The Effect of Leaderboards and Expectations on Deeper Level Cognitive Engagement

A core component of leadership is being able to motivate and influence people to perform at the highest levels they are capable of. Being able to perform well in most industries requires people to put effort into their work, bypass surface level impulses, and engage deeper levels of cognitive processes when making decisions. This study looked at two treatments, an expectation and a social incentive, and its effects on cognitive reflection test (CRT) scores and time taken to complete this test. Although it appeared that receiving a leaderboard and expectation treatment improved cognitive reflection test score, these results were not statistically significant. It appeared that a leaderboard and expectation treatment increased time put into taking the test after removing certain data, but these results were also not statistically significant. After some transformation of the data, there may be an effect that leaderboards have on deeper level cognitive engagement if time and effort put into the test is controlled for properly, but this will have to be observed further in future studies.