Making Yourself Miserable to Succeed?

PeterAitch writes "Nature is reporting that expecting the worst - emotional cushioning - does not usually make you feel any better when you flunk or flop. The reported study indicates that you are just making yourself miserable. On the flip-side, people who are anxious are more likely to motivate themselves better to prepare for the forthcoming ordeal - defensive pessimists. Those with a generally sunny outlook on life expect to succeed and tend to deny responsibility when they perform badly."

Comments

Learned Optimism

[feldsteins]

those with a generally sunny outlook on life expect to succeed and tend to deny responsibility when they perform badly.

This kind of reminds me of Martin Seligman's book "Learned Optimism." Among other things it discusses research on how different kinds of people attribute their successes and failures. It's not at all "pop" psychology. Seligman was (is?) a research psychologist at Penn State. Definitely worth a read.

In other news...

[Anonymous Coward]

Life's a bitch, and then you die!

-AC

Re:www.despair.com

[dlasley]

Looks more like a business relationship to me, actually. They have a storefront hosted at stores.yahoo.com that appears identical to www.despair.com, and they have several examples of partnership scattered around other areas of Yahoo, including anti-greeting cards. Yahoo billed them as a cool site a while back, which hints at some sort of vested interest.

&laz;