“I’ve often praised people warmly for beautifully executed maneuvers, and the next time they always do worse,” the flight instructor said. “And I’ve screamed at people for badly executed maneuvers, and by and large the next time they improve. Don’t tell me that reward works and punishment doesn’t work. My experience contradicts it.” The other flight instructors agreed. To Kahneman the flight instructors’ experiences rang true. On the other hand, Kahne- man believed in the animal experiments that demonstrated that reward works better than punishment. He ruminated on this appar- ent paradox. And then it struck him: the screaming preceded the improvement, but contrary to appearances it did not cause it.

How can that be? The answer lies in a phenomenon called regres- sion toward the mean. That is, in any series of random events an extraordinary event is most likely to be followed, due purely to chance, by a more ordinary one. Here is how it works: The student pilots all had a certain personal ability to fly fighter planes. Raising their skill level involved many factors and required extensive prac- tice, so although their skill was slowly improving through flight train- ing, the change wouldn’t be noticeable from one maneuver to the next. Any especially good or especially poor performance was thus mostly a matter of luck. So if a pilot made an exceptionally good landing—one far above his normal level of performance—then the odds would be good that he would perform closer to his norm—that is, worse—the next day. And if his instructor had praised him, it would appear that the praise had done no good. But if a pilot made an exceptionally bad landing—running the plane off the end of the runway and into the vat of corn chowder in the base cafeteria—then the odds would be good that the next day he would perform closer to his norm—that is, better. And if his instructor had a habit of scream- ing “you clumsy ape” when a student performed poorly, it would appear that his criticism did some good. In this way an apparent pat- tern would emerge: student performs well, praise does no good; stu- dent performs poorly, instructor compares student to lower primate at high volume, student improves. The instructors in Kahneman’s class had concluded from such experiences that their screaming was a powerful educational tool. In reality it made no difference at all.