Category: the modern workforce

Network Research Highlight: Work-Family Conflict is a Barrier for Women

By: Elizabeth Moraff

Work Science Center network member Mary F. Fox has focused much of her research on women in research and academia, particularly noting barriers to their advancement. Most recently, she published a reflection on Georgia Tech’s website detailing the insights present research has provided on the way work-family conflict (when work interferes with family) and family-work conflict (when family interferes with work) operate differently among men and women in various stages of their academic careers. One of study’s most startling findings, Fox notes, shows women at the most senior levels of their academic career report more family-work conflict than those in earlier stages (Fox, 2019). She ends her reflection by indicating men have benefited more from gender-neutral employee policies in academia than women have. For instance, gender-neutral parental leave policy implementation correlates with fewer women achieving tenure, according to some studies (Fox, 2019).

Oddly, the prevalence of work-family and family-work conflict among professional women contrasts with perceptions of barriers that Fox found in earlier research. In a study of women engineers and their experiences with international research collaboration, she and her co-investigators predicted that women would cite external barriers as more influential in whether or not they had collaborated on research with international partners (Fox, Realff, Rueda, & Morn 2017). In particular, they posited female engineers would list difficulty acquiring funding and international research collaborators as the two greatest barriers in conducting collaborative research internationally. They were right! Women engineers did, in fact, list those two external barriers as most daunting. They rated these barriers as significantly more important than conflicts with balancing family and work (Fox et. al 2017).

Interestingly, these same female engineers imagined that balancing work and family would pose a significant obstacle to other women, but not to themselves (Fox et. al, 2017). Essentially, the engineers in the study identified external hurdles, funding and finding research collaborators, as the factors hindering collaborative international research in their own lives, but they envisioned other women as falling prey to more internal tensions (Fox et. al, 2017). In that study’s conclusion, Fox and her co-investigators point out that organizational policies are much more adept at addressing external barriers. Funding programs could close some of the perceived gap in acquiring resources for research. Initiatives connecting international women in similar fields could aid in the cross-pollination necessary for international work. Unfortunately, organizational policies are much more clumsy at alleviating the internal stressors, like work-family and family-work conflict, as Fox reveals in her reflection (2019).

Still, these two works from Dr. Fox suggest an additional dilemma: even women in competitive academic fields have adopted a narrative that says women are more likely to struggle with family obligations in their career, but they often fail to acknowledge those tensions in their own lives. Indeed, even though the research Fox pulls from paints a picture of work-family and family-work conflict straining women at the highest echelons of academia, women in equivalent roles in engineering do not name such stress as their main problem. Perhaps this perception reflects reality, perhaps not. Research indicates that professional women are rewarded for downplaying family obligations (Fox, 2019). It’s possible that female engineers are loath to recognize this stigmatized stressor in their lives despite recognition of its prevalence in the lives of other women. More research would have to answer such a question. In the end, Fox’s two works do show that women in advanced fields face a variety of barriers to their achievement, and that organizations must continue to implement strategic, evidence-based policies to tackle them.

Who Quits STEM Majors?

By Jacqueline Jung

The modern workforce is becoming increasingly science and technology based. Improving the selection and retention of undergraduate students in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) majors is, therefore, increasingly important. Attrition rates are high: more than 1 in 4 students leave college before completing their degree, and it is even more difficult to attract and retain students in STEM majors. This indicates both failure in selection and in identifying students who are at risk for attrition. To solve this problem, we must find or develop strong predictors of academic success at the post-secondary level to reduce the number of students who leave before getting a degree and increase the number of students who complete their degree, particularly students considering STEM majors and careers. Traditional predictors of academic performance include GPA and aptitude/intelligence tests, such as the SAT or ACT. More recently, efforts have been made to include measures of personality, motivational traits and skills, vocational interests, and other psychological measures as predictors of academic success. Although it may be controversial to use these measures for admissions given that they are self-reported, they could be used post-matriculation for identifying those students who are at-risk for attrition either from a STEM major or from the university as a whole.

