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The instructor thought that "50% chance of receiving a positive signal if you send out a negative signal" was better than "50% chance of receiving a negative si
by anvandare 9y ago
The instructor thought that "50% chance of receiving a positive signal if you send out a negative signal" was better than "50% chance of receiving a negative signal if you send out a positive signal".
- Sharlin 9y agoNo, the instructor thought that their feedback had a clear causal connection to the cadet’s subsequent performance (scolding makes them perform better, praise makes them worse) when actually the effect (if any) could not be separated from random noise in performance and regression to the mean.
- anvandare 9y agoMy bad, the choice of "thought" implied more deliberation than I meant. As I read it (with the coin experiment) the instructor was more likely to focus on positive results if he gave a negative response and negative results if he gave a positive results than on a positive results if he gave a positive response and negative results if he gave a positive response because of bias reinforcement.
- Sharlin 9y agoIt’s not really that either. The correlation the instructor saw was real—a cadet would, on average, actually perform better after scolding and worse after praise! But the instructor wrongly assumed that their feedback caused the change in results when in actuality the only clear causation was from the cadet’s earlier performance to the instructor’s feedback. Because of regression to the mean, an exceptional result is more likely to be followed by a more average one, irrespective of the instructor’s reaction. What the instructor actually achieved was condition themselves to respond in a certain way to a student’s performance, rather than conditioning the student to respond to the instructor’s feedback as intended!