Education for Persistence and Innovation Center

04/27/2022

Have you ever criticized an exam you've done poorly in? Or maybe praised a test that you happened to have done well in? Today's study, conducted by Frey in 1978, is about these types of evaluations, and how they are affected by public and private circumstances. This summary was written by Sara Orlowska.

"Reactions to Success and Failure in Public and in Private Conditions" (1978)

In public, we often put up a well-constructed persona to enhance or protect our self-image, which becomes easier to maintain when people around us know less. Past research has shown that perceptions test accuracy depend on receiving a desirable outcome. However, Frey's experiment took this further and studied how evaluations of tests were affected by not only receiving successful/unsuccessful results, but also the setting in which the results are received, and the setting in which evaluations are made.

The study involved groups of female students, aged 15-18, tasked with testing a new measure of intelligence for its validity (accuracy) and reliability (consistency). However, the research was actually measuring how the participants would evaluate the test depending on their results, their results’ anonymity, and evaluations’ anonymity. Upon completion of the intelligence test, participants were given made-up results informing them that they either received the highest or lowest score within their group. Half of the participants received results privately, while the other half were told they would have to later point out their scores publicly. Participants were then asked to evaluate the test on its validity and reliability. This was divided into a private condition in which answers were anonymous, and a public condition in which participants were warned of their ratings being made public.

The results supported all of the experiment's hypotheses. The better the test results, the more positive evaluations. When receiving results privately those in the success condition publicly evaluated positively, whilst those in the failure condition publicly evaluated negatively. In both conditions (success/failure) public evaluations were higher than in private evaluations, likely due to the tendency to impress others. When receiving results publicly, those with successful results evaluated less positively in the public setting than in private, while those with failed results assessed more positively in public than in private. Likely due to participants avoiding either the impression of rationalizing an unsuccessful result or the impression of being self-serving, in favour of looking modest and preserving self-image.

These findings support the idea that reactions before an audience are dependent upon the audience's amount of information. If there is no threat of information individuals will present themselves as positively as they can, but if they may be publicly disproven the individual will be more cautious, or modest, and present an image compatible with their self-perceptions.

Research like this aids EPIC in understanding how social environments affect reactions to failure and success.

Source: https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(78)90023-9

Frey, D., (1978). "Reactions to Success and Failure in Public and in Private Conditions" Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 14(2), 172-179.

03/17/2022

This week’s article will examine one of the earliest papers to empirically examine the benefits of help-seeking behavior. The original paper was published in 1981 by Nelson-Le Gall, and this summary was written by Matt Cohen.

“Help-Seeking: An Understudied Problem-Solving Skill in Children” Nelson Le-Gall (1981)

Have you ever approached a difficult task by breaking it down into more manageable chunks? Psychologists do this all the time when analyzing human behavior, which is always more complex when we take the time to look beneath the surface. Up until the early 1980’s, psychologists often took a one-dimensional, negative view of help-seeking behavior: that it was an indication that someone depends too much on others. Nelson-Le Gall’s (1981) paper challenged this assumption and argued that help-seeking is more nuanced. Depending on what is asked for and why, help-seeking could instead be seen as an important strategy for an independent learner’s toolbox.

Nelson-Le Gall broke down the process by which people seek help into five steps: 1) recognize a need for help, 2) decide WHETHER to ask for help, 3) decide WHO to ask for help, 4) decide HOW to ask for help, and 5) self-reflect. She argued that if a request for help was 1) necessary, and 2) motivated by a goal for self-improvement (not just to get it done with), it should be examined as an adaptive skill rather than as a habit of clinginess. Check out the diagram attached in this post.

In addition to providing a valuable breakdown that can equip EPIC to examine help-seeking behavior more effectively, her work serves as a reminder to challenge assumptions and look deeper. In the same way that she changed how psychologists look at help-seeking, EPIC hopes to push for a deeper understanding of failure. Is failure always bad, or can it teach us valuable lessons in the right circumstances?

Source: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1982-20924-001

Nelson-Le Gall, S. (1981). “Help-seeking: An understudied problem-solving skill in children.” Developmental Review, 1(3), 224–246

03/02/2022

Check out our EPIC Team in 2022!

03/02/2022

Today, we want to highlight a 2016 study conducted by a team, including one of our EPIC advisory board members, Carol Dweck, that investigated how parents’ mindsets influence that of their children. This summary was written by Matt Cohen.

