Analyzing Pink's Candle Experiments

Pink’s arguments and points are made very concise and powerful. This is due to the fact of the sheer amount and the quality of the sources he refers to throughout his book. Pink uses stories, scientific research, statistics and his own experiences to strengthen his overall points of the new and outdated motivation systems used in today 's businesses. Pink (2011) uses a story telling narrative a few times throughout the book to give insight on an important individual who agrees with his view on motivation, “One summer morning in 1944, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, age ten, stood on a train platform in Budapest,”(p. 107). The introduction to Csikszentmihalyi is used to give context to his harsh upbringings and how he is someone to look up to. Pink develops these individuals in order to gain an added effect when

Pink often cites the head researcher of the experiment and then goes on to summarizes the findings and relates it to his theory of the motivational drive. The candle experiment with Glucksberg is a perfect example of this, “Glucksberg experiment provides the first question you should ask when contemplating external motivators: is the task at hand routine?”(p. 60), using the experiment’s findings, he provides context on how this experiment relates to motivation 2.0 faulty factors and reinforces his statements. This type of referencing to experiments is the foundation of Pink’s arguments and is essentially the backbone of most of his arguments towards Type I behaviour. Furthermore, another common reference pink uses, is the use of statistics to strengthen his credibility to the reader,”Gallup’s extensive research on the subject shows that in the united states, more than 50 percent of employees are not engaged at work- and nearly 20 percent our actively disengaged.”(p. 109), similar statistics such as this are present during most of the book as