? If you want to attract ants, put sugar on the ground.

Charles Munger

? What John did made him famous, which prompted him to continue to carry forward this style of doing things.

We conduct behaviors that can bring rewards and avoid behaviors that can lead to punishment, so we know right and wrong through the consequences of behaviors. Through positive reinforcement, a certain behavior can be repeated, while punishment will terminate a certain behavior. Behaviors that can bring benefits and happiness will be repeated, while behaviors that bring punishment will be eliminated. In other words, rewarding (or eliminating pain) can strengthen behavior, and punishing (or depriving happiness) can end behavior. If a certain behavior appears repeatedly, it can be rewarded or punished in time, and the effect is the best.

After learning a certain behavior, various rewards will strengthen the behavior. If the reward is unpredictable in advance, then its response is the strongest, and this behavior is also the most difficult to fade. That's the reward of gambling. We can't predict when the return will come, so we keep trying. In addition, the greater the temptation of reward, the stronger the resistance of behavior return.

What is reward behavior and what is punishment behavior? We are always used to connecting them with past experiences, results or innate values and preferences for judgment. (coupling effect)

Intensified behavior will go deeper and deeper into the bone marrow. This is also the reason for the formation of habits, superstitions and hobbies, which are difficult to eliminate for a while. /kloc-samuel johnson, an English writer in the 0/8th century, once said, "The shackles of habit are always hard to detect at first, and when you detect them, you are firmly bound."

What does this mean? It means that people always do what is good for them. Like bees to nectar, they go where they can get a reward. This also shows that if we don't need the reward, we will accept it equally. As Garrett Hardin said in The Ostrich factor, "If a social law rewards bank robbers, there will be more bank robbers in this society. If the method of selecting officials is biased towards fools, then we will have more stupid politicians. "

According to the survey in Sweden, the change of sickness insurance system will directly affect employees' sick leave behavior. If the reform of the sickness insurance system means more generous compensation for sick leave, the number of sick leave days per employee will increase linearly. American medical service survey shows that once the medical expenses are paid by others, patients will over-consume medical services.

? Why do people abuse the health care and welfare system? The government pays for itself. Isn't it natural for us to use the system? If you don't have to pay for welfare, it will inevitably lead to the abuse of this right. Once more and more people benefit from the abuse of the system, the group will increasingly ignore this behavior. Personally, they have gained great benefits, but for society, the losses are limited. Finally, everyone formed such a thinking. Aristotle, an ancient Greek philosopher, once said, "The more things you have, the less attention you get, because people only pay attention to private property, but are not very enthusiastic about public property."

Why would someone steal it?

According to a survey, 23% people said they would steal without being caught. It is predicted that the annual loss caused by theft in American enterprises is about 400 billion dollars, of which 1/3 is caused by its own employees. Why? Opportunities and rewards. In Charles Munger's words: "In the face of irresistible temptation, it often leads to the worst abuse." If the environment makes it easy to steal, it is to encourage theft in disguise (bad behavior will form an atmosphere).

Charles Munger tells us how bad policies become the norm:

The American police department has a simple system: the pension will be paid according to the last income of the year before retirement. Therefore, in the last year of working career, Qi Xin made concerted efforts to increase the cumulative overtime hours of the clients to 1 1,000 hours. After retirement-although some people have only served for 20 years-there is a considerable income. Of course, this is the result of cooperation with colleagues and cheating the state system. This is generally the case, but one thing can be guaranteed: no one is ashamed of it. Soon, on the contrary, they felt it was their responsibility. In this way, there were ancients before and newcomers after-uninterrupted.

Superstitious Pigeon: Why do tennis players like to wear their lucky clothes in the finals?

American psychologist B.F.Skinner put a small amount of food into the pigeon coop every once in a while in an experiment. After several times in a row, pigeons began to show some "superstitious behaviors". If the food falls when the pigeon shakes its head, the pigeon will think that it is shaking its head to let the food fall. So they began to repeat this behavior-because every time they do this, there will always be food, but in fact, the appearance of food has nothing to do with the behavior of pigeons. Skinner said in "Pigeon Superstition": "Humans have the same similar behavior ... some accidental connections between habitual behavior and good behavior results will keep this behavior. Although there are many examples of negative reinforcement. "

Is the right motivation important?

Incentives can be used as strengthening means (also called incentives, incentives refer to external stimuli and rewards that cause individual motivation and meet individual needs). Charles Munger once explained the importance of establishing a correct incentive mechanism through a short story:

Among the incentive cases of many enterprises, FedEx is my favorite. The core of its operating system-the key to product integration-is to assemble all planes at midnight and transfer all packages from one plane to another. If there is a slight delay, the whole operation will not be able to deliver the products to FedEx customers smoothly. But FedEx employees always screw up and never finish the task on time. Managers have tried many other methods-moral persuasion, threats, etc. , but it's useless. Finally, someone came up with a good idea, that is, to reduce the hourly salary, but to increase the salary of each class-once all the work is completed, you can go home. You see, the old problem was solved overnight.

John invested in a start-up in the biochemical industry, but the company's performance was not good, and finally John lost a lot of money.

If we succeed, we will become high-spirited adventurers. On the contrary, failure makes us timid, depressed and risk-averse-even if success or failure depends entirely on luck. A good result does not mean that we made a good decision before, and a bad result does not mean that we made a bad decision.

Therefore, if someone introduces John to an opportunity to invest in a new enterprise in the biochemical industry, John is likely to refuse. Because everyone thinks that the past can reflect the future, John will certainly not accept this investment opportunity. Assuming that John's first investment performance is excellent, will he associate the new proposal with the past successful experience? In order to participate more actively in the investment plan? This nature of automatic connection with past success or failure experiences makes us less passive in the face of new situations and new environments.

