Making failure painful is a way of pre-committing. There is some research that shows the effectiveness of pre-commitment, but I’m not aware of experimental studies on that particular kind of pre-commitment, so perhaps you’re right. On the other hand, a great many people have found such “penalty” methods of precommitment very useful. And, if I have to bet on advice between a leading researcher in the field and a guy whose website looks like this, I’ll bet on the former.
I expect that there might be a great deal of difference between an externally imposed threat and a self-imposed threat. “Start working, or I’ll do something nasty to you” never seemed to motivate me very much if the task was at all difficult. Threats tend to make me less inclined to attempt whatever task it is that I am being threatened to do, rather than more.
And it seems stupid to precommit to a penalty for not achieving a goal that I think I’m likely to fail at.
Making failure painful is a way of pre-committing. There is some research that shows the effectiveness of pre-commitment, but I’m not aware of experimental studies on that particular kind of pre-commitment, so perhaps you’re right. On the other hand, a great many people have found such “penalty” methods of precommitment very useful. And, if I have to bet on advice between a leading researcher in the field and a guy whose website looks like this, I’ll bet on the former.
The kind of pain is probably important. “Fail and you’ve just proven you’re a really bad person” is not helpful.
I expect that there might be a great deal of difference between an externally imposed threat and a self-imposed threat. “Start working, or I’ll do something nasty to you” never seemed to motivate me very much if the task was at all difficult. Threats tend to make me less inclined to attempt whatever task it is that I am being threatened to do, rather than more.
And it seems stupid to precommit to a penalty for not achieving a goal that I think I’m likely to fail at.
Then induce a penalty for not trying.