Career Executive

Medical research has now confirmed what executive management has suspected for a long time: executives are mostly motivated by a salary that is higher than their colleagues. Relative factors are perhaps more important than absolute ones.

Science magazine recently published a lengthy article on research conducted at the University of Bonn under Dr. Christian Eiger’s neurology group that examined the behavior of homo economicus.

The research made use of medical imaging – magnetic resonance imagery—to permit the visualization of the different centers of the brain subsequent to a stimulus. The research was conducted on 38,000 males (males being notable for a putative greater interest in financial gain than women), who were subjected to a variety of experiments.

Two by two, the subjects were placed in a magnetic resonance machine to monitor their brain activity and each two subjects were

made to perform a simple, identical task, for which they were then compensated if they succeeded. The experiments revealed that the zone of the brain where stimulus from reward is found had major activity when the subject received a larger reward than his partner. The same zone had only a very low activity when the two men received the same reward.

The two ‘competing’ career executives were actually placed side by side in front of a screen on which they had to rapidly estimate the number of points appearing on the screen. If their response was correct, they were awarded 30 to 120 Euros. Then the experimenters informed the participants first of their own award, and then of the award of their partner.

At that point the tomographs were measured for changes in blood circulation in the different brain centers. A higher blood pressure in this or that zone of the brain is indicative of increased activity. The lead neurologist explained that if several centers are active following the announcement of different remunerations, one of them –the ventral striatum—where the reward center is located—showed the strongest activity.

The surprise was that the activation of the brain’s reward center was not in proportion to the absolute sum of the reward – 30, 60, or 120 Euros—but rather the greatest activity was measured when the subject learned that for the same result, he received a larger reward than his partner.

Economist Armin Falk is unequivocal in his interpretation: the experience destroys the received idea that men are simply motivated by a maximum compensation. The experiments show that competition between colleagues plays a major role and that executive staff are often more satisfied with less when they know that its more than their colleagues received.