Another general explanation for the

Another general explanation for the im- portance of pay is that pay is frequently used

as a yardstick for social status (Frank, 1999) and personal accomplishment vis à vis oth- ers, particularly among high achievers (Trank, Rynes, & Bretz, 2002). Status- and accomplishment-based signals associated with compensation appear to be particularly sensitive to relative pay, or pay comparisons, rather than absolute levels of pay. Equity the- ory (Adams, 1963) has long emphasized the importance of pay comparisons to individu- als’ sense of fairness and well-being. More recently, sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists have built a compelling case that the importance of relative wealth and status is “hard-wired” in human nature—the result of evolutionary and natural selection processes that favor (in terms of procre- ational success) those who come out “on top” in a positional or hierarchical sense. Thus, we find that people are often moti- vated to buy houses or yachts that are “just a little bigger” than those of some close com- parator (Frank, 1999), or to demand that their salaries always be “just a little bit higher” than the highest current salary among their peers (e.g., Crystal, 1991).
In summary, the broad usefulness of money as well as its many symbolic meanings suggests that, far from being a mere low- order motivator, pay can assist in obtaining virtually any level on Maslow’s motivational hierarchy, including social esteem and self- actualization.

Contingency Factors: The “It Depends” Nature of Pay Importance

To this point, we have presented evidence suggesting that pay is a very important moti- vator, despite employee self-reports and per- sistent articles in practitioner journals that suggest otherwise. In fact, meta-analytic re- sults do not reveal any motivational interven- tions that work better than performance- contingent pay for enticing people to attain higher performance levels.
However, in emphasizing the impor- tance of pay as a motivator, we are not say- ing that pay is the only important motivator. Indeed, it is clear that many of the other fac- tors mentioned by researchers such as Maslow and Herzberg (for example, interest-