Near wins may actually boost our motivation

Losing out by a whisker, or the "near wins", may actually boost our motivation to achieve other wins, says a new study led by an Indian-origin researcher.

"Our research suggests that at least in some cases, losing has positive power," said lead researcher Monica Wadhwa from INSEAD, a business school based in Fontainebleau, France.

While it may seem like losing might put a damper on motivation, Wadhwa and colleagues hypothesised that losing out by only a narrow margin might have the opposite effect.

A near win, they speculated, intensifies but doesn't satisfy our motivational state, and so the drive to win is extended to the next task or goal we encounter.

"While we often think of motivation as being targeted to a specific reward or goal, these findings support the notion that motivation is like energy and reward is like direction -- once this motivational energy is activated, it leads an individual to seek out a broad range of goals and rewards," Wadhwa added.

In one study, the researchers recruited 50 undergraduate students to evaluate a phone game that was supposedly in development. In the game, students saw a grid of 16 tiles -- half of the tiles covered a rock and half of the tiles covered a diamond.

The goal of the game was to click on the tiles one by one to find eight diamonds without uncovering a single rock. What the students didn't know was that the game was carefully rigged by the experimenters.

Some of the students were set up to experience a near win, uncovering seven diamonds in a row only to uncover a rock on their final tile.

Another group of students was also set up to uncover seven diamonds and one rock, but this time the rock was uncovered on the second click.

After playing, the participants completed surveys evaluating the game and were asked to drop the surveys off at a booth at the end of the hallway, where they could pick up a chocolate bar as a thank-you gift.

Students, who lost the game on the last tile walked significantly faster, reaching the booth about 12 seconds sooner, than those who lost the game on the second tile. The findings indicate that a near win may actually provide a stronger motivational boost than an actual win.

The study was published in the journal Psychological Science.