9308369 Hastie The project will examine the effects of monetary incentives on the performance of cognitive tasks. The nature of the incentive contingencies will be varied to create an experimental design to compare the effect of large and small monetary payoffs in piece rate, variable ratio, quota, and tournament incentive schemes, including flat rate payment. While some prior research has studied these schemes, work tasks have not been standardized, so that it is difficult to obtain a true assessment of each incentive scheme. By standardizing the task, it should be possible to obtain more precise measurement of the effect of incentive on the detailed worker behavior. A comparative evaluation and integration cognitive theory and models inspired by utility theory will be conducted. ***