A 2013 study (Ackerman, Kanfer, & Beier) followed 589 college students from their admission to the school to their graduation or attrition. First, the authors defined five combinations of traits, motivations, and self-perceptions that were common among the students: Math/Science Self-Concept (e.g., you prefer and feel confident in your abilities regarding math and science), Mastery/Organization (e.g., you want to learn, you are organized and conscientious), Openness and Verbal Self-Concept (e.g., you feel confident in your verbal abilities and you are open to new experiences and critical thinking), Anxiety in Achievement Contexts (e.g., you are neurotic and have high levels of test anxiety), and Extroversion/Sociability (e.g., you want status and an easy life, you prefer and feel confident in social contexts). Using these five combinations of traits (i.e., trait complexes), academic records, high school GPA, SAT scores, and AP exam scores, the authors predicted student (1) academic success (measured by GPA), (2) STEM major persistence (STEM-persisters were those whose initial and final major was STEM, whereas STEM-leavers were those whose initial major was STEM, but final was not), and (3) attrition (students who did not complete a degree within eight years of matriculation) better than traditional measures alone would.

Interestingly, women scored lower than men in the Math/Science Self-Concept trait-complex, but scored higher than men in Mastery/Organization, Anxiety in Achievement, and Extroversion/Sociability trait-complexes. An equal proportion (17.6%) of men and women who started college in a STEM major left STEM, yet the men who left the STEM major had high Math/Science Self-Concepts whereas the women had low Math/Science Self-Concepts, similar to those women who were never in a STEM major. Alternatively, the men who left STEM majors were low in Mastery/Organization, lower than even those men who were never in a STEM major. This may suggest that men and women quit STEM for different reasons: women who leave do not feel confident in their STEM abilities and men who leave lack the organizational skills necessary to succeed.

Certainly, more research is needed to really understand why students may leave their chosen educational paths, but this study alone provides some insight into what might be happening. Schools or organizations interested in increasing the pool of talented candidates in STEM majors may work on interventions that increase STEM self-concept, particularly for women, and improve organizational skills and self-regulation, particularly for men.

Network Research Highlight: Work is More Than a Paycheck

By: Keaton Fletcher

WSC Advisory Board Member, David Blustein, is part of a team led by Kelsey L. Autin that recently published a paper in the Journal of Counseling Psychology that tackles what it means to have your needs satisfied by your work. The authors point toward decent work as a method that allows individuals to meet their needs. Although there has been historically been great debate about what constitutes human needs, the authors assert that work can meet your survival needs, social connection needs, and self-determination needs (autonomy, relatedness, and competence). By putting food on the table, a roof over your head, providing you with a sense that you are doing something meaningful, giving you an opportunity to take control of certain aspects of your life, make deep meaningful relationships, and feel like you have successfully mastered something, work contributes greatly to the human experience.

In a survey of 476 people working at least part time within the U.S., the authors found that if your job meets your survival needs you also tend to be more satisfied in your life, but not necessarily the job yourself. If the job meets your social connection needs, that you also tend to be more satisfied in both your life and your job. If the job meets your self-determination needs, you similarly are more satisfied in your job and our life, but the relationship between self-determination needs and job satisfaction is the strongest relationship found in the study. That said, whether your job meets your survival needs was the best predictor of life satisfaction.

For researchers, this study focuses primarily on the development and validation of a scale designed to actually measure whether a job is meeting an individual’s needs.

Lack of Sleep is a Public Health and Economic Concern

By: Riley Swab

Sleep is necessary to increase focus and productivity, both vital traits to workers. Japanese workers, however, are accumulating massive sleep debts (i.e., consistently sleeping less than 7 hours per night without rebound sleep such as naps or sleeping in) due to a prevalent mentality that sacrificing sleep means you are working hard (Lewis, 2018). The issue has become so prevalent that in 2014, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare acknowledged the existence of a “sleep is expendable” attitude in many Japanese workers (Lewis, 2018). The report, in fact, claimed that 71 percent of Japanese adult male workers slept less than seven hours a night (Lewis, 2018). Although Japanese workers’ lack of sleep has reached an extreme state, a lack of sleep in workers is not unique to Japan. The CDC collected sleep data in 2014 and found that 40% of American adults were getting less than seven hours of sleep (the minimum recommended by the CDC for the best health and wellbeing) a statistic that pushed the CDC to label sleep deprivation as a public health epidemic in the United States (Center for Disease Control, 2017; Howe, 2017).

