what if there was a $10 buy in where if we win we get our money back but if we lose the money is donated to some pre-agreed upon charity?
I feel like this structure could be improved, as I don’t think it would press the right psychological buttons. If I’m enthusiastic about the charity, it’s strange to be (effectively) playing against it—especially if there’s a relatively large amount of money at stake, most of it conditionally donated by people other than me, so the altruistic benefit of losing the game clearly outweighs the selfish benefit of winning it. And if I’m not enthusiastic about the charity, I have no strong motive to put any money up, when the best I can personally do is break even.
If you’re expecting the participants to be enthusiastic about the charity, maybe a better structure would be to ditch the idea of giving the players their money back, and find someone (or offer yourself) to match (or at least significantly augment) the donation if the human team wins. That way they’re all working together for a good cause.
(If you wanted to go in the other direction and appeal to their selfish motives, you could stick with something similar to the original plan but make the winning outcome better than breakeven—either by putting some extra money in the pot, or by breaking the humans up into two teams and giving some of the worse-performing team’s money to the better-performing team while donating the rest to charity.)
I feel like this structure could be improved, as I don’t think it would press the right psychological buttons. If I’m enthusiastic about the charity, it’s strange to be (effectively) playing against it—especially if there’s a relatively large amount of money at stake, most of it conditionally donated by people other than me, so the altruistic benefit of losing the game clearly outweighs the selfish benefit of winning it.
That’s a good point. Maybe it’d be better if it were like one team of humans against another. Although I could also see it being the case that people are in fact motivated to win: competitiveness, social pressure, not enough money to be particularly driven to have it donated to the charity.
find someone (or offer yourself) to match (or at least significantly augment) the donation if the human team wins
Yes, sorry—‘magically find more money’ was not exactly a helpful suggestion! (I think I was more confident in the negative part of my critique, but wanted to at least try to offer something constructive.) I do think it could potentially work for quite small values of ‘significantly augment’, though, if that is an option; just enough to take the game from from zero sum to non-negligibly positive sum.
I feel like this structure could be improved, as I don’t think it would press the right psychological buttons. If I’m enthusiastic about the charity, it’s strange to be (effectively) playing against it—especially if there’s a relatively large amount of money at stake, most of it conditionally donated by people other than me, so the altruistic benefit of losing the game clearly outweighs the selfish benefit of winning it. And if I’m not enthusiastic about the charity, I have no strong motive to put any money up, when the best I can personally do is break even.
If you’re expecting the participants to be enthusiastic about the charity, maybe a better structure would be to ditch the idea of giving the players their money back, and find someone (or offer yourself) to match (or at least significantly augment) the donation if the human team wins. That way they’re all working together for a good cause.
(If you wanted to go in the other direction and appeal to their selfish motives, you could stick with something similar to the original plan but make the winning outcome better than breakeven—either by putting some extra money in the pot, or by breaking the humans up into two teams and giving some of the worse-performing team’s money to the better-performing team while donating the rest to charity.)
Thanks for the feedback!
That’s a good point. Maybe it’d be better if it were like one team of humans against another. Although I could also see it being the case that people are in fact motivated to win: competitiveness, social pressure, not enough money to be particularly driven to have it donated to the charity.
That sounds difficult.
Yes, sorry—‘magically find more money’ was not exactly a helpful suggestion! (I think I was more confident in the negative part of my critique, but wanted to at least try to offer something constructive.) I do think it could potentially work for quite small values of ‘significantly augment’, though, if that is an option; just enough to take the game from from zero sum to non-negligibly positive sum.