Using Ice Cream to Understand Frequent-Flier Miles
I dug up this old (but good) NYTimes article today for something I am working on. It’s about game mechanics (points) and ice cream… everyone loves at least one of those topics right?
Students were given a choice between two simple tasks. One would take six minutes, and the students were told that they would get a gallon of Haagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream as a reward. The other would require seven minutes of work, and the payment would be a gallon of Haagen-Dazs pistachio.
Not surprisingly, since the second option involved more work and a less popular flavor, only about a quarter of the students chose it.
But the researchers also repeated the experiment with a couple of tweaks. In the new version, the six-minute task led to a payoff of 60 points, and the seven-minute task brought 100 points.
The researchers then told the students that anyone who finished with between 50 and 99 points would be given a gallon of vanilla ice cream. Anyone with 100 points would get pistachio.
Practically, there was no difference between the two experiments. But the outcomes ended up being very different.
With the lure of points added to the mix, more than half of students chose the longer task and the less desirable pistachio prize that went with it. Independent of their actual value, “points” apparently give people some satisfaction.
