He knew he was wrong — Daniel Kahneman interview

When I was 13, my school cricket team received a visit from a top professional cricket coach, an intoxicating visit from the big leagues. I tried to hear what the great man was saying as he watched us, how he advised our teacher. ‘Never praise kids — they only mess it up next time,’ I overheard him say. After pausing to berate me for a below-average cover drive, he whispered to the teacher, ‘It’s different with criticism — that really works.’

Like a typical cocky teenager, I longed for a clever riposte. Perhaps fortunately, I didn’t have the intellectual insight to deliver one. But last week I met up with the man who did — Daniel Kahneman, professor of psychology, winner of the Nobel prize for economics and author of the newly published Thinking, Fast and Slow.

In the late 1970s, he was teaching flight instructors in the Israeli Air Force about the psychology of effective training.