LIE NO. 4
MONEY DOESN’T MOTIVATE
You can’t buy motivation— for years motivational speakers, work-life coaches, and psychologists have been saying this like a mantra in their seminars. “It’s a widespread myth,” says Steffan Kirchner. He is convinced that a financial reward has a positive influence on motivation. In fact, researchers at the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience in the UK have found that the human brain works faster even with a promised reward of just 50 cents. But what happens in our brains when we come into contact with money? Neurologists can now confirm: Reason and rational considerations play hardly any role in financial matters. When we’re confronted with the prospect of money, the areas of the brain that are responsible for emotional gratification assume command. These emotional systems govern our behavior. Nothing else happens in salary negotiations or stock market crashes, when greed and fear suddenly push reason and understanding into the background. All of this suggests that the idea of money leaves no room in our heads for rational considerations— instead, it is directly activating the motivation centers in our minds.