2 famous psychologists Amos Tversky and Thomas Gilovich were giving a motivational psychology class to teachers and instructors from various walks of life.
The class was about how to inspire better performance from the people they were training and instructing.
Tversky and Giloch asked the class - should they praise someone’s performance to get them to perform better.
Or should they criticize someone’s performance to get them to perform better.
There were 2 Israeli aviation instructors among the students in the class.
They were quick to answer “criticize”.
Tversky and Gilovich told them they were wrong.
Praise was more effective.
The Israeli instructors said, “Sirs, we respectfully disagree. Back at the academy where we teach pilots to fly, we have found criticism to be more effective.”
They said, in their experience, whenever a student pilot performed an excellent flight, and they praised the student for their excellent performance after that flight, the student’s performance on the next flight dropped.
The praise seemed to cause the student to relax and slack off, rather than to be motivated to do even better.
And whenever they criticized a student pilot for a poorly performed flight, the student would almost always perform better on the next flight.
What else could this mean, but that the criticized students were stung by the criticism, and immediately improved their performance so they wouldn’t be criticized again?
The psychologists told the aviation instructors their facts were right.
But their interpretation of those facts was wrong.
The psychologists agreed that a student who had performed excellently on a flight was likely to perform less well on the next flight, and the student who had performed poorly on a flight was likely to perform better on the next flight.
However, they said the reason for the change in performance had nothing to do with criticism or praise.
It was related to statistical regression.
The students were just reverting to their natural level of performance.
Everyone has a natural level of performance.
We may perform above our natural level of performance at times, or below our natural level of performance at times, but we will return to our natural level of performance, which is the norm for us.
Thus a drop after an excellent performance, and an improvement after a mediocre one, is to be expected.
I find the concept of “a natural level of performance” very reassuring.
Because, whatever the current state of affairs - for instance, nothing I do is right, I know I have a natural level of performance I will return to.
If my performance is below par for a while, because I am going through a particularly tough time, or I am in the wrong environment, or I am still learning the ropes of a new skill-set, I know it’s just a question of time before my performance will return to my long term norm.
Likewise, when I suddenly blow it out of the water, and do exceptionally well, I don’t have to fret about not being able to repeat it, because even if I can’t do that, I can depend on my long term natural level of performance to see me through.
1 comment:
Very thought provoking, minoo...however, there exists a third possibilty- thepsyche of the person and his level of self confidence. Is he encouraged and motivated to excel by praise ANd is he deflated by critcism - I suppose a lot depends on how the criticism is delivered...
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