The Master of Motivation

With the sequel to Wall Street currently in production, I want to look back at one of the most memorable scenes in the original. Not the famous “greed is good” speech, but rather a scene early in the movie (33 minutes in, chapter 7 on DVD) in which corporate raider Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas) convinces his protégé Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) to take up illegal corporate espionage.

Gekko carefully chooses as a setting to make his pitch to Fox his own limousine. Gekko wants Fox to spy on rival corporate raider Larry Wildman as payback for Wildman’s snagging a company Gekko wanted. Breaking the law for the thrill of participating in his mentor’s vendetta doesn’t much appeal to Fox, so Gekko has to be more clever.

Earlier the movie makes it clear that Fox is earning an entry-level stock broker’s income of $50,000 and aspiring to an income of half-a-million (remember, that was in 1985 dollars). Gekko raises Fox’s aspiration level by pointing to a building he claims — without verification, I should add — he flipped a decade before for $800,000 profit, which is now simply “a day’s pay.” He sneers at the guy earning $400,000 as “a working Wall Street stiff, flying first class and being comfortable.” He suggests Bud should be aiming for a net worth of $50 to $100 million, which he describes as being “a player, rich enough to own your own jet, rich enough not to waste time.”

Just as he raises Bud’s aspiration level he reframes his perceived downside. Gekko mentions his own father as “working like an elephant pushing electrical supplies and dropping dead at 49 with a heart attack and tax bills” and contrasts two men on the street, one well-dressed and successful and the other panhandling. Gekko’s implicit message to Bud is that the downside is not respectability, but poverty and misery. Fox would be unlikely to break the law if his choice is between an income of $50,000 and an income of $400,000. But, if posed an all-or-nothing choice between being really rich and being on the street, breaking the law looks more attractive.

When Fox points out that Gekko is asking him to deal in insider information, Gekko reminds Fox that he previously disclosed inside information he got from his father about the airline where he works. Thus Fox has already broken the law. Metaphorically, he’s a little bit pregnant.

Finally, Gekko poses the all-or-nothing choice as dramatically as possible. He asks his driver to pull over and let Fox out. It’s either cooperate with Gekko and ride in the limo or walk on New York’s mean streets. Fox ponders his fate for a few agonizing seconds, then leans over the window and agrees to cooperate: “alright, Mr. Gekko, you got me.” Yes Gekko “got” Fox alright, and it’s clear from Fox’s anxious body language by exactly which part of his anatomy Gekko has got him.

That clip is a cinematic gem that I’d heartily recommend to any instructor teaching motivational theory in psychology. It might be necessary to provide a bit of explanation about the context, but I think the clip stands up pretty well on its own.

Finally, I can’t help but compare Gekko’s ability to persuade the initially-skeptical Fox to break the law to the ability of terrorist organizations to persuade more than a few people of a similar age to be suicide bombers. While the element of revenge — against the Americans and their Afghan or Iraqi or Pakistani or Israeli or Australian allies — is greater, the terrorist leaders also provide a psychological upside in terms of the portrait they paint of life in the afterworld and a material upside in terms of wealth for their families. It’s surprising - and depressing - some of the things some people can persuade other people to do.