On Sun, 2004-12-09 at 14:32 -0700, Krzysztof Kowalczyk wrote:
And finally, as quoted by http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000070.html and http://www.uwo.ca/uwofa/ft/6.2/#ph1 :
"... at least two dozen studies over the last three decades have conclusively shown that people who expect to receive a reward for completing a task or for doing that task successfully simply do not perform as well as those who expect no reward at all."
To jump in here, the key word is "expect". I haven't read the studies, nor am I a student of psych, but it seems to me that there is a significant difference between work directly leading to a reward, and work possibly leading to a reward. I don't think that any of these studies are relevant to the conversation.