Folk wisdom has been a major source of knowledge among people throughout history. As a result, Hallgeir Sjastad investigated the situation of addressing out-of-reach goals–one that fables often address–in 6 different experiments. Sjastad et al. (2020) provide insight into people’s attitudes towards failure by studying how unexpected positive events yield more joy and happiness and, in the face of initial failure, people underestimate how good it would feel to succeed in the future.
To examine unexpected happiness and the effects of facing initial failure, Sjastad conducted six experiments involving 1304 people to investigate how people dealt with failure on cognitive tests as a result of poor performance. For the first three experiments, participants were assigned a series of cognitive ability tests (intelligence, mental agility, etc.) with a positive feedback condition (success) and a poor feedback condition (failure). Additionally, they were asked to predict their happiness, how their identity relates to their performance, and how their intelligence levels relate to their happiness. As a result, for the first experiment, participants with the poor feedback condition predicted that it would be harder to receive a top score compared to those with the good feedback condition. Furthermore, those who received low scores on the first test reported it to be harder than those who received high scores. For the second and third experiments, participants with the poor feedback condition predicted much lower identity relevance (associating their abilities with identity) of their cognitive ability than those with the good feedback condition. Additionally, those who received the poor feedback condition had lower identity relevance, which is associated with predicting lower happiness following a top performance in the future. These results match with the sour-grape hypothesis, and those who were in the poor feedback condition significantly underpredicted their happiness. Experiments four, five, and six were conducted to investigate the sour grape effect in different settings and provide further support for the effect with incentives. Their results support the sour grape hypothesis.
Sjastad and colleagues’ (2020) study provide educators insight on motivating students to strive for their futures. Since participants undermined their future performance upon facing failures, educators should remind students that failures are merely setbacks on their path to future success. Additionally, EPIC can consider incorporating questions about students’ predictions towards future success and investigate if the prediction will serve as an initial bias and affect their future performance.
To learn more about Sjastad and Baumeister’s study, check out the link to retrieve this article:
This post is written by Katelyn Chow.
Reference:
Sjåstad, H., Baumeister, R. F., & Ent, M. (2020). Greener grass or sour grapes? How people value future goals after initial failure. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 88, 103965.