Mood and Affect following Success and Failure in Two Cultural Groups

Abstract

Occupational therapy theorists and others have stated that success and failure in activities play important roles in the development of a generalized sense of competence in occupational performance In this study it was hypothesized that a success experience and a failure experience would elicit different moods and affects in participants, and that people from different cultural backgrounds would respond to success and failure differently. Twenty Chinese graduate students currently enrolled in U.S. graduate schools and 20 U.S. graduate students participated in this study. The semantic differential technique and the Bipolar Form of the Profile of Mood States (POMS-BI) were used as dependent variables In addition to success-failure and nationality, gender inadvertently was found to be a significant predictor of responses and was treated as the third independent variable Results revealed that across the nationalities and across the sexes, the success experience resulted in significantly more positive moods and affects than the failure experience on all dependent variables. The only significant interaction between nationality and success-failure occurred on the composed-anxious factor of the POMS-BI, such that the Chinese group felt especially composed after the success activity in comparison with the American group. Females' moods were generally lower than males' on pre-activity, post-success, and post-failure measurements.