure time you have), and what people really want is more leisure time. Based on this theory, work is something we endure merely to have money to satisfy our needs and fund our leisure.

This view is obviously flawed. As Yale economist Robert Lane puts it, viewing work as a disutility is a “basic market error.” We don’t just work because we get paid. Sure, compensation is a component of why we work, but it isn’t the only, or maybe even the most important, motivation behind working. In addition to money, we work because our jobs (to varying extents) provide meaning, a sense of achievement and direction, and contribute to our identities (e.g., it’s common to be asked by someone you just met, “What do you do?”).

Plus, our accomplishments at work tend to add more to our sense of well-being than our leisure activities. A national survey asked what activities people preferred and related questions, and the researchers found that “the intrinsic rewards from work are, on average, higher than the intrinsic rewards from leisure, a finding that creates considerable difficulty for the conventional analysis” of work as a disutility.

The Case of Legos

An interesting study used LEGOs to dig into the idea of whether we work only for compensation. The study was structured as follows:

• Study participants were recruited to build Lego Bionicle sets in return for payment—they were paid for each set they completed. They’d continue to get paid (but at a declining pay scale) for however many sets they wanted to complete, and the amount of time wasn’t capped. Their only decision was when to stop making Bionicle sets.
• Each Bionicle set consisted of 40 pieces and took about 10 minutes to complete.
• The participants were randomly assigned to two groups: (1) the Meaningful Condition or (2) the Sisyphus Condition.
• Meaningful Condition: For participants in the meaningful group, there were many Bionicle sets. Once they constructed a Bionicle, it was placed on the desk in front of them, and they were given a new set to construct the next one.
• Sisyphus Condition: For the participants in this group, there were only two Bionicle sets. “After the subject completed the first Bionicle and began working on the second, the experimenter would disassemble the first Bionicle into pieces and place the pieces back into the box.”

The participants in each group had the exact same job and received the exact same pay. Thus, if work is just for the money, the participants in each group should make about the same number of Bionicles. But that’s not what happened. The subjects in the Meaningful Condition made 40% more Bionicles than those in the Sisyphus Condition.

It’s pretty interesting that the participants in the meaningful group made so many more Bionicles, given that the only meaning was that the Bionicles they made were placed in front of them — it’s not like they were making Bionicles for kids with cancer or anything. Yet, I can understand the sense of accomplishment after spending 10 minutes of effort, following instructions, and making a cool LEGO robot. I also can imagine how deflating it would be for it to be disassembled right after you finished it. Sisyphean indeed!

This IFOD pairs well with the one earlier this week about how we’re happier when we’re busy, but we want our busyness to be justified. Making LEGO Bionicles that are disassembled before our eyes is busyness without purpose and, thus, hard to justify.

I think most (all?) of us can agree that we work for more than just remuneration. We do want our jobs to have meaning, and when we find meaning, we are more motivated.