What does this mean for workers? Not getting enough sleep impairs brain function, reducing a person’s ability to make rational judgements (Lewis, 2018), reducing worker productivity (Lewis, 2018), and even increasing chances of developing arthritis, depression, and suicide (Center for Disease Control, 2017). In addition, those who do not sleep the minimum required hours are at a greater risk for obesity, heart attacks, strokes, and diabetes (Center for Disease Control, 2017). Although a lack of sleep impairs the individual workers, these individual impairments are adding up and impacting the entire Japanese workplace, even extending to their economy. Rand Corporation conducted a study in 2009 to quantify the cost of insufficient sleep in Japanese workers (Lewis, 2018; Hafner, Stepanek, Taylor, Troxel, & Van Stolk, 2016). Their study suggested that Japan loses 138 billion US dollars per year (the equivalent of 2.92% of Japan’s gross domestic product) because of the higher mortality risks and productivity losses resulting from the sleep shortage (Lewis, 2018; Hafner, et al., 2016). According to Rand Corporation’s 2009 study, the United States is estimated to lose $411 billion a year because of problems associated with deficient sleep in workers (Lewis, 2018; Hafner, et al., 2016).

This worrisome change in the sleep patterns of workers holds major implications for modern organizations and economies. Fortunately, some companies are creating systems that reward and encourage workers to sleep. These attempts range from providing a raise for workers who sleep at least six hours a night, to installing rooms in the workplace dedicated to napping (Fleming, 2018). In addition, Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare issued guidance for employers in how to encourage employees to sleep more, primarily through educating both employers and employees about the benefits of getting enough sleep (Fleming, 2018; Lewis, 2018). Moving forward, we suggest organizations take steps to further encourage employee health and wellbeing, including sleep hygiene.

References

Center for Disease Control. (2017). Short Sleep Duration Among US Adults. Retrieved from https://www.cdc.gov

Hafner, M., Stepanek, M., Taylor, J., Troxel, W. M., & Van Stolk, C. (2016). Why sleep matters — the economic costs of insufficient sleep: A cross-country comparative analysis. Retrieved from www.rand.org/giving/contribute

Howe, N. (2017, August 18). America The Sleep-Deprived. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com

Lewis, L. (2018, November 19). Japan wakes up to sleep shortage problems. Retrieved from https://www.ft.com

Fleming, S. (2018, November 28). To combat Japan’s sleep debt, some firms allow tired workers to nap on the job. Retrieved from https://www.weforum.org

Network Research Highlight: Cyber-Vetting May Be Limiting Talent Pools

By: Elizabeth Moraff & Keaton Fletcher

A recent paper published by Debora Jeske, Sonia Lippke, and Work Science Center Network Member, Kenneth Shultz, in the Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, highlights the increasingly confusing role of social media in job selection. Cyber-vetting is a process in which employers screen potential employees based on information provided in their social media accounts and other online presences. However, the opportunity to reduce risk on the part of the employer, through cyber-vetting, may in fact, increase perceived risk for applicants, particularly those who have personal information that may impact their prospects of being hired. Willingness to disclose information, as well as privacy concerns, may very well be affecting what applicants complete the recruitment process. People vary in their willingness to share personal information with others, what the authors call, self-disclosure.

The researchers recruited over 200 undergraduates at a university in the U.K. and asked them to imagine themselves applying to various jobs, ranging from sales to government think tanks to childcare. In some of the conditions, participants were asked to provide their login information for all of their social media accounts, which the interviewer would use to peruse their accounts during an interview. Participants then indicated whether or not they intended to continue in the application process (Jeske et. al, 2019).

