Dr. Heidi Grant

Blog

It’s Not How Often You Test – It’s What You Think Tests Tell You

by Leave a Comment

From my Psychology Today blog:

“What makes a test feel like an interesting challenge rather than an anxiety-provoking assault?”

This is the question posed by Elisabeth Rosenthal, in “Testing, The Chinese Way,” an article in this week’s New York Times (Week in Review).  In the piece, she writes about the experiences of her young children as students at the International School of Beijing.  Beginning as early as kindergarten, children in China (Rosenthal’s included) take frequent quizzes and exams, and she notes that by and large her children did not find this constant testing anxiety-provoking, even when they performed poorly.

Americans, on the other hand, have traditionally been philosophically opposed to too much testing, particularly of very young children, on the grounds that it adds unnecessary pressure to the educational environment. Many fear that testing can create debilitating failure experiences that permanently shape a young child’s view of learning.  But the tide of opinion in the U.S. may be changing.

Increasingly, some American education experts, including members of the Obama administration, are advocating for more testing, on the grounds that more frequent assessments will give teachers and students a better sense of how they are progressing.  Research shows that this kind of low-stakes, age-appropriate testing provides feedback that can in fact help students learn more effectively.

There are still plenty of good reasons to be concerned when it comes to increased testing, which Rosenthal acknowledges, but despite these concerns, there is little doubt that assessment is on the rise in the American classroom.

So, given the direction we seem to be going in, back to Rosenthal’s question – how do we make sure that testing is perceived as informative and challenging, rather than as a series of anxiety-filled experiences that disrupt real learning?

I think we’ve been missing something important in our national discussion of testing – something that will help us find the answer to that question.  We rarely talk about what testing means to a child and to their teachers.  We don’t consider the kinds of conclusions we tend to draw when a child does poorly.

Different cultures tend to rely on somewhat different explanations for why a child underperforms, and this difference is essential to understanding why testing may work so well in China and be so troublesome here in the U.S.   You see, Americans tend to believe that test scores are a reflection of ability, while in China, they are perceived to be, more than anything else, a function of effort.

Most East Asian educational systems are founded on a bedrock of Confucian doctrine that heavily emphasizes the importance of effort (e.g., “Being diligent in study means devoting one’s effort to it for a long time. “- Confucius, Zi Zhang chapter )

One of my fellow graduate students at Columbia, who had been born and educated in Korea, once told me that Koreans have an expression, sugo haseyo, that is used to congratulate someone on a job well done.  It literally means “work hard.”  The message it conveys is that no matter how well you have done, you can always try to do better.  (To which a typical American response would be “Gee, thanks a lot.”)

Not surprisingly, Asian students are much more likely to blame their poor performance on a test (as well as their successes) on the effort they put in to it.

For example, in one study, Japanese college students who were led to believe that they had failed on an anagram task were most likely to choose “lack of effort” rather than “lack of ability,” “task difficulty,” or “luck” as the most important cause.  In another, researchers found that Chinese mothers cited “lack of effort” as the predominant cause of their child’s failure in mathematics, while American mothers tended to blame failure on ability, training, luck, and effort equally.

Asian children are explicitly taught that hard work and persistence are the keys to success.  It makes sense, therefore, that they would respond to poor test performance with increased effort (and over time come to excel in subjects like math and science, which require determination and long hours to master.)

Too often, American students (even very young ones) labor under the (mistaken) belief that doing well on tests is a matter of possessing some innate ability – as if some people are just born capable of spelling and long division.  When they test poorly, they jump to the (mistaken) conclusion that they don’t have what it takes to do well.

If we want our children to see tests as informative and challenging, we need to emphasize the importance of effort, persistence, and strategy use over ability.   We need to explain to them how tests can help them see what they need to improve, and express confidence that they will improve if they don’t give up.  We need to learn to praise our children for their effort and hard work, rather than (or at least in addition to) always telling them how “smart” they are.

American children can probably benefit from more testing, but only if they come to see assessment as a tool of learning, rather than a measurement of fixed ability.  In other words, only when we teach them that testing is about getting smarter, rather than being smart.

For reference:

R. D. Hess, C. Chih-Mei, and T. M. McDevitt, “Cultural Variations in Family Beliefs about Children’s Performance in Mathematics: Comparisons among People’s Republic of China, Chinese-American, and Caucasian-American Families,” Journal of Educational Psychology 79, no. 2 (1982): 179–188.

K. Shikanai, “Effects of Self-esteem on Attribution of Success-Failure,” Japanese Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 18 (1978): 47–55.

