Small Wins, Small Losses

In my last blog entry, Mundane Details, I focused on how speaking Spanish with my patients has its good and bad days. There are the great days when I am able to communicate all of my thoughts very clearly and in turn, the patients understand me. Then there are the bad days, when my conversations are littered with grammar mistakes and I struggle to find the right interpretation. I used to think I was the only one who felt this way,  until I came across the blog of an American ex-pat in Spain who described similar frustrations.  It is comforting to know I’m not alone in this daily tug-of-war to get the language right.

Not long after completing that entry, and along this same vein of thought, I read a very interesting news article about a study that was done regarding unemployed workers.  Princeton economist Alan Krueger (who, incidentally, was chosen in 2001 by then President Barack Obama to chair the White House Council of Economic Advisors) interviewed over 6,000 unemployed workers for over half a year.  Up until this study was done and for the longest time, economists held the belief that when people lost their job, the longer they were out of work, the more vigorous their search for a new job would become. The thinking was that while a person remained unemployed, the absence of a paycheck and the accumulation of bills would spur a person into a greater frenzy to find a new position.  However, Mr. Krueger’s results actually refuted that belief. In fact, he found that the longer people are out of work, the less and less time they spend looking for a job. The reason? It all comes down to small wins and small losses, and their effect on the human psyche.

In the article, Alan Krueger, the Economics of Small Wins and Losses, written by Charles Duhigg,  Krueger explains that as a Cornell professor once appropriately stated in 1984, “Small wins are the steady application of a small advantage.” In other words, small wins (succeeding at something, overcoming a challenge, getting accepted for a job position, etc etc) give a person the confidence he or she needs to take the risk necessary to continue competing and continue moving forward. Small wins “..convince people that bigger achievements are within reach.”

However, just as an accumulation of wins encourages a person and imbues him with confidence, an accumulation of losses has the exact opposite effect. This is what was highlighted in Krueger’s study. As small losses mount up in a person’s life, “...people can become so sensitized to losses that they begin to anticipate them, and become less motivated to try.”  For example, experiencing the constant rejection of  job applications makes the applicant feel greater disappointment. Before long, the applicant begins anticipating rejection before it even happens. These losses have the power of reducing the job applicant's ability to even try to continue the search for employment. New coping mechanisms begin to develop: those of sleeping in later or taking numerous breaks from job hunting altogether.

After reading all of this, I had an epiphany: in many ways, the trials and tribulations one experiences while trying to communicate in a non-native language mimic the results of Alan Krueger’s study. I have said time and again during this blog that earlier on in my Spanish learning days, there were times I didn’t even want to start a conversation with someone in Spanish because I made a lot of mistakes. I was also afraid that I wouldn’t be able to understand the speaker. Either way I would (in my mind) come across looking foolish. This fear of looking or sounding foolish in Spanish made me not even want to try.

Today, things are different.  I have grown in the language- my vocabulary has expanded and I’ve had much more practice speaking and listening. Because I’ve experienced many more successful communications with patients, my confidence in the language has grown.  And it’s because my confidence has grown that I’m not as fearful when talking in Spanish because I know I’ll be able to express myself and, in turn, be able to figure out what the patient is saying. I still have a long way to go—there’s always room for improvement—but I’m much more proactive in Spanish than I was in the past.

 After Alan Krueger’s ground-breaking discovery of the power of small wins and losses, further studies were done by other investigators over the years as to what to do to solve the problem of overcoming the confidence lost from an accumulation of small losses. How can you encourage these disillusioned workers  to reignite their job search and instill confidence in themselves? How can a non-native language learner push herself to communicate when the grammar mistakes build? The answer: you have to reset expectations. In essence, you have to alter a perceived loss into an actual win. Take, for example, the workers in the above scenario.  When sending out a resume, the worker looks upon a callback for an interview as the win, so when he doesn’t get it, he feels he’s lost. If one resets the goal from a callback for an interview to simply sending out the resumes to as many potential employers as possible, then the act of successfully sending them out is the win. Callbacks are irrelevant.

When applying this to my speaking Spanish with patients, instead of me focusing on getting all the grammar and conjugation right, I should set the goal of simple understanding between doctor and patient. Maybe I’ll accidentally turn a feminine noun into a masculine one (potential loss, if I’m focusing on grammar as goal), but if the patient understands the point I was making (win! win! win!), then that’s the only goal that should matter.

As we transition from this eve of 2016 to 2017, let's not be afraid to take on new challenges in the face of failure or potential failure. If we're learning something and moving forward with that knowledge, then we have the potential to turn every 'loss' into a win. Happy New Year, everyone! 

References

Duhigg, Charles. “Alan Krueger, and the Economics of Small Wins (and Losses).” http://charlesduhigg.com/alan-krueger-and-the-economics-of-small-wins-and-losses/ (Accessed December 1, 2016).

Philips, Matthew. “Who is Alan B. Krueger?” Freakonomics. http://freakonomics.com/2011/08/29/who-is-alan-b-krueger/ 29 August 2011. (Accessed December 1, 2016).

Courtesy: Charles McDonald, Charlottesville Real Estate Solutions