10.1184/R1/6686084.v1 Diana Lynn Bartolotta Diana Lynn Bartolotta If At First You Don't Succeed... What Makes You Try Again? Carnegie Mellon University 1998 Dietrich Honors Thesis 1998-05-01 00:00:00 Thesis https://kilthub.cmu.edu/articles/thesis/If_At_First_You_Don_t_Succeed_What_Makes_You_Try_Again_/6686084 <p>Optimists have better outcomes than pessimists across a variety of situations (Andersson,<br>1996; Scheier and Carver, 1992). The underlying assumption for these differences is that<br>because optimists have positive expectancies for future events, they persist longer. Greater<br>persistence, in turn, leads to the more frequent experience of desired outcomes. In the<br>present study, we hypothesized that situational factors will also play a role in persistence.<br>Specifically, when individuals believe that it is important to perform well on a given task,<br>they will persist longer than if they believe the task is unimportant. To investigate the role<br>of these variables, both optimists and pessimists were given an unsolvable task for which<br>we manipulated the perceived importance of the task. We predicted a main effect for<br>optimism, such that optimists would persist longer than pessimists. In addition, we<br>predicted a main effect for level of task importance, such that persistence would be longer<br>for those in the high importance of task condition. Lastly, we examined the possibility of<br>an interaction between the two variables. Results and implications will be discussed.</p>