Permission to Make Mistakes Usually Means Fewer of Them

by Leave a Comment

From my Fast Company blog:

If you have ever had to assign an employee a new project or task, you are no doubt familiar with the look of discomfort and anxiety such assignments often provoke.

While some people may be eager to tackle a new challenge, hoping it will help them to climb the corporate ladder, many workers are really just trying to survive without committing any major screw-ups.    Becoming responsible for something new and unfamiliar is understandably frightening.  The odds of making a mistake increase dramatically when you are inexperienced.  Small wonder that a “new” assignment is greeted with so little enthusiasm.

So how can we motivate employees to approach new responsibilities with confidence and energy?  The answer is simple, though perhaps a little surprising:  Give them permission to screw-up.

I know this may not be something you are thrilled to hear, because immediately you’re probably thinking, “If my employee screws up, I’m going to be the one who pays for it.”  But you needn’t worry about that, because studies show that when people feel they are allowed to make mistakes, they are significantly less likely to actually make them!  Let me explain.

People approach any task with one of two types of goals: what I call be-good goals, where the focus is on proving that you have a lot of ability and already know what you’re doing, and get-better goals, where the focus is on developing ability and learning to master a new skill.

The problem with be-good goals is that they tend to backfire when we are faced with something unfamiliar or difficult.  We quickly start feeling that we don’t actually know what we are doing, that we lack ability, and this creates a lot of anxiety.  Countless studies have shown that nothing interferes with performance quite like anxiety does – it is the productivity-killer.

Get-better goals, on the other hand, are practically bullet-proof.  When we think about what we are doing in terms of learning and mastering, accepting that we may make some mistakes along the way, we stay motivated despite the setbacks that might occur.

Just to give you an example, in one study I conducted a few years ago, I found that people in pursuit of be-good goals (i.e., trying to show how smart they already were) performed very poorly on a test of problem-solving when I made the test more difficult (either by interrupting them frequently, or by throwing in a few additional unsolvable problems).

The amazing thing was, the people who were pursuing get-better goals (i.e., who saw the test as an opportunity to learn a new problem-solving skill) were completely unaffected by any of my dirty tricks.  No matter how hard I made it, these participants stayed motivated and did well.

Usually, when managers assign a new task, they emphasize how important it is for the work to be done flawlessly, no matter how challenging it might be.  They make the focus all about being good, and the prospect becomes terrifying.

The irony is that the pressure from managers to be-good results in many more mistakes, and far inferior performance, than would a focus on getting-better.

How can you assign projects in a way that conveys the goal of getting-better?  It’s easy, actually. Here are the 3 steps:

Step 1: Acknowledge that the project is difficult and unfamiliar, and that you expect your employee will need some time to really get a handle on it.  They may make some mistakes, and that’s ok.

Step 2:  Remind your employee that you are there as a resource, to help them when they run into trouble.

Step 3: Let them know that you are confident they have what it takes to eventually master this new responsibility.

Remember, by giving your employee permission to not do everything perfectly from the start, and by acknowledging that there is a learning curve and that improvement takes time, you are taking the anxiety out of the situation.  And in so doing, you are not only increasing their motivation to succeed, but also dramatically reducing the chances that any mistakes will be made at all.

Yesterday Influences Your Performance Today in Surprising Ways

by Leave a Comment

It probably won’t surprise you if I tell you that thinking about your past successes and failures can influence your performance in the here and now.  There’s nothing like a winning season to give a player confidence going into that last game, and nothing like a string of awkward dates to make you nervous about how the next one is going to turn out.  But thanks to new research, it’s become clear that the relationship between our past and present isn’t as obvious as you might think.

Imagine you are about to take a difficult test, or undergo a grueling interview.  Before you begin, you take a few moments to reflect on some of your past successes – moments where you really shined.  This turns out to be a really good idea, because when you think about the many times in the past when you reached your goals, you start feeling like you’ve really got something that makes you a successful person.

In other words, reflecting on past successes (plural) leads your brain to unconsciously, and quite naturally, assume that since you are the common denominator in all of those successes, your traits (e.g., your intelligence, creativity, charm) are the reason for your success.

Believing that you’ve got it, whatever it is, makes you more confident, and provides a very real boost to your performance.

Of course the same kind of process occurs when you reflect on many past failures before embarking on a new task – you unconsciously assume that something about you is to blame for your bad track record, and as a consequence your performance in the here and now suffers.

