{"id":5431,"date":"2026-05-13T08:27:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-13T12:27:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/?p=5431"},"modified":"2026-05-13T08:27:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-13T12:27:25","slug":"winning-the-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/13\/winning-the-heart\/","title":{"rendered":"Winning the Heart"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast<\/em>,\u00a0click here<\/a>

What motivates people to work hard and succeed at difficult tasks?

In the 1930’s, a psychologist named Karl Duncker devised a famous experiment to try to find out.

It’s called the Candle Problem.

Small groups are given a candle, a box of tacks, and a book of matches.\u00a0Their assignment is simple: affix the candle to the wall in such a way that the wax doesn’t drip onto the table.

How about tacking the candle to the wall?\u00a0That doesn’t work.\u00a0Is it\u00a0possible to use some melted wax as\u00a0a glue that will hold up the candle?\u00a0That doesn’t prevent drippage, either.\u00a0\u00a0

It takes most groups 5-10 minutes to come up with the best solution.\u00a0

Their challenge is to overcome what Duncker called “functional fixedness” \u2013 that is, the sense that when we look at the resources we have at hand, we already know what they are and what to do with them.

Most people, for instance, overlook the possible usefulness\u00a0of the box that holds the tacks. It turns out that the best solution to the Candle Problem\u00a0is to tack the box to the wall so the candle can stand upright inside it.\u00a0

A Princeton researcher later decided to explore what effect incentives might have on coming up with such novel solutions.\u00a0He told Group One that he was going to time their efforts at solving the Candle Problem as a means of establishing benchmarks.\u00a0He promised Group Two that if they were in the top 25% of all times, they would each receive a couple of bucks.\u00a0He told Group Three that if they were the fastest of all the groups, they would receive a nice prize \u2013 the equivalent of about $100 in today’s money.\u00a0

How do you think the groups performed?\u00a0

It definitely mattered that two of the groups were promised a financial reward.\u00a0But not perhaps as one might expect.

On average, it took the incentivized groups three and a half minutes longer<\/em> to succeed. In fact, researchers have discovered that giving people more money almost never improves their ability to solve problems. As Daniel Pink points out in his book Drive<\/em>, people aren’t motivated the way we usually think.\u00a0\u00a0

One of the most cherished approaches to leadership of the past century was\u00a0to treat people like donkeys.\u00a0If you show them a carrot, they will go forward.\u00a0If you whack them with a stick, they will go forward a few steps faster.\u00a0\u00a0

Many\u00a0corporate policies are plainly\u00a0carrot-and-stick. If you do this we will give you big bucks (and no whammies, as the game show would no doubt put it).\u00a0But if you screw things up, we will punish you, shame you, and maybe even take your job away.\u00a0

Carrots and sticks may work for jobs that are “algorithmic” \u2013 that is, that follow a set path.\u00a0This would include taking out the trash, painting a wall, and trying out a new recipe for enchiladas.\u00a0

But Pink asserts that financial incentives do not usually clarify thinking and sharpen creativity for dealing with tasks that are\u00a0“heuristic” \u2013 complex problems\u00a0that require breaking from old patterns to discover new paths.

Is it OK to give a child an allowance for performing certain household chores, and to reward exceptional performance?\u00a0Of course.\u00a0\u00a0

But all of us dream that our children will one day want to take on bigger challenges than taking out the trash.\u00a0We hope they will want to address\u00a0problems that are interesting, difficult (maybe even exasperating), and will require significant creativity \u2013 especially if the solutions to those problems have the capacity\u00a0to bless many people.\u00a0

They may not get big bucks for succeeding at such\u00a0jobs, but they will receive things money can never buy: peace, joy, and a deep sense of fulfillment.

In general, penalties and rewards may generate short-term results. But they are powerless to win human hearts.

That\u2019s why carrot-and-stick thinking is gradually falling out of favor.\u00a0\u00a0

Most people, after all, don’t like being treated like donkeys.\u00a0More significantly,\u00a0we have acquired plenty of evidence that eye-popping incentives rarely improve creativity. If we doubled someone’s salary and told them to try twice as hard to bring peace to the Middle East, is it more likely they would succeed?\u00a0

That brings us to an important question: Is God into carrots and sticks?

A lot of churches seem to think so.\u00a0If you’re really good, you get the ultimate carrot.\u00a0You get to go to heaven.\u00a0If you’re really bad, you get the ultimate stick.\u00a0You go straight to hell and have to spend the rest of eternity watching every episode of the purple dinosaur Barney and Friends<\/em> on a continuous loop.\u00a0

But such theology simply doesn’t win human hearts.\u00a0If 20 centuries have taught us anything, it’s that\u00a0people\u00a0aren’t ultimately motivated to become better human beings by the promise of heaven or the threat of hell.

But there is<\/em> something that motivates people from the inside out.\u00a0 \u00a0

It’s love<\/em>.

The apostle John writes, \u201cThere is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear,\u00a0because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love. We love because he first loved us\u201d (I John 4:18-19).

If you fall in love with another person, your behavior will be transformed.

God\u2019s love is so remarkable and so unexpected that if we crack open our hearts and receive even a taste of it, our lives will never be the same. \u00a0

People motivated by love will do their utmost to solve the toughest problems,\u00a0bravely face the unknown without guarantees, and even surrender their own lives \u2013 not in the hope of getting richer, but because there’s nothing more worthy, absorbing, and gratifying than loving the ones we love.\u00a0\u00a0

Here we\u2019re catching a glimpse of the very heart of our Father in heaven, who \u201cloved the world so much that he sent his only Son\u2026\u201d\u00a0

It\u2019s true that appeals to our bank accounts, reputation, security, and fears may get our attention for a little while.

But love actually has the power to change things for the better.

And God\u2019s love changes everything.\u00a0<\/em>
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast,\u00a0click here What motivates people to work hard and succeed at difficult tasks? In the 1930’s, a psychologist named Karl Duncker devised a famous experiment to try to find out. It’s called the Candle Problem. Small groups are given a candle, a box of tacks, and a book of matches.\u00a0Their assignment is simple:… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5432,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[535,1113],"class_list":["post-5431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-heart","tag-motivations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5431"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5433,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5431\/revisions\/5433"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5432"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}