Abstract
Following the logic of a prior experiment (Seligman et al., 1990) with varsity collegiate swimmers, sixty student volunteers performed a brief, but highly stressful vigilance task. Half were then given false feedback indicating poor performance; the others experienced a non-evaluative display at that point. All were then asked to repeat the vigil. Half the observers were assessed as high optimists and half as high pessimists. The pessimists showed a steeper vigilance decrement than the optimists, consistent with a model (Scheier and Carver, 1987) that proposes that pessimists are more emotion-focused under stress than optimists, and hence would be less attentive to the vigilance display, regardless of feedback condition. The false negative feedback actually turned out to be ineffective; hence, based on Seligman's account of the swimmer study, which requires effective negative feedback, there should have been no vigilance performance difference between optimists and pessimists, either pre- or post-feedback.
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Helton, W.S., Dember, W.N., Warm, J.S. et al. Optimism, pessimism, and false failure feedback: Effects on vigilance performance. Curr Psychol 18, 311–325 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-999-1006-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-999-1006-2