“Corrigendum: What Predicts Children’s Fixed and Growth Intelligence Mind-Sets? Not Their Parents’ Views of Intelligence but Their Parents’ Views of Failure” (2016)

Psychologists have found that a person’s belief of whether or not intelligence can be changed over time can have effects on their educational outcomes. Generally speaking, those who believe intelligence can grow with effort (growth mindset) will fare better than those who believe it is fixed and unchangeable (fixed mindset). But where do these mindsets come from? The authors of this study sought to explore the link between the mindsets of parents and that of their children.

Researchers asked 73 parent-child pairs to participate in the study, and measured the parent’s mindsets and perceptions of their children’s academic ability through online assessments. The children completed surveys asking about their own mindsets as well as their perception of their parents’ mindsets. When they compared the data, they found that parents who thought of failure as debilitating were likely to have children with fixed mindsets.

This study demonstrates that parents can harmfully affect their children's mindsets with a negative view of failure experiences. To equip children with the best odds for educational success, parents can try to look at every obstacle as an opportunity instead. By understanding how different views of failure shape people’s experiences within and beyond the classroom, EPIC is better positioned to understand the impact we can expect to make with our research.

Source: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797616639727?journalCode=pssa

Haimovitz K., Dweck, C., S. (2016). Corrigendum: What Predicts Children’s Fixed and Growth Intelligence Mind-Sets? Not Their Parents’ Views of Intelligence but Their Parents’ Views of Failure. Psychological Science, 27, 859-869

Children’s intelligence mind-sets (i.e., their beliefs about whether intelligence is fixed or malleable) robustly influence their motivation and learning. Yet, ...

02/16/2022

Today’s post will spotlight the first of two experiments, conducted as part of a larger 1996 study by Brunstein and Gollwitzer. The experiment explores a factor that plays a role in whether a failure will boost or sink later performance, identity. This summary was written by Matt Cohen, with contributions by Khudaija Ahmad and Yiran Du.

“Effects of Failure on Subsequent Performance: The Importance of Self-Defining Goals” (Brunstein & Gollwitzer 1996)

In psychological research, there have been many conflicting results on how failure affects performance. Some psychologists argue that failure increases performance while others say the exact opposite, but perhaps there is truth to both sides of this debate. The authors of this article believed that the performance-boosting benefits of failure depend on the failure’s relevance to one’s identity. They predicted that more personally relevant failures would increase performance because they caused the individual to realize they needed to work harder to prove themselves in areas they cared about.

To test this prediction, they asked 96 German medical students to complete a quiz on hypothetical social scenarios and a mental concentration test. Half of the students were given social scenarios related to situations a doctor might face and the other half answered questions about generic social situations. Within each of these groups, regardless how they actually did, the students randomly received one of two made-up grades: a failing grade or no grade at all. Finally, all students were given the mental concentration test, but half were told that the task was relevant to becoming a doctor and the other half was told nothing.

They found that “failing” the social scenario quiz substantially increased performance on the mental concentration task, but only if both tests were relevant to the students’ identity as a doctor. If one or both of the tests were not directly presented as relevant to becoming a doctor, “failing” the social scenario quiz decreased performance on the mental concentration task instead. These results suggest that if a failure is relevant to a person’s identity, it can be the motivational push they need to succeed later on. Interested in the positive benefits of failure, this article provides EPIC with an interesting lens through which to examine how and when failure affects performance. It also highlights identity relevance as an important factor to be aware of when examining failure.

Source: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1996-01717-016

Brunstein J., C., Gollwitzer, P., M., (1996) “Effects of Failure on Subsequent Performance: The Importance of Self-Defining Goals.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70(2), 395-407

Extending R. A. Wicklund and P. M. Gollwitzer's (1982) self-completion theory, 2 experiments examined the role of self-defining goals in predicting performance effects of failure among students committed to professional goals such as becoming a physician (Experiment 1) or a computer scientist (Exper...

01/19/2022

Today we will explore a 2018 paper in which the authors investigated the relationship between persistence and the way in which people think about their life stories. The original paper was written by Jones, Destin, and McAdams and this summary was written by Matt Cohen.

“Telling better stories: Competence-building narrative themes increase adolescent persistence and academic achievement” (2018)

Many psychologists believe that identity is shaped by the way people discuss and conceptualize their life stories. Jones, Destin, and McAdams suspected that these stories, which are coined as “personal narratives,” might be able to tell us more about a person than just their identity. The team of researchers conducted two studies to explore the relationship between personal narratives with growth-focused themes and school success.

