Self-respect can override material incentives worth millions of dollars

Evidence

Because individuals have to live with themselves, they strive to preserve a self-view as decent, self-respecting people. There is no self-view more personally devastating than self-loathing. Consider the powerful sway of self-respect in the following examples. An individual goes to great lengths to return a lost wallet containing 34,000. His self-respect trumps material gain: “The money is something, but the feeling inside is worth a heck of a lot more than the money.” Gil Meche, a pitcher for the Kansas City Royals, provides an even more striking example of the extraordinary power that self-respect can exert over one’s behavior (Kepner, 2011). Because of shoulder injuries, Meche was unable to pitch but was guaranteed the remaining 12 million in his contract. In an astonishing decision, he declined the money. As he explained, it was the right thing to do, “Once I started to realize I wasn’t earning my money, I felt bad.” He went on to explain that his self-respect meant more to him than the money. “I didn’t feel like I deserved it. I didn’t want to have those feelings again.” — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 223

Categorization

• SHARE: The Gil Meche $12 million refusal story is a perfect anecdote for someone interested in economic incentives vs. intrinsic motivation.
• XREF: connects to: Sacralized values resist material incentives and cause offer-driven concessions to backfire — Hammad Sheikh and Jeremy Ginges and Alin Coman and Scott Atran, Religion, group threat and sacred values, 5; Material incentives for relinquishing sacred values backfire and harden resistance — Scott Atran and Jeremy Ginges, Sacred Values and Cultural Conflict, 48