No real surprises there, right?  But what if instead of reflecting on your past successes and failures plural, you just thought about a single success or failure?  What does your brain do with just one particular memory?  The answer:  it unconsciously draws the opposite conclusion!  That’s right – remembering a single episode of success can make you doubt yourself, just as the memory of a single instance of failure can leave you feeling more confident.  But why?

General memories, or memories about a group of similar behaviors (like many games won, or many dates gone wrong) lead you to make unconscious inferences about your own traits, because they seem to reflect what you typically do.

Specific memories, on the other hand, are about a single event (e.g., that one win against Central High, that one bad date with Brad).  When you focus on a single event, you are less likely to see yourself as responsible for whatever happened, and more likely to unconsciously conclude that it was all due to the situation you were in.  (You beat Central High because their team isn’t that strong.  Your date with Brad was awkward because Brad isn’t really your type.)

In other words, memories of a single occurrence in our lives can easily feel like the exception, rather than the rule.

This was nicely illustrated in a set of recent studies.  Some of the participants were asked to reflect on a number of their past successes or failures by completing the sentence: “In general, I’m successful (I fail) when….”

The other participants were focused instead on a single episode of success or failure, by completing the sentence: “I succeeded (failed) once when I had to….”

The results were remarkable.  People who were asked to reflect on their many past successes or a specific failure scored roughly 10% better on tests of mathematical ability, as well as verbal, spatial, and abstract reasoning, than those who reflected on either many past failures or a single specific success.

Let that sink in for a second.  You get the same boost of confidence from thinking about a single time you screwed up that you do from reflecting on the many times you really shined.  And you fall victim to the same nagging self-doubt from thinking about that one time you did something right, that you do from dwelling on all the times you did everything wrong.

So if you’re looking to bolster your confidence and really motivate yourself before your next test, or your next blind date, or maybe the next meeting you have to run, remember that it’s a good idea to draw on your memories of success, so long as you have a string of successes in mind.  That way, your unconscious mind (which is so often the maker or breaker of a great performance) will clearly understand that your awesomeness is not the exception – it’s the rule.

Get Dirty and Lighten Up!

by Leave a Comment

People might like you more when you get a little dirty.

Our language is loaded with common sayings that use cleanliness as a metaphor for goodness and virtue.  When your hands are clean, or when you have a clean conscience, it means you aren’t guilty of a transgression.  When you clean up your act, you become a better, more admirable person.  On the other hand, dirty words are those that violate our standards of speech, and dirty tricks are underhanded and unscrupulous maneuvers.  When you play dirty, it means you cheat.   There is obviously a strong psychological association between physical cleanliness and our sense of not only what is good and bad, but also what is morally right and wrong.

But it turns out that cleanliness is much more than a metaphor for virtue.  A few weeks ago, I wrote about how sitting on a hard chair can lead you to make more rigid decisions, and how holding a heavy clipboard can make what you’re doing seem more serious and important.  Recent research reveals than your own cleanliness influences not only how virtuous you feel, but how harshly you judge the behaviors of others.

In one study, half of the participants were asked to clean their hands with an antiseptic wipe before using the keyboard to answer a series of questions.  The researchers found those who had cleaned their hands subsequently rated behaviors like smoking, using drugs, looking at pornography, cursing, littering and cheating on your spouse as significant more immoral than those who had not cleaned their hands.

In other studies, people who simply spent a few moments visualizing themselves in a clean slate (“My hair feels clean and light.  My breath is fresh.  My clothes are pristine and new…. I feel so clean”) rendered harsher moral judgments on 16 issues, including abortion, homosexuality, obesity, prostitution, and masturbation, than people who had visualized themselves in a dirty state, or who did not visualize at all.  They also rated themselves as possessing a significantly more moral character than their peers.

So being clean makes you feel like you are a better, more virtuous person, and that is probably on the whole a good thing.  People who believe they are moral are usually more likely to behave morally.  But there is a potential danger here as well.  As the researchers write, “Our seemingly rational desires and acts of cleanliness have not only the potential to shift our moral pendulum to a more virtuous self, but also license harsher moral judgment on others.”

When we are squeaky clean, we are more likely to adopt a self-righteous, less empathetic and understanding view of the shortcomings and foibles of others.  We are more likely to see ourselves as morally superior to others, when we may in fact not be.  That’s the kind of thinking that leads to far greater unhappiness, for you and for the people around you, than a little dirt under your fingernails or spaghetti sauce on your tie.