In the first study, the researchers asked 62 ninth graders to write about a time they failed and a time they succeeded. Without letting the students know specifically what they were looking for, the researchers tracked the students who mentioned how they learned from their failure and the steps they took to reach their success.

The second study began similarly to the first study, with the researchers asking 183 ninth graders to write about their experiences with failure and success by handing out worksheets with essay prompts. The main difference was that half of the students were randomly assigned worksheets that directly asked them to write about their experiences in the same growth-focused manner that they secretly looked for in the first study.
The researchers found that in both studies, the students who wrote about their successes and failures in a growth-focused manner were more likely to perform better in school. These results imply the importance of being able to see oneself as capable of growth and demonstrate that the benefits of growth-focused personal narratives are both tangible and teachable. As EPIC is very interested in how people conceptualize and learn from their past failures, this study helps to pave the way for our continued research into developing a better understanding of students' experiences of failure.

Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103117304997 (Jones, Destin, & McAdams 2018)

Jones, B., K., Destin, M., McAdams, D., P., (2018) “Telling Better Stories: Competence-Building Narrative Themes Increase Adolescent Persistence and Academic Achievement” Journal of Experimental and Social Psychology 76 76-80

The current studies investigate the power of competence-building narrative themes in adolescents' accounts of failures and successes to improve school…

01/05/2022

Today’s spotlighted study was conducted by Ackerman, Kanfer, & Calderwood at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2013, and examines the relationship between advanced placement (AP) testing performance, future academic success, and STEM persistence among other variables. This summary was written by Jonathan Young.

“High School Advanced Placement and Student Performance in College: STEM Majors, Non-STEM Majors, and Gender Differences” 2013

The term “Advanced Placement” is common within school systems today, but what does it mean, and does it really set high school students up for future success? The authors of this study wanted to find out if taking “Advanced Placement” exams/classes really set up students for success, and if scoring better on these tests/entering college with more transfer credits is an indicator for college success.

The researchers compared the high school scores and experiences with AP tests from the freshman classes of Georgia Tech between the years 1999-2005, and compared it to their total college GPAs to see if there was any relationship. Researchers found that those who completed more AP exams scored higher on average in their first year courses and graduated at a higher rate. Failing on AP exams was associated with students whose GPA in their first year of college was below average,even lower than the GPAs of students who did not do any AP exams. There was no relationship between the scores on the AP exams and the graduation rate.

Researchers also found a clear relationship between the number of transfer credits from AP exams and GPA at Georgia Tech. This group (which also performed the best on their AP exams) performed the best throughout their time at Georgia Tech and graduated at the highest rate of all of the groups. They also found that the students who completed AP exams but did not earn transfer credits performed about as well as students who did not complete any AP exams at all.

This study suggests that challenging yourself in school from an earlier age will set you up for success in college, and in the future. Furthermore, it suggests that it is not just the challenges, but the habits you build to succeed while facing the challenges that is what gives you a competitive advantage in the future. This ties nicely to EPIC's work examining how early instances of adversity may set some people up for success, while others fail. It is interesting that “failure” to overcome adversity in this case may mark someone as “average,” instead of above the rest, reminding us that failure can be defined in many ways for different people.

Background/Context: The past few decades have seen an explosive growth in high-school student participation in the Advanced Placement program® (AP), with nearly two million exams completed in 2011. Traditionally, universities have considered AP enrollment as an indicator for predicting academic suc...

12/01/2021

Today’s post will cover a study, published in 1990 by Mantzicopoulos, which searched for patterns in differences between elementary-aged children’s coping skills and academic achievement among other factors. This summary was written by Matt Cohen.

“Coping With School Failure: Characteristics of Students Employing Successful and Unsuccessful Coping Strategies” (Mantzicopoulos 1990)

To be happy in life despite the endless stress in the world, one must learn to weather the inevitable storms. Not all coping strategies are created equally, however. In the event of a car accident, for example, it may be healthier to be thankful that nobody was injured or to try and replace a flat tire than to yell at the other driver. Mantzicopoulos, the author of this study, wanted to explore how the types of coping strategies used by children related to their academic achievement, self-esteem, and classroom behavior. Were the students who tended to use healthier coping strategies typically better off?

