As a behavioral scientist, I have long known that giving people encouragement and assisting them with goal-setting is a manipulative and underhanded practice.

Wait…that doesn’t sound right.

This message is what caught my eye in the New York Times cover story discussing the “psychological tricks” used by Uber’s technology to cajole and control its drivers into staying on the road. I was told that among Uber’s mind-control techniques are such psychological chestnuts as goal-setting, Zeigarnik effects (i.e. fancy-talk for “we don’t like to leave tasks unfinished”), and even the use of happy, positive messages.

Look, the article’s thesis that Uber is manipulating drivers was on-point. The problem is it buried the lead on what is psychologically wrong with Uber’s approach. The behavioral effects and gamification mechanics the Times’ article cites are really the helpless minions in service of a much deeper evil. Like most minions, they are not to blame.

The true villain at the heart of the story is best unmasked using the science of self-determination theory. Self-determination theory is fundamentally concerned with our basic psychological needs, and how environments and experiences support or thwart those needs.

Research consistently shows that one of our most important psychological needs is the need for autonomy, which is our intrinsic desire to be “the decider” in what we undertake.

Autonomy vs Control

When we do something because we truly value it, we’re acting autonomously. That may be because we choose to do something, but is also true when someone takes the time (e.g. our manager, our leaders) to convince us to believe in it. When those we work with (and for) respect us enough to ensure our autonomy is supported in one of those two ways, we experience what we call “high quality motivation” for our work: A form of motivation that is associated not only with greater satisfaction and engagement, but greater creativity, productivity, and bottom line results.

By contrast, if we don’t feel we are truly choosing or endorsing our actions, there’s a big problem. Because now we are feeling pressured and controlled in some way.

Feeling controlled, manipulated, or “tricked” starves us of our fundamental need for autonomy and so we chafe, underperform, lash out against, and ultimately leave such environments.

Control and pressure is a form of “low quality motivation” that hurts productivity and the bottom line as we grumble our way through meetings thinking about the best way to refresh our resume.

Nobody wins through manipulation and pressure, least of all the company using it. Uber has lost key talent and been in a tailspin because of its toxic culture. Pressuring tactics cost Wells Fargo billions of dollars, untold customers, and a reputation that will take years to repair.

Even Facebook got caught up in controversy in 2014 when it was discovered they tested emotional manipulation in their content. Facebook argued they were just trying to make their content better, but that misses the key point:

Manipulating me with good intentions is still violating my fundamental need for autonomy.

And you will pay a price. Hell, even the professor who edited the study for publication said that she was a little creeped out by the whole thing.

Self-determination theory is the right framework for understanding these dynamics, measuring levels of pressure and support in corporate cultures at the high resolution necessary for taking action and avoiding these cavernous pitfalls. It describes motivation not as a uniform resource to be increased by any means necessary, but as a spectrum of motivational quality that distinguishes good forms of motivation from the bad. Some bad forms — such as external pressure — are easier to spot and address. These include overt threats (such as the infamous “rank and yank” systems), as well as blatantly manipulative rewards. But other bad motivational forms — such as internal pressure — are harder to spot. When your culture is focused on “excellence” (and who’s isn’t?), are your employees truly invested in their work and do they value corporate goals? Or are they really hustling to burnish their political status within the company or because they are driven by fear or guilt about not keeping up? Unless you are looking at the behavioral science of motivation in the right away, you can easily miss these critical distinctions that greatly impact everyone’s success. Two years ago, Uber promoted the fact that they put ideas before people and “encouraged toe-stepping.” Welcome home chickens…it’s time to roost.

Context is King

Whether you’re thinking about implementing new policies, designing a compensation system, or vetting new features for your app that let you elude the authorities, a key idea within self-determination theory is the importance of context:

How will people interpret the intentions of your policies, your app features, and your communications?

Reward systems are a great example of this, because we expect them to work as intended: Give reward, get happiness and motivation.

The problem is, rewards often backfire. Kids become wary of being praised very early in life, because they learn that praise is a way adults try to manipulate them into doing things. Their need for autonomy kicks in and the fun begins. And numerous studies using self-determination theory have demonstrated that financial rewards often undermine the very motivation they are trying to build. Not always, but often. What determines whether rewards work or not? Whether they are supportive of high quality forms of motivation, or whether they are perceived as mechanisms of control.

lower to higher quality forms of motivation

In the same way, most of the mechanics mentioned as “tricks” in the New York Times piece on Uber are not implicitly evil. We have written extensively on the motivational dynamics of games, and there are only a few mechanics we would write off as being cosmically malevolent. Most of the time, any mechanic — whether it be recognition through badges, goal-setting systems, or enticements for staying engaged — can be either good or bad depending on its context and its goal:

Is it designed to manipulate? Or is it designed to fulfill basic needs, which in turn builds more meaningful value in its audience?

The former might bring short term results. But the latter always wins in the long run. Uber is certainly learning that lesson now.

Of course, it is easier to see these issues in hindsight. The trick is to clock motivational quality in our employees, customers, and culture early and often, address the issues that exist, and keep high quality motivation on our radar as a key “cultural performance indicator.” Because self-determination theory is an empirically tested and validated framework, all the concepts I’ve discussed here can be objectively measured, and there is a rich literature on how to take action.

Each of us values our autonomy highly. Respecting that our coworkers and customers do as well will inoculate us from the blight of manipulation, pressure, and control that can so easily rot out corporate cultures. More importantly, a focus on high quality motivation will always keep us — and our organizations — on the road to well-deserved appreciation and bankable success.