So if you want to lighten up a bit and not judge others so harshly, try getting just a little bit dirty.  Perhaps more importantly, take a moment to think about the personal cleanliness of the important people in your life, like your boss, your spouse, your mother-in-law.  You’d be wise to expect the clean freaks to take a less generous view of your lapses in judgment than those with a more relaxed approach to hygiene.

And finally, if there is something you need to confess to your romantic partner, try doing it before he or she gets into the shower.

What to Say When You Have to Say “I’m Sorry”

by Leave a Comment

The 3 kinds of apology, and who they most appeal to.

Apologies can be enormously effective when it comes to resolving conflict, repairing hurt feelings, fostering forgiveness, and improving relationships in both our personal and professional lives. They increase relationship commitment and satisfaction, employee loyalty and satisfaction, feelings of trust, and cooperation. An apology can even keep you out of the courtroom. (Despite the fact that lawyers tend to caution their clients to avoid apologies like the plague, fearing that they are tantamount to an admission of guilt, studies show that when potential plaintiffs receive an apology, they are more likely to settle out of court for less money.)

But as anyone can tell you, apologies don’t always work. (Ask Michael Richards, for instance. Or John Edwards.  Or Trent Lott.  I could go on and on.)  At times they seem to fall on deaf ears.  This can be because the person or persons we are seeking forgiveness from really aren’t interested in forgiving, or because the transgression itself is deemed simply unforgivable.  But more often than not, our apologies fall flat because we apologize the wrong way.

So what is the right way? How should you apologize to your coworker, customer, friend, or spouse, in order to be sure that your already bad situation doesn’t end up even worse?  Until recently, there has been very little (scientific) psychological research focusing on what constitutes a “good” apology.  A new set of studies, however, reveals that different kinds of apologies appeal to different kinds of people, and that the key to an effective apology lies in thinking carefully about your audience.

The researchers identified three distinct forms of apology:  offers of compensation, expressions of empathy, and acknowledgment of violated rules and norms.

Offers of compensation are an attempt to restore balance through some redeeming action.  Sometimes the compensation is tangible, like paying to repair or replace your neighbor’s fence when you inadvertently back your car into it, or running out to get your girlfriend a new phone when you accidentally drop hers into the toilet (which happened to me, by the way.  Not cool.)  Offers of compensation can also be more emotional or socially-supportive.   (as in,  “I’m sorry I was a jerk, and I’ll make it up to you by being extra nice from now on.”)

Expressions of empathy, on the other hand, involve recognizing and expressing concern over the suffering you caused.  (e.g., “I’m so sorry that I didn’t appreciate all the effort you went to.  You must have felt awful, and that’s the last thing I want.”) Through expressions of empathy, the victim feels understood and valued as a partner in the relationship, and trust is restored.

When your apology is an acknowledgement of violated rules and norms, you are basically admitting that you broke the code of behavior of your social group, your organization, or your society. (e.g.,  “No one in my family/profession/community behaves this way, I should have known better.”  “I didn’t just let myself down, I let my teammates/company/fans down.”

Research shows that these three different types of apology are most effective when offered to people who think of themselves in particular ways.

People who have an independent self-concept think of themselves primarily as individual, autonomous agents, completely separate from others.  They tend to be focused mainly on their own rights, feelings, and goals, and as a result, experience transgressions as a personal injury or betrayal.  No surprise then that they respond most favorably to apologies that offer compensation.   The United States is a particularly independent, individualistic society, which may explain why American juries seem to love doling out lots of money as compensation for pain and suffering.  (And this is why telling a deserving employee who you passed over for promotion that you “feel his pain” is probably not helpful – he doesn’t care what you feel, he wants what’s coming to him.)

People with a more relational self-concept see themselves as primarily defined by their relationships with significant others (e.g., spouse, parent, child, friend, colleague).    This type of self-concept is more common among women, for whom relationship ups and downs tend to loom large. When your self-concept is relational, you are focused on creating, maintaining and strengthening the relationships in your life.  Transgressions are experienced as betrayals of mutual respect and trust, and consequently, apologies are most effective when they include expressions of empathy, rather than offers of compensation.  (And this is why your gift of flowers after you’ve forgotten your wife’s birthday or stayed out too late drinking with the guys is usually met with an icy stare.  We don’t want your flowers – we want you to feel our pain.)