Mantzicopoulos began by asking 120 students from fourth to sixth grade about a time they failed in an important academic situation and how they coped with this failure. Next, she asked about the extent to which the students believed that low ability, low effort, bad luck, or task difficulty played a role in the failure. After learning of the students’ academic performance and classroom behavior from the school, she asked the students about their self-perception. After organizing the students into groups based on their coping strategies, she compared the results.

She found that the children with positive coping strategies had the highest sense of self-worth and had the highest levels of academic achievement. However, she found that there was no relationship between coping strategies and classroom behavior. Nevertheless, these results demonstrate the importance of learning healthy strategies of coping with stress. Studies such as this one help the EPIC team to understand how people’s responses to failure affect their wellbeing within and beyond the classroom.

Source:

This study examined the characteristics of four groups of children employing positive, defensive, self-blame, or mixed strategies to cope with a failure experience in school. The findings indicated t...

11/10/2021

Today we will explore a study on the factors that lead children to adopt healthy or unhealthy coping strategies. The paper was published in 1997 and this research summary was written by Matt Cohen.

“How do Children Cope With School Failure? A Study of Social/Emotional Factors Related to Children's Coping Strategies” (1997)

Everyone handles stress differently, but not all coping strategies are equally healthy. In the face of stressful failure, blaming others or denying failure outright detract from one’s ability to learn or grow from the situation. Curious about the factors that influence the development of healthy or unhealthy coping strategies, Mantzicopoulos hoped to explore the how motivational and emotional skills of children shaped how they coped with failures within school.

The author of the study interviewed 187 fifth graders, asking about a time they failed in an important academic task, their emotional response to the event, and why they thought they failed. Next, she measured the extent to which they were motivated by external factors (like a promise of ice cream if they did well), or by their own personal interest in succeeding. Finally, Mantzicopoulos surveyed the coping strategies used by the students and compared all of the findings.

She found that those who were more likely to use healthy coping mechanisms reported less negative emotions in response to the stressful event, had more positive self-worth, and tended to pin failures on a lack of effort rather than a lack of ability. Furthermore, there was a relationship between unhealthy coping mechanisms and feeling motivated primarily by external rewards.

These findings shed light on a number of factors which affect the likelihood of learning healthy coping strategies. Studies such as this equip EPIC to understand how different coping strategies come to be, and give context to people’s responses to failure.

Source:

This study examined the coping strategies employed by 187 fourth and fifth graders in an encounter with an academic failure experience in school. Resources considered in this study included motivatio...

10/27/2021

Today we will share a 1988 investigation conducted by Compas, Malcarne, and Fondacaro in which the authors tried to explore how coping strategies relate to emotional/behavior problems, and how they change with age. This summary was written by Matt Cohen.

"Coping With Stressful Events in Older Children and Young Adolescents” (1988)

Psychologists identify two main categories of coping strategy: 1) those that address the negative emotions from the problem, and 2) those that address the problem itself. In addition to exploring what kind of coping strategies people use, psychologists are also interested in how many. Compas, Malcarne, and Fondacaro wanted to explore how the number and type of coping strategies used by children relate to age, emotional/behavioral problems, and perceived control over a stressful situation.

The authors of the study asked 130 students from sixth to eighth grade to discuss a recent stressful event, specifically what it was and why it was stressful. Next, they asked the students to list all coping strategies they could have used and to rate how much control they felt they had over the event. After testing for emotional/behavioral problems and comparing the results to age, they found some interesting results.

The researchers identified two main categories of stressful events: academic and social, finding that all students felt they had more control over academic events than social ones. Secondly, they found that everyone used more emotion-focused coping strategies as they aged. Perhaps most importantly, they found that students had the fewest emotional/behavioral challenges when they were good at matching problem-focused strategies to events within their control, and matching emotion-focused strategies to events beyond their control.

The results suggest that although having a bigger or more varied coping toolbox is important, it is not enough unless a student can adaptively apply the right tool to the right job. Studies like this position EPIC to understand how coping strategies fit into the bigger picture of equipping students with the necessary skills to be successful within and beyond school.

Source:https://cdn.vanderbilt.edu/vu-my/wp-content/uploads/sites/2804/2019/04/14195743/Compas-et-al.-1988-JCCP.pdf (Compas, Malcarne, & Fondacaro, 1988)

10/14/2021

This week we want to showcase an investigation, conducted by Eisenberger and Leonard in 1980, on the extent to which being challenged can increase persistence in the future. This summary was written by Matt Cohen.

