We evaluate how people will act in
the future all the time. Hiring someone
to do a job involves determining how well they will carry out that task. Colleges make decisions about who they should
admit based on their beliefs about how well the prospective student will
perform in the future. Couples who are
dating decide whether to engage in a long-term partnership based on their
beliefs about how they will interact in the distant future as a couple.
What kind of information do we use
to make the decision about future performance?
There are two sources of
information you might use to judge the future.
One source of information is a person’s past performance. Someone who has already demonstrated their ability
to perform a task may be a good candidate to continue to perform well. A second source of information is a person’s
potential for the future. That is, the
person may not have achieved greatness yet, but may show signs of being on the
cusp of greatness.
Which of these factors plays a
greater role in judgments about the future?
You might think that current performance would play a greater role than
potential. After all, if someone has
already demonstrated her ability to do something, that should be a good
indication of future performance as well.
An interesting paper in the
October, 2012 issue of the Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology by Zakary Tormala, Jayson Jia, and
Michael Norton suggests that in many situations people may give more weight to
information about potential performance in the future than to actual
performance in the past.
In one study, the authors took out
a Facebook ad to promote the fan page of a comedian. They created different versions of the
ad. Some versions focused on actual
performance (“Critics say he has become the next big thing.”) Other ads focused on potential performance
(“Critics say he could become the next big thing.”) People were more likely to click on ads that focused
on potential performance than on actual performance. They were also more likely to become Facebook
fans of the comedian when the ad focused on potential performance than on
actual performance.
A variety of laboratory studies
demonstrated a similar effect with judgments about job candidates, athletes,
and artwork.
Why does this happen? The researchers suggest that statements about
potential performance create more feelings about uncertainty than statements
about actual performance. This
uncertainty leads people to think more about the options, and that gets them
more involved with the option.
One way that the authors
demonstrate this increased involvement is through studies that manipulate
whether the information decision makers get is about potential or actual
performance and also whether the information strongly or weakly supports the
performance of the person being evaluated.
In one study, participants read a
letter of recommendation for a prospective graduate student. The student was described either as having
great potential for success or having already had great success in their
academic ventures. After this statement
about actual or potential success, the letter describes what the prospective
student has done. The description is
either very impressive (completed several projects, published a paper in a
major scientific journal) or not so impressive after all (completed a project,
published a paper in a campus journal).
When the described performance was
truly excellent, then the student described as having great potential was rated
as a somewhat better candidate than the student described as having achieved
great things. However, when the
described performance was mediocre, then the student described as having
achieved great things was rated as a better candidate than the student who was
described as having great potential.
That is, when the student was
described as having great potential, people paid more attention to the actual
accomplishments than when the student was described as having achieved great
things already.
What can you do with this
information?
When you have to evaluate someone
in the future, recognize that information about potential will lead you to be
more involved in the evaluation than information about actual performance. Try to counteract this tendency by exploring
what people have already done. In many
situations, a person’s past accomplishments are an excellent predictor of what
they will do in the future.
