Strings Attached: Untangling the Ethics of Incentives

by Ruth W. Grant

The legitimate and illegitimate use of incentives in society today

Incentives can be found everywhere―in schools, businesses, factories, and government―influencing people's choices about almost everything, from financial decisions and tobacco use to exercise and child rearing. So long as people have a choice, incentives seem innocuous. But Strings Attached demonstrates that when incentives are viewed as a kind of power rather than as a form of exchange, many ethical questions arise: How do incentives affect character and institutional culture? Can incentives be manipulative or exploitative, even if people are free to refuse them? What are the responsibilities of the powerful in using incentives? Ruth Grant shows that, like all other forms of power, incentives can be subject to abuse, and she identifies their legitimate and illegitimate uses.

Grant offers a history of the growth of incentives in early twentieth-century America, identifies standards for judging incentives, and examines incentives in four areas―plea bargaining, recruiting medical research subjects, International Monetary Fund loan conditions, and motivating students. In every case, the analysis of incentives in terms of power yields strikingly different and more complex judgments than an analysis that views incentives as trades, in which the desired behavior is freely exchanged for the incentives offered.

Challenging the role and function of incentives in a democracy, Strings Attached questions whether the penchant for constant incentivizing undermines active, autonomous citizenship. Readers of this book are sure to view the ethics of incentives in a new light.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2011

Reviews

[Randy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm impressed that the author made an interesting and nuanced discussion of an important topic.

[Juvoni · Rating 3 out of 5]

Incentives are one of the more powerful, yet underrated forces. An incentive is the added element without which the desired action probably would not occur. The ability to influence the behaviors of another is something that the author points out should be monitored and the ethics of incentives weighed. Governments and other institutions make heavy use of incentives to influence their citizens and society at large. Understanding incentives can help build your defense against them being used to manipulate you. The book has a very academic tone, prompting the question, what should be considered when we weigh the ethics of incentives. I felt like the book was too narrow, lacking depth for such an impactful concept.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book might have been a big snooze in the hands of a less capable writer, but it turned out to be a smart, interdisciplinary, and engaging read on a topic most of us don’t understand well enough. I appreciate the author’s ability to provide a deep analysis without droning on and on.

[Sara Moesgaard · Rating 3 out of 5]

3,5

Started out excellent, touches on many important points, however quickly becomes a bit repetitive. Could be a 40 page essay.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a really insightful book, a philosophical examination of the morality of incentives. Is it moral, in other words, to dangle a carrot in front of someone in order to get them to do what they might not otherwise. Grant's thoughtful and pluralistic analysis is that one's answer basically depends on three major (and several minor) questions.

Is the purpose of the incentive moral (are we getting someone to be healthy or kill someone)?
Is what we are offering as an incentive moral (are we offering a gift certificate or crack cocaine)?
Is the incentive such that it might change the character of the target (are we "crowding out" potential internal motivation with external motivation)?

There are some other questions the author entertains as relevant (how likely is it that the target wouldn't do x via some other motivation, like reasoning with them?), but these are the "big three." Needless to say, anyone looking for a philosophical argument that simply celebrates or repudiates all incentive structures will be disappointed.

From here, the author gives us four examples of controversial incentive programs and analyzes them using the questions she fleshed out: the use of plea bargains, paying for participation in medical research, a condition of austerity policies placed getting an IMF loan, and paying kids for good school performance. (I really question whether the third of these belongs here, as the IMF loan is not an incentive to get nations to adopt austerity policies, but a condition placed on a loan that countries are already applying for.) I won't rehash the author's positions on all four, but the interesting case to me was that of plea bargaining. Grant expresses aversion (I think, correctly) largely because dangling a lower sentence in front of criminals who plead guilty takes away the "justice" from justice by way of allowing someone to be punished LESS than they would have been for a crime by virtue of saving the state the burden of a trial. Another interesting case was that of paying medical research subjects, which Grant is largely (with limits) for, because all "big three" questions can largely be answered in a way that satisfies moral demands (the first two, "yes," the third, "not likely.")
EE
All in all, a really enjoyable book that will probably change the way (deepen, really) you think about incentives and the moral issues involved with them. I have some quibbles (the author's use of the term "coercion" is probably looser than I think sensible, the author often talks about our intrinsic motivation for doing things without recognizing that some examples she uses - doing well in school - often involve more extrinsic motivations [making parents happy, promise of a high paying job later on, etc] whether incentives are EXPLICITLY used or not). But Grant does philosophy very well, delving very ably into the moral nuances of incentive use.

[University of Chicago Magazine]

Ruth E. Grant, AB'71, AM'75, PhD'84
Author

From our pages (May–June/12): "Incentives can be a form of power, says Duke University philosopher Ruth Grant. They can influence people’s financial decisions or child-rearing choices, so if they are used to manipulate or exploit rather than as an exchange for a desired behavior, the ethics of incentives become complex. Presenting a history of incentives in the 20th-century United States, Grant examines their use in four areas: plea bargaining, recruiting medical-research subjects, International Monetary Fund loan conditions, and motivating students."

[Theodore Kinni · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a brief, rather academic treatise that reframes incentives as a form of power, which raises new questions about their use.