Praise and Punishment
A flight instructor notices that cadets praised after excellent landings usually do worse on the next attempt, while cadets berated after terrible landings usually improve. He concludes punishment works and praise backfires. What statistical phenomenon better explains his observation?
Related problems & prerequisites
Worth solving first
- The Taxi Cab Problem 5.0/10
- Bessel's Correction 5.0/10
Source: Regression to the mean; the flight-instructor framing follows Kahneman and Tversky (1973). Statement written for AxiomIQ.