Participants who typically engaged in higher self-disclosure behavior were more willing to continue the application process, despite the need to share their social media information. The researchers also found that if participants felt as though the information from their social media accounts may be used inappropriately and if they were generally concerned about privacy, they were less likely to continue with the application. Applicants who felt vulnerable and were worried about a prospective employer invading their social media accounts were less likely to provide the requested information, and less likely to indicate they would persevere in the process. If an applicant did not feel vulnerable, though, their concern about global privacy did not affect their self-disclosure of information (Jeske et. al, 2019). Additionally, the study demonstrated that willingness to trust influenced self-disclosure independently. People who were more willing to trust an employer gave more information.

Moving forward, this suggests that employers who require applicants to share their social media account information for cyber-vetting may be limiting their applicant pool on traits that are not necessarily relevant to job performance (e.g., preference for privacy). These unexpected findings potentially serve as a caution to employers about the way they talk about social media screenings with applicants. Applicants who feel vulnerable, potentially those who carry stigmatized work identities, such as a disability, may be more likely to drop out of the recruitment process when it seems that an organization may seek sensitive information about them. The researchers suggest that companies might mitigate these potential effects by limiting themselves to asking for information from applicants that they truly need, and by clarifying for applicants exactly how they intend to glean information from social media, and to what end.

Modern Teams Speaker Series

Date: Friday, February 1, 2019
By: Justin Sabree

The Industrial-Organizational Psychology program at Georgia Tech recently hosted a series of speakers on modern team research in a wide variety of contexts. Below, we briefly outline these talks.

Scott Tannenbaum, President and Co-Founder of the consulting firm, gOE (the Group for Organizational Effectiveness) discussed his experience solving issues for over 500 organizations globally, including more than 30 Fortune 100 companies. Tannenbaum has noticed that almost every organization wants to be better at collaboration and lauds teamwork. This trend has only intensified as the demands to collaborate to solve multi-dimensional problems have increased. However, despite this strong value of teamwork, many workers report that their own teams perform sub-optimally and have misconceptions about what teamwork actually is. Tannenbaum explained that many organizations view teamwork as simply getting along and consequently dissociate it from employee performance and business goals. This dissociation inadvertently downplays the importance of teamwork within an organization. To combat this problem, organizations may consider tying employees’ teamwork ability to their performance assessments and their ability to achieve business objectives.

Before team issues can be solved, organizations need to be sure that the problem truly is team-related. For instance, if a team is underperforming because of general communication issues within that team, then a team-level intervention is appropriate. However, if a team refuses to communicate due to a specific individual, such as a dismissive leader, then the solution should focus on performance management of that individual as opposed to involving the entire team. On the other hand, if many teams fail to communicate effectively, then the problem might lie at a higher level of analysis, and an organizational intervention may be necessary. Ultimately, in order for an intervention to be effective, it must be at the same level of analysis as the problem that it hopes to address.

Greg Ruark, team leader for basic research at the Army Research Institute (ARI), discussed exciting advances in teams research being conducted with the United States Army as well as the future of the field. Ruark explained that, unlike teams in traditional organizations, many teams in the Army serve on two-year rotations, and the individuals on these teams frequently move from different locations. Due to most members being new to a location, team members typically spend a larger amount of their non-work hours together than team members in traditional organization settings. As a result of this reliance on team members outside of work, maintaining positive interactions during non-task related situations is a pressing topic of current research.

Moving forward, Ruark explained that an important frontier for future teams research is how to adapt to new domains of war, such as cyberspace. Traditionally, the Army’s culture has been centralized with a strong top-down influence, but while this set up has been successful for hundreds of years, future attacks may require quicker responses than this design may allow. This may alter the nature of the multiteam system that is the Army.

