Speaking of a weakness has consequences

You can do better, there's still room for improvement - this is what teachers say when they want to encourage their pupils in the face of a poor performance. With good reason: the choice of words makes a difference. This is shown by experiments conducted by Adam Abdulla from Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen. However, as the psychologist writes in the journal "Psychological Reports", this does not apply to all people. Those who already have little confidence in themselves are also more susceptible to demotivating words.

In the first experiment, female students were asked to rate on a scale of 0 to 100 per cent how well they can manage themselves at work, for example by planning their tasks or concentrating on one task. They were then asked to write about something they find difficult. Half of the test subjects were given instructions that labelled this area as a "weakness", while the other half were asked to write "area with potential for improvement". At the end, they were asked to indicate how likely it was that something could be changed in this area: Is it within their control or is it impossible to change?

When talking about a weakness, the difficulties seemed generally less easy to change. However, this only applied to those who generally considered themselves to have poor self-management, in technical terms: low self-efficacy expectations. These students then also expected to be less able to change things themselves. With good self-management, the opposite was true: the expectation of being able to change something even increased when their problem was labelled as a weakness.

The second experiment, this time with female and male students, was conducted in the same way as the first, except that the words "weakness" or "potential for improvement" were used even more frequently. With similar results: Once again, the effect was particularly large when students rated their self-management skills as below average.

The author's conclusion: Talking about a "weakness" can lower the expectation of being able to change something about a problem because it therefore appears to be less changeable or controllable. An unfavourable choice of words could therefore actually have a demoralising effect, especially for people who don't believe in themselves anyway.

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