Page 128 - Peerless Performance Travelers Proposal

Recently, the IRF released a report looking at what the study of biometrics like eye movement, pupil dilation, sweat, and body positioning -- what professional card players call “tells” -- can show us about people’s real desires when it comes to award types. The report, “Conscious and Unconscious Reward Preference & Choice: A Biometric Experiment,” sought to determine whether people were being honest with themselves when they say they prefer cash awards in incentive and recognition programs.
Not only did 62 percent of the subjects choose a non- cash award over the same amount of money, but their initial reactions “overwhelmingly” favored non-cash, says Allan Schweyer, the whitepaper’s author and chief academic adviser of the IRF.
Aside from biometrics, the study relied upon the science of preference -- how people make decisions. This breaks down into two methods: The first is unconscious thinking, which the report calls “fast, reflexive, automatic.” The second is conscious thinking, which is described as “slow, careful, cognitive” thinking.
In interviews, 46 people were asked which non-cash award they would prefer: travel, merchandise, a gift card, or an experiential reward such as a spa day
or ticket to a sporting event. With that information in hand, they were asked to choose between a non- cash award or its price in cash. In all cases, visuals of the awards or cash were prominently displayed to help with biometric measurements and build excitement in the subject.
What the study shows is that “our involuntary, instinctual reaction to non-cash rewards is more emotional than our reaction to cash,” Schweyer says.
He adds that planners of incentive, recognition, and reward programs know that “rewards which trigger emotions cause higher performance after and in anticipation of the reward. So, this research offers scientific evidence in support of a body of academic behavioral research that suggests non-cash rewards are usually a better choice than cash rewards.”
When choosing between cash and non-cash awards, subjects’ responses were measured with a number of biometric techniques, including pupil dilation and eye-tracking techniques that scientists call “time to first fixation.” This showed that subjects were “overwhelmingly drawn to non-cash rewards over cash,” Schweyer says.
Finally, when choosing between cash and non-cash awards, it took far longer for subjects to become fixed on the cash reward. Which is to say, they had to override their unconscious desires for more carefully considered ones. Only 16 of the 42 subjects ultimately chose cash.
Understanding the Culture
“Culture is a huge topic in businesses right
now,” says Melissa Van Dyke, president of the
IRF. “For at least the last couple of decades, good businesses have known that. But when 80 percent of the market is now valued in intangible assets -- meaning what your business is worth
is not in your bricks and mortar anymore, it’s
not even what you have on the shelves -- it’s in your algorithms, it’s in your people, it’s literally
in your brand. Your internal culture equals your
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