“Effects of Conceptual Task Difficulty on Generalized Persistence” (1980)

How hard are you used to working? Does your expectation of how hard you need to work affect how hard you are willing to work? The researchers sought to find out with a series of experiments, predicting that a higher difficulty level on one round of puzzles would correspond to an increase of college students’ effort levels on a second round of puzzles.

In each experiment, they had college students complete two types of puzzles: 1) an anagram puzzle in which scrambled letters need to be rearranged to create a word, and 2) a picture puzzle in which subtle differences needed to be identified between two similar cartoon images. In each experiment the students were split into four groups based on the difficulty of the anagrams they were given: easy, difficult, impossible, or a mix of easy and difficult. The experiments varied in terms of the order in which the anagrams were given, whether they included impossible picture puzzles, and whether the students were told after the fact which anagrams were unsolvable. In each experiment the authors had the students first spend up to ten minutes to complete a total of ten anagrams, then measured how long they spent trying to solve the picture puzzles.

The authors found that the level of anagram difficulty the students were given was closely linked to how long they persisted trying to solve the picture puzzles. This finding suggests that challenges can increase motivation, and that the effort we exert is related to how hard we have become accustomed to working in the past. However, the students’ effort levels were lower in subsequent puzzles when they were told that they were given some impossible puzzles, suggesting we are prone to give up if we are given reason to believe our efforts may be in vain. Studies like this better position EPIC to understand why some people give up and why others persist.

Source: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1981-22808-001

Eisenberger, R., Leonard, J., Mauriello., (1980). “Effects of Conceptual Task Difficulty on Generalized Persistence” American Journal of Psychology 93(2) 285-298

Three experiments tested whether the degree of effort rewarded in a conceptual task would affect subsequent persistence in a perceptual task. 560 college students were presented with complex, simple, or unsolvable anagrams or, in a control group, read the anagram target words; the perceptual task re...

09/22/2021

This week's spotlight study, published by Gazelle and Druhen in 2009, investigates the role of social rejection on the formation of learned helplessness and explores factors that may contribute to increased vulnerability to unhealthy responses to rejection. The summary below was written by Matt Cohen.

“Anxious Solitude and Peer Exclusion Predict Social Helplessness, Upset Affect, and Vagal Regulation in Response to Behavioral Rejection by a Friend” (2009)

Have you or someone you know ever said “what’s the point in trying anymore?” when faced with repeated failure? When people start to believe that their actions don’t affect their outcomes and give up as a result, they experience what psychologists like to call 'learned helplessness'. Gazelle and Druhen wanted to explore how this phenomenon plays out when shy children face social rejection, and to explore the role that stress from peer exclusion plays in shaping their reaction. The researchers predicted that shy children who experienced regular stress from peer-exclusion would experience more learned helplessness in response to social rejection and have a stronger negative reaction to it.

The researchers first mapped the social relationships of 163 third graders, trying to determine who was shy, excluded by peers, or both. They then asked the students, one at a time, to join them in a separate room for an interview, asking each student to nominate a friend to join them. The researchers’ assistant created a fake social rejection scenario by reporting that the nominated child didn’t want to come after pretending to leave the room to find the friend. After being assessed for emotional distress, the interviewed child was asked to nominate a second friend instead.

The authors wanted to see who would give up and decline to nominate the second friend after being told they were rejected by the first one. They found that the shy children and excluded children were more upset upon rejection, and that they were more likely to not nominate a second friend. This was especially true for the children who had both traits.

These findings suggest that shyness and social exclusion can interact to increase risk of social helplessness even beyond the level of either trait on its own. With this knowledge, educators can try to identify students who may need more support and make efforts to make them feel more included. Interested in the factors that determine whether someone keeps trying or gives up, studies like this one are of interest to EPIC as they shed light on how reactions to failure can be shaped by personal characteristics.

Source: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/19586181/ (Gazelle & Druhen 2009)

Gazelle, H., Druhen, M., J., (2009). “Anxious Solitude and Peer Exclusion Predict Social Helplessness, Upset Affect, and Vagal Regulation in Response to Behavioral Rejection by a Friend” Developmental Psychology 45(4) 1077-1096.

It was hypothesized that combined individual child vulnerability (anxious solitude) and interpersonal stress (peer exclusion) would predict the strongest responses to experimentally manipulated behavioral peer rejection. Results indicated that in a sample of 3rd graders (N = 160, 59% girls), anxious...