Low paid employees = Happy employees?

 It was July 2016. We were very much eager to watch the movie Kabali. We almost went to every theatre in Chennai and the ticket was not available for the next 3 days. Unfortunately, Albert theatre screened an extra show because of the huge demand. Movie was a good experience. Thanks not to the director but to the audience for running commentary. At the end of the day, I met my other hostel mate who has seen the movie twice the same day! That’s not even the shocking part. He said the movie was good the second time! 😲

We tend to justify all the things that we do and have. This is explained in an experiment by Festinger. Festinger conducted an experiment in which the participants were given a boring task and later they were asked to lie about the task saying how great the task was. Some participants were given $1 and some were given $20 to lie. (They would have to give me at least $5 trillion to lie because how good I am. This is called Joke) Later the participants were asked to rate the task. The $1 receivers rated higher than those $20 receivers. 

The $1 receivers had to justify why they did the job. In order to justify the believed that the task was fun. But for $20 receivers no justification was needed as they received higher price. Higher price was the justification for $20 receivers.

Therefore, low paid employees might be happy about their job and not your high paid employees. This is also the reason why my friend loved to watch the movie the second time.