Page 57 - Hard Goals

48 HARD Goals

In a series of experiments, Higgins and his colleagues asked
people to play a game called Shoot the Moon. A skill-oriented
game from the 1940s, it involves rolling a small metal ball, the
size of a marble, uphill by manipulating two metal rails. The
goal is to separate the bars at just the right moment so the ball
drops into the hole that carries the most points. (You can check
it out on YouTube by searching for “shoot the moon game”; it’s
actually a pretty addictive little game.)
In one experiment, researchers told folks to just have fun
playing the game because they were studying what types of
games people found the most entertaining. Then they offered
people a reward—a pen—for winning, but they varied the
framing of the reward. One group had the reward described in
serious tones, as if it were a work-related task, and with seri-
ous scoring on a whiteboard. The other group had the reward
described in fun tones—imagine this is a carnival game where
you can win a prize—and scoring was done with poker chips.
Following all this they gave the participants some free time and
covertly assessed how many in each group continued to play
the game, and how many went on to other things like reading a
magazine or playing computer games.
The results were fascinating. When people got the fun
reward, it “fi t” with the inherently fun activity. And thus,
they continued to play the game more during their free period.
(Watching what you do in your free time is a pretty good mea-
sure of what you fi nd intrinsically motivating.) And when peo-

ple got the serious reward, which did not fit at all with the fun
activity, their intrinsic desire to play the game dropped. Nearly
71 percent of the people in the fun reward group played the
game in the free period, compared to only 44 percent in the
serious reward group.