Freakonomics Radio - 117. When Is a Negative a Positive?

Episode Date: March 6, 2013

Sure, we all like to hear compliments. But if you're truly looking to get better at something, it's the negative feedback that will get you there.

From APM, American Public Media, and WNYC, this is Freakonomics Radio on Marketplace. Here's the host of Marketplace, Kai Risdahl. Time now for a little Freakonomics Radio. It's that moment every couple of weeks we talk to Stephen Dubner, the co-author of the books and the blog of the same name. The hidden side of everything is what he does. Dubner, welcome back. Hey, Kai. Thanks for having me back.

All right, man. Anytime. You know, last month, you know, we New Yorkers lost a legend, former Congressman and Mayor Ed Koch. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Now, Koch was unique in a few ways, including the fact that he actively solicited feedback from the public.

Just serendipitously, on one occasion, I said, I'm Ed Koch. I'm your congressman. How am I doing? People stopped to tell me. And I knew I was onto something. So, Kai, this got me to thinking about feedback generally. It strikes me that a lot of people say they want feedback, but I'm not so sure they really do, especially if there's a chance it'll be negative feedback.

No, man. Who wants to be told they're doing something wrong? That's probably right. But the fact is that if you really want to get better at something, it's hard to do that without feedback, whether it's your job or sport or schoolwork. So I wanted to know the latest academic thinking on feedback. All right, well, give it up. What'd you find? Well, let's start with the fact that there are obviously at least two different kinds of feedback, right? Positive and negative. As it turns out, they each produce their own benefits. Positive feedback is really helpful when you're trying to increase someone's commitment. So let's say, you know, someone new to a job or a project. Here is Stacey Finkelstein, a Columbia management

professor who's been studying feedback. For these people, positive feedback is most motivating. It's what signals that there's value to what they're doing, they like what they're doing, or that they might achieve their goal at some point. But here's the thing, Kai. Once somebody really buys into that goal, positive feedback has diminishing returns. So if you're looking for actual improvement, you've got to start going negative. Here is Heidi Grant Halverson. She's a psychologist also at Columbia.

This seems fraught. Look, doling out negative feedback is not fun. It's embarrassing. We feel terrible. We feel guilty. So we love hearing, hey, maybe I don't have to give negative feedback. Maybe I can just say positive things. And if I just keep saying positive things, then somehow this person will work to their fullest potential and everything will turn out fine. And that just turns out to

not be the case. Well, wait, how do you know that's not the case? Okay. So I'll tell you about the research that Stacey Finkelstein and a co-author, Ayelet Fishback at the University of Chicago did. They ran a series of experiments with people in a variety of realms, some novices, some experts. And granted, these are only experiments, but this is the best they could do for now. And they wanted to see how different people handle feedback at different stages of their expertise. And the results argue quite strongly that novices really need the positive feedback, but that experts just start to tune it out. So here's Fishback.

The more a person is committed to a goal the more negative compared with positive feedback will be efficient but but don't know people are fragile man I mean people's feelings I come out of the studio and said somebody says man that interview stunk well I guess there are two ways to look at this you can either look at trying to make people happy or try to make people better if you want to make people happy, you know, well, maybe. Look, if you don't want to get better, that's your prerogative, right? If you do, then it's critical feedback that's going to help get you there.

Now, I'm not saying you should eliminate positive feedback or that you should, you know, deliver the negative feedback in a way that makes people weep. Well, give me a for instance here, would you? Oh, I'm so glad you asked, Kai. So as you know, I'm a really big fan of Marketplace. Yes, I appreciate that. I think you do a great job as a host. Yeah, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah. I would like to look at a couple recent examples of your work.

I've noticed you're smooth as silk on most domestic matters. But I think that you might want to think about practicing your foreign pronunciations a bit more before you get on the air. Here, listen to this one. If you want to know where those reactors built like Fukushima, rather, that Alex mentioned. You are so fired. All right, we're going to turn off your microphone. We're done. Steve and Doug. Hang on, there's another.

The prospect of a quarter million new Romanian Bulgarians. Romanians, rather, and Bulgarians. What are Romanian Bulgarians? You remember them? Yeah. And here's a little something else I think you could maybe improve on, Kai. This is interesting. This is kind of a trademark phrase of yours, I found. A final thought on the way out, which goes like this. This final note on the way out in which Boris Johnson, the mayor of the city of London. This final note as we leave off today which Boris Johnson, the mayor of the city of London, this final note as we leave off today, the end of the beginning, perhaps at the end of the beginning, we did a thing a couple of months ago. You know what? This may well be your final note, pal. Possibly. But before I go, let me just offer constructive feedback. No, here's the thing.

I have nothing against the final note or on the way out, but together, they're just redundant. So what about cutting one of them? And just think, Kai, just think of all the extra time you'll save over the course of a year, maybe enough time to actually run an extra couple Freakonomics radio segments. Or five minutes every two weeks that we don't have to have you on. How about that? Would that be all right, too? Please, no.

Please have me back. Stephen Dubner, Freakonomics.com is his website. We'll see you. I hope so. Maybe. I don't know. Hey, podcast listeners. Coming up next week on Freakonomics Radio, there ain't no such thing as a free parking spot.

It's about the nightmare that parking can be, especially in a place like New York. Unless you're someone like Jamie Drake, who's an interior designer. He's worked for, among many others, Madonna and Mayor Bloomberg. Well, many friends or acquaintances, when you say where you live, first I'll start by, I live at 24th and 11th. Then they sort of, if they know New York, their mind starts to, and they go, you live in the building with the garage. I mean, it is iconic at this point. That's right. Drake's building, which is quite posh, has what it calls a sky garage.

Every apartment has its own garage attached to the apartment reached by a separate automobile elevator. We tested it out. So that's the, that's garage exit there. Yeah. You're right. Yeah. You drive in from 11th Avenue. All right. So we turned in and we just pull around. Welcome. Call up to wait. The elevator has been called for you. You pull into the garage head first. And we're off. You ascend to your floor. So we don't get a view out of the elevator. The doors open, and you back out into your space.

So you drive in straight, and you're backing. Wow. Oh, mama, look at the view. For the rest of us, parking will never be quite so good. But on next week's podcast, you'll hear from some pioneers in the effort to make parking everywhere a little bit better for everybody. Talk to you then. you