Lauren Blackwell Landon, Team Risk Portfolio Scientist at NASA, spoke about cutting edge research being conducted with astronauts in preparation for the Mars Mission. This preparation starts with selecting the 12 best candidates out of 18,000 applicants. In a recent job analysis conducted at NASA, the top five needed-at-hire traits for prospective astronauts were sociability, adaptability, motivation, communication, and teamwork. Three of these traits underscore how astronauts must work and live well with others. Due to astronauts cohabitating, group living skills, such as tidiness and sleeping schedule, predict team performance among teams of astronauts much more than would be expected from traditional teams research.

Landon also explained that nuance exists in the desirability of the degree to which astronauts exhibit traits. For example, certain traits, like motivation and emotional stability, have fairly straightforward guidelines: the higher the scores on these traits, the better the team will perform. On the other hand, traits like extraversion seem to be deleterious to team performance if they are present in too high or too low of a quantity. If an astronaut is too reclusive, she may not bond with the team members. However, if an astronaut is too extroverted, he may annoy his fellow team members or fail to function optimally in a relatively isolated environment. Though NASA has a clear view on the ideal range of traits for individuals, Landon mentioned that much less is known about what the ideal composition of traits should be within a team. For instance, the teams literature does not suggest if a team with two introverted members and one extroverted member will perform differently than a team with two extroverts and one introvert.

Though gaps exist about the ideal trait combinations among team members, NASA does focus on other team composition aspects. When composing teams, NASA strategically avoids building teams that have many fault lines, such as gender, profession, or ethnicity. Despite team diversity frequently resulting in positive outcomes, too many surface level fault lines can lead to conflict and subgroup formations.

Steve Fiore, professor at University of Central Florida, spoke about the importance of interdisciplinary science teams and how to study them. Nature’s problems frequently cut across disciplinary borders. Fiore argued that researchers are well-positioned to overcome barriers that have been hindering interdisciplinary scientific research for more than 40 years. When breakdowns occur, the problem should be identified as either relating to issues with task work or teamwork. In regard to scientific teams research, task work is the actual work being completed—hypothesis generation, data analysis, writing up results—and has frequently been the focus of research. In contrast, teamwork involves the attitudinal, behavioral, and cognitive aspects of working with other people. Ultimately, breakdowns in interdisciplinary scientific research can occur due to either type of work, but some common reasons for these breakdowns are from goal misalignment and unclear boundaries.

To overcome these potential degradations in performance, Fiore presented three crucial aspects of teamwork. First, interdisciplinary teams must create a climate of psychological safety. By doing so, the team will foster increased innovation due to members feeling more comfortable to share novel ideas. Second, team members should listen actively and possess assertive communication styles. Active listening facilitates positive social relationships and clearer understanding of members’ goals and intentions. On the other hand, assertive communication mitigates the potential for members’ diverse expertise to be overlooked. Finally, teams need well-defined shared mental models, so each member knows the strengths of each member as well as a clear vision of the team’s goal.

Melissa Harrell, People Analytics Manager at Google, spoke about the history of Google’s People Operations and the pioneering teams-related research that they conduct. Despite now being well-known for their people-centric culture, founding Googlers initially questioned if team managers even mattered. A series of rigorous studies at Google supported the current science of leadership: effective managers can develop their team members and also ensure their team completes their assigned tasks. The question evolved to what parts of managing could be substituted with data analytics. With this aim in mind, People Analytics eventually created an algorithm that predicted who would be promoted, sometimes achieving up to 90% accuracy and reducing 30% of the time that managers needed to make these promotion decisions. Despite the accuracy of the algorithm and time savings, managers did not respond favorably to this change. As Harrell explained, the algorithm took away the autonomy in these important people-related decisions, and Google eventually stopped using it. This impactful moment in the company’s history led to their current stance: people should not be taken out of people decisions.

With this philosophy, data analytics supplements, but does not replace, the human decisions needed to improve Google’s workforce. Furthermore, this change in perspective has allowed the People Operation’s team to be successful in their teams research endeavors. For instance, Harrell spoke about Project Oxygen, Google’s study into what makes an effective team. Most notably, this project underscored the importance of teams being dependable, having clear structure, and feeling psychologically safe.

