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Optimists are more wiling to delay gratification because they expect success. Ervin Staub escaped from communist Hungary as a young man, and in the early 1960s he became one of my first graduate students at Stanford as well as a lifelong friend. Together we conducted experiments at Stanford to see how expectations about success influence self-control and the willingness to work and wait for delayed rewards. We found that 14-year-old eighth-grade boys who generally expected to succeed even before they saw the specific task they would have to perform chose to do cognitive tasks for which the larger but delayed reward was contingent on successful performance, not just on waiting. This was rather than settling for the smaller but immediate reward, and they chose this option almost twice as often as those with low success expectations.
The boys with high expectations for success approached new tasks more confidently, as if they had already succeeded at them. They wanted to “go for it,” and they were willing to risk failure because they did not believe they would fail. Their expectations were more than fantasies: they were based on their history of previous successful experiences. Their successes fed the positive expectancies, which in turn encouraged behaviors and mind-sets that increased their chances for further success.
The findings also showed that those who started with low generalized expectations began as if they had already failed at the task. But these boys did respond positively when they actually succeeded at it, and their new success experiences significantly raised their expectations for future success. Our broad expectations for success or failure crucially impact how we approach new tasks, but our specific expectations are responsive to change when we see that we can actually succeed. The message is clear: optimists in general are better off than pessimists, but even pessimists raise their expectations when they see that they can succeed.
References
- Mischel, Walter. (2014). The Marshmallow Test Chapter 8 The Engine of Success I Think I Can (Epub p. 120) New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company.
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