Losing Sight of Piecemeal Progress: Negative Lumping Creates Pseudoinefficacy
Photograph by Richard Croft. CC BY-SA 2.0
By Anna Van Boven
The negative-lumping effect is the tendency to view incremental progress that does not achieve a larger goal as absolute failure; people’s negative feelings towards what was not accomplished overshadow any positive feelings towards forward progress being made.
In his paper “Losing Sight of Piecemeal Progress: People Lump and Dismiss Improvement Efforts That Fall Short of Categorical Change—Despite Improving”, Professor of Behavioral Science Ed O’Brien studies the negative-lumping effect in people’s response to large entities engaging in small positive changes. For instance, people will push a company to reduce its carbon emission, but will react negatively if the company fails to meet a given benchmark, even though the company significantly reduced emissions.
O’Brien conducted three groups of experiments. In the first group of experiments, participants were given data on pairs of entities and asked to evaluate them in eight real-world domains. Participants were asked to measure how the two entities compared to each other in these categories in terms of positive change. This first group of experiments indicated that two entities that made notably different levels of improvement are both considered the same when neither entity accomplished absolute reform. The same was not found to be true when both entities achieved absolute reform; two entities that made similarly different levels of change were seen as distinctly accomplished when the result was significantly positive. In the second group of experiments, participants were once again shown data on different entities, and were then asked to measure how “impressive” or “worthy of reward” these entities were. These experiments showed that people view entities that do not achieve absolute reform as lacking in effort. The final group of experiments asked participants to allocate funds to two entities, where one clearly outranked the other. The results showed that if the two entities performed poorly, the funds would be more evenly distributed amongst the two. If one performed poorly and the other performed well, or if both performed well, the more successful entity received a higher proportion of the funds. These results indicate that people are less likely to reward or support these entities that fail to achieve absolute reform.
O’Brien’s study highlights an instance where pseudoinefficacy has an impact on our lives: when one sets a categorical goal to define success, one will likely fail to appreciate partial successes, thus creating the conditions for pseudoinefficacy. O’Brien acknowledges this, saying that “people’s motivation to make a better world might be increased by helping them appreciate that relative progress is, in fact, progress.” You can combat the tendency to negative-lump by giving focused and intentional appreciation to smaller acts of progress; as we say on this site, even partial solutions save whole lives.
The full paper was published by the Association for Psychological Science on August 3, 2022. The article can be accessed through Sage journals here.