Mark Twain fully understood the danger of blindly relying on past experience to deal with the present and the future: "Sometimes we are content to gain wisdom from experience and stop trying. We should be careful about this kind of behavior, otherwise we will be like a cat sitting on a hot stove cover. It will never climb on this hot stove cover again, but it will never have a chance to sit on the cold stove cover again. "

What is the impact of the degree or order of rewards and punishments?

Mary never puts all her children's gifts in the same gift box.

If you divide your life experience into small pieces, life seems to be more chewy. So we like to divide pleasant experiences into small pieces and knead painful experiences into a ball. That's why Mary put the gifts in several different gift boxes. There will be surprises when there are rewards. For example, if you win $65,438+000 at once, you might as well win $50 twice in a row, because winning money every time makes people feel a sense of accomplishment. And a loss of 100 dollars is better than two losses of $50, because each loss is a painful process.

We hope things will get better and better. So it is better to lose $ 100 and then win $50 than to win $50 and then lose $ 100. We want to get rid of all the gloom of failure first, so we would rather lose money first than win first and then lose. Because we hate the experience of failure, we don't like to suffer while waiting for failure. We like to get out of failure as soon as possible.

Connection effect and reinforcement are both manifestations of conditioned reflex. Charles Munger once gave an example to illustrate how to use this psychological power to invent a non-alcoholic beverage.

The edible value in the beverage is taken as the reinforcement, while the packaging, brand name and appearance of the beverage are taken as the stimuli ... Then, we continue to use the second conditioned reflex-Pavlov's conditioned reflex theory. How to use this theory to obtain Pavlov's connection effect? Obviously, we only need to associate drinks and brands with things people like: exciting experiences, sexy stunners, happy times and so on.

Under what circumstances will the conditioned reflex that worked in the past lose its effect? Charles Munger continued: If a customer tries another brand of beverage and finds that this brand is a fortifier, he will turn to this brand. As we all know, in marriage, if you are always around, your partner is less likely to change to another brand, because the setting of marriage does not include long-term separation. Similarly, if you sell products everywhere, customers are less likely to switch to other products, which has a reinforcing effect.

Pay attention.

Benjamin Franklin, an American politician, scientist and philosopher, told us that "a spoonful of honey attracts flies more than a gallon of vinegar." Praise is more effective than punishment in changing behavior, so it is more effective to encourage correct behavior than to crack down on wrong behavior.

Montaigne once said: "The traditional practice of the judiciary is to kill one as an example. It is undoubtedly foolish to punish people with past mistakes, as Plato said: what has been done is spilled water. " But the purpose of doing this is to prevent the same mistake, and also to prevent others from making the same mistake. We hanged the prisoner, not to make him atone, but to reform others.

Don't learn too much from your own or others' experiences of success or failure. The same behavior, under different circumstances, may achieve different results.

4. Distinguish between skill and luck. Charles Munger said: "If you take a competitive and high-paying position, you should be clear in your heart that today's achievements are related to your ability and motivation for success, and what percentage is luck?"

Upton sinclair, an American novelist, said, "The range of a person's interests depends on the range of his salary requirements." Because we only do what works, we must ensure the correctness of incentives. It is necessary to link the incentive mechanism with the performance, and also with the target factors that you finally achieve. Let others know the watershed between right and wrong behavior, and understand the relationship between their performance, reward and the final result you want to achieve. For example, the manager's salary is related to the business value obtained by the manager (the department under management), excluding the cost factor. GEICO's plan embodies Berkshire Hathaway's compensation principles. Warren Buffett said:

The establishment of objectives must follow the following principles: (1) It is in line with the financial situation of the enterprise; (2) Concise and to the point, which is convenient for smooth implementation; (3) It is directly linked to the daily activities of project participants. Finally (4) We must avoid schemes similar to "winning the lottery", such as distributing Berkshire stock options to motivate employees, because their final value -0∞- is completely out of the control of the target group we want to influence. We believe that the unrealistic compensation system is a waste for the owners, which may offset the behavioral values we advocate in management.

6. Rewards need to be implemented on individual performance, rather than praising the efforts or progress of the whole organization; In addition, the reward is given afterwards, not in advance.

7. Don't take money as the only incentive. Sometimes when you get a reward after doing something you like, you will turn something you like into a cold job. Rewards will change our minds. I used to do it because I liked it, but now I do it to make money, so the mystery is to show the essence of reward. Because rewarding our achievements will inspire more fighting spirit, because we feel extra satisfaction. If a reward makes people feel controlled, it will become a passive paid product, which will greatly reduce the attraction of this matter. Bryce blaise pascal once said, "We are usually persuaded by the reasons we find, not by the reasons others tell us."

8. The establishment of the system or articles of association must vigorously advocate and encourage the target behavior. Don't give material rewards for behaviors that are not advocated. Under this system, those negative behaviors must be made to pay the price and cannot escape punishment. At the same time, the cost of unpopular behavior must be higher than the benefits it brings. For example, the happiness of successful theft must be lower than the pain of imprisonment.

9. Sometimes it is difficult to reform a system. Warren Buffett said: If powerful people get huge benefits from a certain system, especially if such benefits are disproportionate to the system, then it is difficult to reform a system.

10, decision makers should be responsible for their actions. The American philosopher Charles Frankel defined "responsibility" in The Case of Modern People: "Responsible decision-making means that decision-makers or organizations must be responsible for those who are indirectly or directly affected by decision-making." Charlie Munger once said: "An example can be used to explain the so-called' responsibility system', which was established by the Romans when they built arches. After the construction frame is dismantled, the person in charge of arch design must stand under the arch. Just like tying your own parachute. "