Ariely, D., Kamenica, E., &Prelec, D. (2008). Man& #39;s search for meaning: The case of Legos. Journal of Economic Behavior &Organization, 67(3-4), 671-677.
We investigate how perceived meaning influences labor supply. In a laboratory setting, we manipulate the perceived meaning of simple, repetitive tasks and find a strong influence on subjects’ labor supply. Despite the fact that the wage and the task are identical across the conditions in each experiment, subjects in the less meaningful conditions exhibit reservation wages that are consistently much higher than the subjects in ...