In a study by Berkley Hass, Berkeley Haas Prof. Emeritus Barry Staw and two colleagues, Katherine DeCelles and Peter de Goey studied hundreds of basketball half-time speeches to determine the effect of the speech and it correlation to the outcome of the game.
Their findings determined that brutal honesty elicits better results.
The trend has been to emphasize the idea of “positive affect” driving people to greater performance. A smaller strand of research, however, has surmised that at least in the short term, negative emotion might actually push people to greater effort.
In order of observe these motivational speeches, the researchers visited with more than 50 high school and college coaches, which isn’t easy considering part of coaching involves speaking specifically to ones athletes in a direct fashion.