Yelling improves performance? Nope, it’s random.
While the post I got this from is from an HR blog the insight from the book The Drunkard’s Walk is excellent with respect to child discipline.
Essentially what Leonard Modlinow says is that given that most outcomes and performance are heavily random, it’s unlikely that yelling at your kids (or subordinates in business) for poor performance or bad behaviour will cause or influence a positive outcome next time. If behaviour is quite random along a reasonably set distribution (and it is) then a bad performance - one that’s an outlier in the distribution of behaviour - will be followed by a better one - i.e. it will tend back towards the denser part of the distribution.
So bad behaviour in a situation will likely be followed by better behaviour next time regardless of yelling, threats or punishment. The same goes for praise after an exceptionally good performance - the next is likely to be less exceptional and doesn’t have anything to with the praise.
Since parents will praise positive outliers and criticize the negative ones, they will assume that vocal support causes jitters that reduce performance and that a stern response will be met with improved behaviour. The take-away? Don’t bet on it.
The book is now in my Amazon cart.
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