A bite of pizza
(Photo: Pixabay)

Have you ever found that you’ve had a sudden burst of energy and felt like you can take on the world after a couple of slices of pizza? No? Just us?

Well, a new human-behavioural study in Payoff: The Hidden Logic That Shapes Our Motivations has confirmed this theory, and they’ve found that just thinking about pizza will motivate you to work harder.

The study, led by Professor of Psychology and Behavioural Economics at Duke University, Dan Ariely, followed a group of Intel factory workers through their work week to assess how their productivity would change based on potential rewards.

Pizza
(Photo: Pixabay)

At the start of the week, the workers were either offered a voucher for free pizza, a cash bonus or a compliment from their boss. Surprisingly, the pizza emerged as the biggest incentive, trumping self-praise and cold-hard cash.

The promise of a slice of melted cheese-topped dough caused an increase in productivity of 6.7 per cent, compared to only 6.6 per cent from the compliment group, and 4.9 per cent from the bonus cash group.

It seems most of us would take delicious food over a little bit of extra cash any day. And we definitely slot into this field…

Now, if we’ve got you craving pizza, here’s a selection of our favourite homemade pizza recipes for dinner tonight.

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Text: The Australian Women’s Weekly / Additional Reporting: Sean Tan