The power of positive feedback

We can't emphasize enough how much proper feedback means when trying to improve one's performance. But what does "proper" mean here? Watch this video about an experiment the Brain Games crew has done at National Geographic Channel that shows the effect of positive and negative feedback.

What has happened here? An important element of performance is one's self-confidence - it may boost and spoil the actual competence level. This means that no matter how skilful you are in a task, you also have to believe in yourself and think that you will be able to do it. So destructive criticism, yelling and these types of negative behaviour will most probably destroy ones self-confidence - the person will perform worse than his/her skills would forecast it. On the other hand, cheering and positive feedback - even if it is false - will increase self-confidence that might increase performance (even above the competence-level).

After seeing this, we might get to the WRONG conclusion that giving positive feedback (independently of the actual performance) is the proper choice. This is not true: increasing self-confidence ONLY - without an actual increase in the competence level will not boost performance in the long run. So what we actually need is a combination of positive feedback (finding and reinforcing the things the person already does properly) AND constructive criticism (telling what can be improved and how WITH helpful intentions and WITHOUT negative labelling).