From a post titled “When Is a Negative a Positive?” on Freakonomics.com.
Ayelet Fishbach of the University of Chicago …
“The more a person is committed to a goal — and by that I mean the more someone thinks that they absolutely have to do it, they like doing it, it’s important for them to do it — the more negative compared with positive feedback will be efficient”
Heidi Grant Halvorson, associate director of the Motivation Science Center at the Columbia Business School …
“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!’ ‘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.”
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