Finally, people with a collective self-concept see themselves first and foremost as members of the important groups, organizations, and cultures to which they belong.  When you are a part of a group, whether it’s your family, your company, or your society, there are rules that govern how you are supposed to behave.  For instance, baseball players aren’t allowed to take steroids.  Accountants aren’t allowed to fool around with the books.  Politicians can’t break the laws that they are elected to create and protect.  Members of my family aren’t allowed to violate the rules of grammar. (You want to see an icy stare, try saying “You did really good” in front of my mother.  It’s positively Arctic.)   Transgressions are experienced as betrayals of the rules or values of the group, and thus, apologies that offer acknowledgment of violated rules and norms are your best bet for restoring your good standing with the other group members.

When crafting your apology, remember to ask yourself:  Who am I talking to, and what are they looking for in my apology?  What troubles them the most about what I did?  Was my transgression perceived as a personal injury, betrayal of the relationship, or betrayal of the code of behavior of our group?

If you’re not sure, think about how the injured party most often talks about themselves – do they focus on their own individual qualities, their key relationships, or the important groups to which they belong?  Knowing something about how the person you wronged thinks of him or herself is your first clue into what is probably bothering them most, and will help you to apologize in the most effective way.

Rejection in 3 Minutes or Less

by Leave a Comment

Why some of us really shouldn’t try speed dating

Most of us get a little nervous approaching an attractive stranger, hoping to make a connection.  Even if you are usually brimming with confidence, the obvious potential for rejection in these situations can rarely be ignored.  But for some of us, trying to find love in the singles scene presents a particularly terrifying challenge, illustrated nicely by a recent study of speed dating.

As you are probably aware, speed dating is designed to introduce people who are looking for love to as many other love-seekers as possible in a single evening.  Gone is the awkwardness of having to approach a stranger, because everyone has to meet with every potential partner for a short time – usually about three minutes.  A bell rings or a whistle blows when the three minutes are up, and off you go to another table to meet the next Mr. or Ms. Potentially Right.  Everyone keeps scorecards to indicate who they would be interested in dating, and when there is a match, the event’s organizers give both parties the contact information they’ll need to pursue the relationship outside of speed dating.

It’s not easy to present yourself in your best light in three minutes, nor is it easy to make an accurate assessment of someone else in so short a time.   Also critical is your ability to sense whether the other person seemed to like you – even in the somewhat odd and artificial world of speed dating, rejection still stings.

Then there is the question of strategy – should you cast a wide net, giving the green light to lots of potential partners in order to avoid missing that love connection, or should you be highly selective, choosing only those you liked most and who clearly liked you? Is it more important to seize any opportunity for love, or to protect yourself and avoid the pain of unnecessary rejection?

This is a hard question to answer, but it’s particularly difficult for those among us who are what psychologists call anxiously-attached. In a nutshell, anxiously-attached people have a somewhat hyperactive need to feel close to and form relationships with others, while simultaneously suffering from a heightened fear of, and tendency to over-perceive rejection.  In other words, they are both really needy and really touchy.  (Attachment styles are often the product of early childhood experiences with caregivers – for more information, see here.)

Think about that for a second, and you’ll realize that it is a really killer combination – you desperately want love, but you are terrified of rejection, and you see rejection everywhere.  Some estimates suggest that about one in four adults are anxiously-attached, so chances are good that if you aren’t anxiously-attached yourself, you know someone well who is, so you’ve seen the damage this combo can do first-hand.

When anxiously-attached people speed date, which strategy do you think they use?  Do they cast a wide net, in order to grasp any chance at love, or do they make fewer selections, in order to avoid the dreaded rejection?  Recent research shows that the answer is the former – anxious speed daters give their stamp of approval to significantly more potential mates than non-anxious daters.  They are less picky, hoping that by setting the bar lower they will be more likely to make a match.

The bad news is, it doesn’t really work.  Anxious daters (particularly male anxious daters) were significantly less popular than non-anxious daters, and less likely to make a match.   In as little as three minutes, these individuals rub Mr. or Ms. Potentially Right the wrong way.

This isn’t really surprising – past research shows that anxiously–attached people often have a variety of social handicaps.  They are more likely to monopolize conversations, disclose too much about themselves too soon, and get defensive way too fast.  They are long on obvious insecurity and short on charm.

Lowering the bar really doesn’t help them in the long run – anxiously-attached people are unlikely to find lasting love without directly addressing their anxiousness.  If you think that you yourself might be anxiously-attached, the good news is that you really aren’t stuck that way.  People can and do change their attachment style over the course of their lives, as they become aware of their behavior, and as new experiences shape their understanding of how relationships work.  Your early experiences of rejection need not haunt you forever – but until you can learn to leave them behind, speed dating is probably not such a terrific idea.