Thinking 'I can do better' really can improve performance

Professor Andrew Lane and his colleagues tested which psychological skills would help people improve their scores in an online game. With help from BBC Lab UK, they conducted a large experimental study on 44,000 people to investigate if one motivational method would be more effective for any specific aspect of a task. The methods tested were self-talk, imagery, and if-then planning.

The participants were divided into 12 experimental groups and one control group, testing the three different motivational methods on one of four parts of a competitive task: process, outcome, arousal-control, and instruction.

People using self-talk, for example telling themself "I can do better next time", performed better than the control group in every portion of the task. Motivational videos and imagery were also helpful, and least helpful was if-then planning. (“If you do this, then that will happen” instructions).

These results suggest that brief online interventions that focus on increasing motivation, increased arousal, effort invested, and pleasant emotions were the most effective psychological skills in helping people increase their scores. The applications of this for online learning in the educational field are obvious. Think you can do better – and you will!

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