Expectations and What People Learn from Failure

Abstract

This chapter offers an explanation of why our culture, and our field, has attached positive value only to persistence and not to quitting, while in our view the ability to quit is every bit as vital as the ability to persist. It aims to establish that a pathological form of behavior is manifested both in the blind persistence exhibited by people with high expectations and in the lack of persistence exhibited by people with low expectations. The chapter reviews evidence that people with low expectations are less likely to persist at a task both following failure and following success, and also in the absence of further feedback. High expectations will be more advantageous than low expectations only when, as in the immunization condition of our experiment, people are aware of and accept the fact that some tasks are impossible to accomplish and not worth persisting on.

Topics & Concepts