“Our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task determines, more than anything, the results.” This is an idea that has become fashionable again, thanks to Positive Psychology and Personal Growth gurus. However, it is not really something new, since its origins can be traced back to William James, a psychologist who was a pioneer in the analysis of emotions and their impact on our lives.
Based on this idea, hundreds of self-help books have been written , songs have been composed and, of course, there is no shortage of motivational movies. However, how much truth is there in this statement? Is attitude really a determining factor for the success of a project?
Does being optimistic improve our performance?
This question was posed by researchers from the Universities of California and Utah. They wanted to find out how optimism affected the results that people obtained in a series of tasks, compared to the results achieved by those who were more pessimistic.
In the first experiment, people were simply asked to perform a series of mathematical tasks. The trick was that some participants were given very positive feedback about their performance, while others were told that they weren’t doing so well. Obviously, this was false feedback, just to generate a feeling of optimism or to increase pessimism.
In theory, people who received positive feedback and felt more optimistic about their performance should do better. But that was not the case. Optimism was no better companion on a trip than pessimism.
The researchers wanted to confirm these results, so they set up another experiment. This time, people were asked to study a complex image until they discovered the hidden image, and they could spend as much time as they wanted.
In this case, since the task had nothing to do with prior mathematical knowledge but rather with perseverance, it was possible that more optimistic people were able to solve the task better.
Indeed, people who had been given positive feedback, to encourage optimism, remained focused on the task for 20% longer. However, this tenacity did not translate into better results (it was not statistically significant). In other words, the fact that they spent more time looking at the image did not translate into better performance.
Once again, optimism was seen not to improve results.
In a final experiment, the researchers asked a number of people to estimate how well participants would perform on certain tasks. This time, their goal was to assess the weight we place on optimism.
So, they gave each person a profile of the participants in the previous experiments, including their level of optimism. Interestingly, many people placed a high value on optimism, indicating that it was a factor that improved performance. However, when optimism was not indicated in the profiles, people rated the participants’ results more accurately.
All of this tells us that we are overestimating the power of optimism.
Is optimism really useful?
This is not the only study that has put optimism in the spotlight. For example, another study conducted at the University of Michigan found that while positive thoughts were beneficial in improving the mood of some people, in others they had the opposite effect. That is, optimism and positive thoughts generated negative emotions.
In fact, these experiments do not suggest that optimism is a negative strategy for coping with life. On the contrary, it can make us feel better about a difficult and tedious task and can even encourage perseverance. However, this does not always translate into better results.
Therefore, optimism and positive thinking are not a magic wand with which we will solve our problems, and they are not even the most important pillar, but only one of the many columns with which we must support our lives.
So when you set out on a project, you should not only make sure that you are motivated and have the right attitude, but you should also spend time developing the skills necessary to carry it out. Giving in to naive optimism is not only negative but can be counterproductive and can even lead to frustration.
Reference:
Tenney, E., Logg, J., & Moore, D. (2015) (Too) optimistic about optimism: The belief that optimism improves performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology; 108 (3): 377-399.
Leave a Reply