Performance is claimed to be bounded by the self-image, which acts as a set point returning the person to their accustomed level.
Maltz was a plastic surgeon who observed that patients whose appearance improved often did not feel different, and generalised to a thermostatic self-image. The observation is genuine and the mechanism is an analogy. Bandura's self-efficacy work is the researched successor and does not support a ceiling that returns people to a set point.
In practice
- A person promoted beyond what they expected of themselves underperforms, and several explanations fit.
- A team that has never shipped on time treats a rare early delivery as an anomaly to be corrected.
- Possible explanations
- The explanation offered is a thermostatic self-image that returns a person to their accustomed level. The researched relatives are self-efficacy, which predicts effort within a domain, and self-verification, in which people seek feedback consistent with how they already see themselves.
- In its favour
- Self-verification research does find people resisting feedback that conflicts with their self-view, which is the observation Maltz started from.
- Against it
- The set point is an analogy from control engineering rather than a measured mechanism, the ceiling cannot be observed independently of the performance it explains, and the evidence offered is testimonial and selected on success.
- Standing
- Testimonial evidence selected on success, with no comparison group. Built on a servomechanism analogy from Maltz's engineering-era vocabulary rather than on data. Self-efficacy research covers adjacent ground with far better method and finds a smaller, more conditional effect.
- Subject
- Psychology & Behavior
- Essay
- Theories of the mind, from the lab to the bookshop