Network Research Highlight: Creating Enriched Jobs

By: Elizabeth Moraff

An enriched work design is one in which work roles provide employees with autonomy, task variety, and opportunities to use and develop skills. Despite a wealth of literature pointing towards the benefits of enriched work design, low-quality and poorly-designed jobs continue to pervade the global workspace (Parker, Andrei, & Broeck 2019). Further, relatively little research examines the variables that affect what strategies people use when designing jobs (Parker, Andrei, & Broeck 2019). Work Science Center Network member Sharon K. Parker, with Daniela M. Andrei and Anja den Broeck, sought to ameliorate this gap in a study published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

Parker and colleagues proposed that supervisors have a tendency towards creating simplified roles while designing work, and that this may lead to the low proportion of enriched work roles. Indeed, they replicated the findings of a 1991 study (Campion & Stevens), in which undergraduate students, when given the opportunity to design clerical roles, overwhelmingly utilized strategies geared towards efficiency and role simplicity, rather than enrichment and enjoyability for workers.

Given this consistent finding, the researchers designed two subsequent studies to explain some of the factors that affect why people choose particular strategies when designing work.

The studies indicated a few important influences on what factors led to more enriched work designs. Firstly, a worker’s current experience of job autonomy corresponded to an increased tendency to design enriching roles for others (Parker, Andrei, & Broeck 2019). Secondly, although registered I-O Psychologists were also more likely to create more enriched roles, this inclination likely stemmed from work experience, which bred implicit knowledge and practical skills, rather than explicit knowledge from their training (Parker, Andrei, & Broeck 2019). In other words, even though I-O Psychologists are experts in work design, they used more enriching strategies not because they were specifically taught to, but because they had experiences that promoted this behavior. Further, openness to change did positively correlate with more enriching strategies and task allocation. Participants who ranked lower on openness to change tended to design less enriched roles (Parker, Andrei, & Broeck 2019).

We are excited for the implications these findings have for IO Psychologists, particularly those involved in designing work and influencing the processes in which work roles emerge. As the Work Science Center, we are glad to highlight research that builds our understanding of how to equip people to design more enriching work.

References

Campion, M. A., & Stevens, M. J. (1991). Neglected questions in job design: How people design jobs, task-job predictability, and influence of training. Journal of Business and Psychology, 6, 169 –191. http://dx.doi .org/10.1007/BF01126707

Parker, S. K., Andrei, D. M., & Van den Broeck, A. (2019). Poor work design begets poor work design: Capacity and willingness antecedents of individual work design behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/apl0000383

Workforce Readiness and the Future of Work

Date: Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Network Member, Fred Oswald; WSC Advisory Council member, Tara Behrend; and Lori Foster released the first edition of their edited book, Workforce Readiness and the Future of Work. The book features 13 chapters tackling topics including the roles of technology, education, and policy in modern workforce readiness. The book concludes with a summative and forward-thinking chapter, written by WSC Director, Ruth Kanfer, and Jamai Blivin. 

Network Research Highlight: Vocational Interests and Fit

By: Keaton Fletcher

Members of the Work Science Center Advisory Council, Tara Behrend and David Blustein, recently published a groundbreaking study, led by Alexander Glosenberg, in the Journal of Vocational Behavior exploring the fit between individuals’ vocational interests and their current careers across the globe. Vocational interests are essentially common aspects of jobs or careers that may be particularly attractive to individuals. One model, RIASEC (Holland, 1997), breaks these potential interests into Realistic (preference for hands-on tasks), Investigative (preference for scientific inquiry), Artistic (preference for ambiguity), Social (preference for interpersonal interactions), Enterprising (preference for business-oriented activities), and Conventional (preference for data manipulation). A second model, the Octant model (Tracey, 2002), has a similar, though more nuanced break down of vocational interests that is not entirely different from RIASEC. Taken together, these models suggest interests may vary along two dimensions, a preference for data versus ideas and a preference for things versus people. Glosenberg and colleagues used these two models and their combined understanding to explore the nature of vocational interests and person-vocation fit.

