When: The Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing

by Daniel H. Pink

Truckloads of sports data can reveal correlations, but they don’t tell us anything definitive about causes. So Berger and Pope conducted some simple experiments to identify the mechanisms at work. They gathered participants and pitted each one against an opponent in another room in a contest to see who would bang out computer keystrokes more quickly. Those who scored higher than their opponents won a cash prize. The game had two short periods separated by a break. And it was during the break that experimenters treated their participants differently. They told some that they were far behind their opponent, some that they were a little behind, some that they were tied, and some that they were a little ahead. The results? Three groups matched their first-half performance, but one did considerably better—the people who believed they were trailing by a little. “[M]erely telling people they were slightly behind an opponent led them to exert more effort,” Berger and Pope write.21