Neuroscience
Go through life expecting the worst and then you’ll never be disappointed. And on those rare occasions when something goes right for you, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. It sounds like a sensible philosophy, but according to Margaret Marshall and Jonathon Brown at the universities of Seattle Pacific and Washington, it doesn’t work that way.
They asked 81 students to complete a word association task. Before the task the students said how well they expected to do based on some sample questions.
Afterwards, the researchers found that the students who expected to do well, but in fact did badly, actually felt better about themselves after the task than the poorly performing students who expected to do badly.
On the other hand, the students who expected to do well and did do well, felt happier about themselves after the task than the students who did much better than they expected.
What was going on? One clue came from other questionnaires the students filled in. These showed that the students who expected to do well were more positive about life in general. Another possibility was that the students with high and low expectations differed in what they attributed their success or failure to.
In a second study using the same task, the researchers found the high-scoring students who expected to do well, put their success down to their ability, more than the high scoring students who hadn’t expected to do well. On the other hand, the poor performers who expected to do well, but did badly, tended not to see their failure as caused by their lack of ability (unlike the poor performers who expected to do badly).
The great American psychologist William James recommended lowering your expectations. “Make thy claim of wages a zero, then hast thou the world under thy feet”, he wrote. But combined with previous work showing that pessimism undermines people’s performance, this research suggests that it’s probably best not to think the worst.
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Marshall, M.A. & Brown, J.D. (2006). Emotional reactions to achievement outcomes: Is its really best to expect the worst. Cognition and Emotion, 20, 43-63.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Link to William James' classic text
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Neuroscience
Why it's best not to expect the worst
Go through life expecting the worst and then you’ll never be disappointed. And on those rare occasions when something goes right for you, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. It sounds like a sensible philosophy, but according to Margaret Marshall and Jonathon Brown at the universities of Seattle Pacific and Washington, it doesn’t work that way.They asked 81 students to complete a word association task. Before the task the students said how well they expected to do based on some sample questions.
Afterwards, the researchers found that the students who expected to do well, but in fact did badly, actually felt better about themselves after the task than the poorly performing students who expected to do badly.
On the other hand, the students who expected to do well and did do well, felt happier about themselves after the task than the students who did much better than they expected.
What was going on? One clue came from other questionnaires the students filled in. These showed that the students who expected to do well were more positive about life in general. Another possibility was that the students with high and low expectations differed in what they attributed their success or failure to.
In a second study using the same task, the researchers found the high-scoring students who expected to do well, put their success down to their ability, more than the high scoring students who hadn’t expected to do well. On the other hand, the poor performers who expected to do well, but did badly, tended not to see their failure as caused by their lack of ability (unlike the poor performers who expected to do badly).
The great American psychologist William James recommended lowering your expectations. “Make thy claim of wages a zero, then hast thou the world under thy feet”, he wrote. But combined with previous work showing that pessimism undermines people’s performance, this research suggests that it’s probably best not to think the worst.
___________________________________
Marshall, M.A. & Brown, J.D. (2006). Emotional reactions to achievement outcomes: Is its really best to expect the worst. Cognition and Emotion, 20, 43-63.
Post written by Christian Jarrett (@psych_writer) for the BPS Research Digest.
Link to William James' classic text
- We're Useless At Predicting How What Happens Will Affect Us Emotionally
When making decisions, a key factor we weigh up is how we think the outcome of our decisions will make us feel emotionally – what psychologists call postdecisional affect. The trouble is, we're useless at predicting how we'll feel. Nick Sevdalis...
- Violent Video Games Slow Our Processing Of Happy Faces
Just 15 minutes playing a violent video game can lend a negative bias to the way we interpret people's facial expressions. Steven Kirsh and Jeffrey Mounts at SUNY-Guneseo in New York asked 197 students to play either 15 minutes of the violent House...
- People Who Are Dogmatic Have Poorer Working Memory
People who are narrow-minded and dogmatic have a poorer working memory capacity, which is what makes it harder for them to process new information. That's according to Adam Brown who tested 212 university students on a verbal working memory task....
- Social, Creative - That's Physics!
Physics seems to have an image problem. According to BBC News, the physics department at Reading University is set to become the 21st physics school to have closed or merged over the last 10 years in the UK. But now Ursula Kessels and colleagues at the...
- Do You Ever Feel Like A Fraud
Have you ever had the feeling that you’ve really only got where you are by a mixture of luck and bluffing? Such feelings are often experienced by high achievers who believe they’ve successfully deceived others into believing they’re something they’re...