Research on EE

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Comment by Roy Saunderson on May 12, 2008 at 9:16am

My involvement with employee engagement is specifically related to the subset element of employee recognition and its contribution to EE.

A recent scientific study reported that paying people a compliment appears to activate the same reward center in the brain which is stimulated when paying people cash.

Doctors Keise Izuma, Daisuke N. Saito, and Norihiro Sadato from the University of Fukui, Fukui, in Japan reported in Neuron (Volume 58, Issue 2, April 2008, Pages 284-294) said the study offers scientific support for the long-held assumption that people get a psychological boost from having good recognition.

Entitled “Processing of Social and Monetary Rewards in the Human Striatum” their study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study patterns within the reward-related brain areas, notably the striatum. The striatum is activated by stimuli associated with reward, but also by aversive, novel, unexpected or intense stimuli, and cues associated with such events

Results from participants receiving monetary and social rewards indicated the same or overlapping areas of the brain were activated, thus showing a neural explanation for the social behaviors around reward and recognition. The authors suggest the idea of that we have a “common neural currency” that crosses over for monetary and social rewards and that they are biologically coded by the same neural structure of the striatum.

I find it encouraging to know medical and social science can validate that the brain actually registers rewards and recognition. What once seemed so soft is beginning to show some hard evidence for its benefits.

Comment by David Zinger on May 10, 2008 at 9:29am

Please let the network participants know about any of the latest research you are finding on the topic.