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Working adults completed a personality test (NEO-PI-R) of the Big Five traits and rated the perceived efficacy of 20 work-related incentive schemes. Factor analysis of the different schemes revealed four factors which were labelled: time/benefits; status; money and long term offers. Regressing the big five onto each factor score showed that less open, less conscientious, stable individuals rated the importance of time/benefits most. Further, extraversion was a hypothesized and significant predictor of the status factor. Demographic variables (sex, age, education) and religious and political beliefs were poor predictors of the factor scores. Results are discussed within the limited research in the area.
Perhaps the issue that most concerns managers is how to motivate the people who report to them. There is no shortage of academic theories of motivation in psychology, each with very specific and limited implications for how to motivate people at work (Furnham, 2000). There are also a number of popular books for managers listing incentive schemes with recommendations for their use (Fisher, 2000). However, there remains a paucity of empirical studies that attempt to evaluate the efficacy of particular schemes for particular groups of people. There are, however, sophisticated economic theories about incentive schemes (Agrell, Bogetoft & Tund, 2002; Kraizberg, Tziner & Weisberg, 2002; Raghu, Sen & Rao, 2003) as well as empirical tests of particular schemes (Kam, Fielding & Conn, 1998); Natter, Mild, Feurstein, Dorffner & Taudes, 2001; Tait & Walker, 2002).
This study concerns peoples' beliefs about the efficacy of particular incentive schemes. Specifically it looks at the relationship between individual differences (demographic and belief variables), personality traits and ratings of efficacy. Social psychologists have extensively documented cognitive biases in psychology some of which show the overestimation similarity effect which indicates that believe people others are like them (Gilovich, 1991). This study will test the overall proposition that people will believe in the efficacy of incentives for others in general that they personally find effective for themselves.
There is limited literature on personality and incentives. Probably the most fecund theory is that of Gray (1973) which has received considerable attention (Corr, 2002; Avila & Parcet, 2002). Gray's theory asserts that extraverts will respond more readily to reward while introverts react primarily to punishment. Although extraverts will react positively to...