Using a final sample of over 63,000 employed individuals from 74 countries/territories, the authors found individuals with higher levels of education are more likely to have a career that fits their vocational interests. This is even more so the case in countries highly individualistic countries and countries with high levels of economic development. Further, the authors found that one of the main models of vocational interests may not hold up as well in less economically developed countries, potentially because work focusing on data and ideas is not as accessible as it is in developed countries.

The Science Behind Uber’s Nudges

By: Brian Hengesbaugh

Behavioral science has long been used by media and advertisers to influence the decision-making of consumers (e.g., pricing items at 99 cents instead of the full dollar). The growing “gig economy,” in which temporary jobs are completed by independent contractors instead of full-time employees, has led employers to look towards behavioral science concepts in an effort to increase their influence over gig workers.

The New York Times article, ‘How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons,’ explains that the Uber drivers’ status as independent business owners leads to significant cost savings for the company, however, a key trade-off is that Uber cannot control the times or locations that the drivers choose to work. This lack of control over drivers’ schedules can lead to the company’s inability to meet customer demand at peak times (e.g., rush hour) and peak locations (e.g., concert venues). In these situations, Uber currently uses a price increase called surge-pricing to reduce customer demand and entice more drivers to get behind the wheel. The challenge is that surge-pricing scenarios are bad for Uber, but good for drivers. When prices increase, Uber is losing potential customers and current customers face longer wait-times between rides – not good for Uber. For the drivers, the price increase leads to greater compensation per ride and shorter wait time between rides, which increases their effective hourly rate – good for drivers. The misalignment of incentives between the company and the drivers, coupled with the lack of control over drivers’ schedules, has lead Uber to explore methods other than surge pricing to influence the decision-making of drivers. Below is an examination of three interventions, and the associated behavioral science concepts, that Uber has used in an effort to influence their drivers.

Intervention: Almost There!

Goal: Extend shift length

Description: When drivers attempt to log-off, the app sends them a message stating that they are only a specific number of dollars short of reaching an arbitrarily set income goal for the day.

Behavioral Science Concept: Loss Framing – Prospect theory states that people are motivated more by the threat of loss than by the potential of equivalent gain (Kahneman & Tversky, 1979). As a result, people are more likely to take risks to avoid losses than to secure gains. The message from the app frames the daily income as a loss relative to the arbitrary income goal and the motivation of loss aversion leads the driver to continue their shift.

Intervention: Forward Dispatch (or Auto-Queuing)

Goal: Extend shift length

Description: Uber pre-loads the driver’s next ride before the current ride has ended.

Behavioral Science Concept: Regret Avoidance – People feel greater regret for bad outcomes that are produced by new actions than for bad outcomes that result from inaction, and therefore exhibit preferences for inaction (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982). By pre-loading the next ride, Uber has created a scenario in which the driver’s inaction results in continuing the shift.

Intervention: New Driver Signing Bonus

Goal: Reduce attrition rate of new drivers.

Description: New drivers are given a financial bonus when they reach 25 rides.

Behavioral Science Concept: Sunk Cost Fallacy – The investment of time, money, or effort produces a greater tendency to continue an endeavor (Arkes & Blumer, 1985). In order to reach 25 rides, the driver will have invested a significant amount of time and effort in the process and will be more likely to continue working as a driver. As the “gig economy” continues to grow employers will continue to explore new ways to use behavioral science to increase control over independent contractors. Clear ethical guidelines must be developed to help companies navigate scenarios in which there is a misalignment of incentives, or an asymmetry of information, between the company and workers.

Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1979). Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk. Econometrica, 47, 263-291.

Kahneman, D., & Tversky, A. (1982). The psychology of preference. Scientific American, 246, 160-173.

Arkes, H. R., & Blumer, C. (1985), The psychology of sunk costs. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 35, 124-140