(From Handbook For Humans)
A fascinating study was done by psychologists with students of various ages. What they did was try different mixes of praise and criticism with the students, and then see what happened. And here’s what they found: That the mix between praise and criticism needed to be at least three to one. That is, the students had to be praised at least three-quarters of the time, and corrected no more than one-quarter of the time.
What happened when the amount of correction rose over 25% was that the students lost interest, lost motivation, and started doing very poorly. When the amount of praise stayed over 75%, however, students retained their self-esteem and their motivation and did well.
The implications of that are vast. Student or not, we human beings are all the same underneath. We all seek to be validated, in our work, in our being, in our actions, and to avoid being invalidated.
And we can do that for others. In all our relationships, we can use the principle of reinforcement by creating a basic climate of acceptance of the other. We can continually let them know that they’re okay with us, even if occasionally we have to correct them. Sound basic? It is, yes. But oh, what a difference it makes.
The U.S. military intuitively follows this finding in their guidelines for correction. If you have to correct someone, they say, you first praise them, then you correct them, then you praise them again. Otherwise the person feels discouraged or you lose rapport with them, or both. From long experience they have found that correction must be used in a climate of acceptance.
It’s futile to keep harping on the same undesirable act or trait, however, even if we’re otherwise positive. If something continues to go wrong, then the thing to do is to ignore the problem directly, but find a related positive and focus on that instead.
Ken Keyes gives a simple example, which I adapt here: Suppose the cook is putting too much salt in the soup. We can certainly indicate a preference for less salt. At that point the cook will either respond positively—“I didn’t realize it had too much salt”—or not. But if not, it’s not productive to keep mentioning it against increasing resistance.
Vastly more effective, though requiring more patience and skillfulness, is to wait until the soup is a little bit less salty, —for whatever reason, maybe accidentally—and then praise the flavor with the reduced salt. “You know, the soup seemed less salty today, and it tasted really good.”
Then we’re reinforcing the positive. We are watering, with our attention, the plant that we do want instead of the one we don’t.
Another factor of practical reinforcement is variability. As discussed in the fine work of Tony Robbins, psychologists have determined that reinforcement is far more effective if it is variable in time and amount and quality.
What do they mean?
Suppose tonight you give your wife roses, just to say you love her. She’s surprised and delighted. Tomorrow night you give her roses again. She’s surprised and delighted again—but just a little less so. The next night, and the next and the next, you give her roses again. What will happen? Because of the automatic habituation of our nervous systems, pretty soon she’ll expect those roses every night and they’ll have less and less effect. They’ll no longer give the joy and thrill that they once did.
So let’s say you decide to alternate your gift each night between roses and violets. The first night she gets violets she’ll be surprised and pleased, but soon it will have the same effect. Her nervous system will have concluded that, “I get either roses or violets every night,” and though it will still be a positive event it won’t have the same impact it once did.
In other words, anything that becomes too predictable our nervous systems habituate to, and we no longer get the same feeling of reward from it. Worse, we’ll come to expect it. And then if we don’t get it we’ll be mad or disappointed!
The way to avoid that is to vary things. Believe it or not, it’s more effective to give roses on a random schedule than it is to give them every night. It’s even more effective to vary the kind or number of flowers you give. And it’s even more so to give flowers sometimes and other things other times. Don’t underestimate the power of positive surprise!
This applies to every area imaginable. For example, at work a salary or wage is provided. It’s a reward of course. But because it comes at the same time each week or month, and is the same amount or in the same range, it ceases to provide quite the same thrill that it once did.
That’s why we see companies giving bonuses—it varies the financial reward. That’s why we see award trips to Hawaii, perks, praise in the company newsletter, or whatever. These are examples of a varying positive reinforcement. In being a right-finder, in noticing the good in the world—and thus increasing it—we can use this principle of variability.
The final subject that needs to be addressed in terms of practical reinforcement is that rewards have much greater effect if they are given immediately. The longer we wait before reinforcing something, whether in ourselves or in others, the less effect it will have.
If somebody does a good job, our words of praise now mean much more than if we let a long delay occur. When we’re trying to form a new habit, our immediate words of encouragement to ourselves when we get it right make those words much more effective.
When I was trying to form the habit of working on this book, for instance, I established two rewards right off the bat: I would drink my favorite beverage—chai with soy milk—and listen to certain types of music only when I was writing. Thus every time I sit down and write on this book I receive two rewards immediately, right while I’m in the process of it. Such seemingly little things can work incredibly well.
It’s useful to use these aspects of positive reinforcement in the ways that we talk to ourselves. Say we make a mistake of some kind. If we berate ourselves, “God, that was stupid, how could I be so dumb?” we’re creating the very climate of non-acceptance that will lower our self-esteem and actually make us less competent.
If on the other hand we say something like, “Well, I made a mistake here, but overall I’m pleased with my progress and I give myself credit for that,” will it make a difference? Yes. We’re creating for ourselves a climate of acceptance and positive regard that we’d like to get from others, and it helps greatly in whatever we’re trying to do.
We’ve talked about the principle of reinforcement as it applies in general to every area of life. But now, let’s apply it specifically to the subject of bringing our creative vision into being on a day-to-day basis.
Commitment is a name for the application of consistent reinforcement to our vision, and it’s the engine that causes production to actually happen. It’s appreciation of our vision on a practical and daily basis.
There are two fundamental elements of commitment—planning and perseverence.
Let’s now turn to the first of those.
© 1997 by James Sloman
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