I've observed that too and it raises some interesting psychological thoughts. A linguistic distinction may help if we say that incentives are not quite the sam

I've observed that too and it raises some interesting psychological thoughts. A linguistic distinction may help if we say that incentives are not quite the same thing as motives. Motives can be intrinsic, coming only from one actor. "I am motivated to learn the piano". (See Pink, "Drive" etc) Incentives are a relation between two actors, one (leader/manager) who sets the incentives to shape the behaviour of another. The 'incentivised person' is acted upon and is the target of the incentives. That means the leader has to have a working model of both the environment (and other parametric factors) and of the group or individual they want to incentivise. If you challenge that internal working model you're not just playing with logic and reason about parameters, you're challenging someone's perception - and that's much closer to the ego. There was a good article posted earlier by Christine VanDeVelde Luskin on intrinsic and extrinsic motivations in the Bing preschool. Kids always know when you're playing games at "incentivising" them. They know it's a "bribe", which lessens your integrity, and they act up in response. In my opinion the manipulator has a bit of a binary choice. Either be absolutely up-front and tell people "I am doing X as an incentive for you to behave as Y, and I expect accordant behaviour", or, be so clever as totally hide your manipulation. The former requires the overt exercise of power, or at least risks the vulnerability of total honesty. I think nost perverse incentives come from people treading the middle ground, being deceptive, thinking they are being clever nudging others. But those others see right through the game.