The key ideas

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

Daniel Pink, 2009

People were promised money for solving a puzzle quickly, and took longer than those promised nothing. Daniel Pink brings together experiments on when rewards help and when they hinder. He proposes a different foundation: autonomy, mastery, and purpose. We will show honestly which of his conclusions remain contested.

Who it is for

For managers, parents, teachers, and anyone wanting to understand why bonuses and penalties sometimes work and sometimes backfire.

Control leads to compliance; autonomy leads to engagement.

What the book is about

People are promised money for solving a puzzle quickly. It seems that the higher the reward, the greater the effort. Yet in some experiments, those promised money took longer than those promised nothing.

Daniel Pink, a journalist and former speechwriter to US Vice President Al Gore, collected research in Drive to explain why this happens. His central thesis is that carrots and sticks suit simple, routine work fairly well, but creative and complex tasks need another foundation. For Pink, this is autonomy, mastery, and purpose.

An important qualification first. Pink is a popularizer rather than a scientist. He draws on real experiments but sometimes states their implications more boldly than the data allow. Where the research is contested, we will say so.

Idea 1. Monkeys that needed no reward

It is 1949 in Wisconsin. Psychologist Harry Harlow places a mechanical puzzle in macaques’ cages: pull out a pin, release a hook, lift a lid. The monkeys begin solving it on their own, with concentration and apparent enjoyment. Nobody feeds them for doing so.

What followed was even more surprising. When food was offered for solving it, Harlow described the monkeys making more mistakes. He proposed a third source of behavior beyond hunger and reward: enjoyment of the activity itself.

Twenty years later, Edward Deci tested a similar idea with students. Some received a dollar for each figure assembled from a Soma puzzle; others did not. The payments were then withdrawn. During periods when the students were left alone, those previously paid played with the puzzle less. Later, Deci and Richard Ryan built a theory on such experiments whose central concept is intrinsic motivation.

Pink has an image for this: the Sawyer Effect, named after Tom Sawyer, who presented fence painting as a pleasure. Pink believes rewards may turn play into work, and sometimes work into play.

A child enjoys drawing. They start receiving money for each drawing, then the payments stop, and they feel less inclined to draw simply for enjoyment.

A reward may change what an activity means. When it is removed, interest sometimes proves weaker than it was before.

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About the author

Daniel Pink is an American journalist and author of books about work, business, and behavior. From 1995 to 1997, he was chief speechwriter to US Vice President Al Gore.

All books by this author: Daniel Pink

Terms from the book

  • Flow
  • Intrinsic motivation
  • Motivation 3.0: Pink’s metaphor for a motivational system driven primarily by intrinsic interest in the work rather than rewards and punishments. The author’s image rather than a scientific term.
  • Sawyer Effect: Pink’s term inspired by The Adventures of Tom Sawyer: a reward may turn play into work, and sometimes the reverse.
  • Goldilocks tasks: The book’s image for tasks that are neither too easy nor too difficult. The author believes flow occurs more often in such tasks.
  • Type I: Pink’s term for behavior driven by interest in the activity, unlike Type X, driven by external reward. A description of behavior rather than a personality type.

All terms

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