Noncontingent Failure Research Articles

Perseverative thought: A robust predictor of response to emotional challenge in generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and major depressive disorder (MDD) frequently co-occur, yet the reasons for their comorbidity remain poorly understood. In the present experiment, we tested whether a tendency to engage in negative, repetitive thinking constitutes a common risk process for the two disorders. A mixed sample of adults with comorbid GAD–MDD (n=50), GAD only (n=35), MDD only (n=34), or no lifetime psychopathology (n=35) was administered noncontingent failure and success feedback on consecutive performance tasks. Perseverative thought (PT), measured by negative thought intrusions during a baseline period of focused breathing, emerged as a powerful prospective predictor of responses to this experimental challenge. Participants reporting more frequent negative thought intrusions at baseline, irrespective of thought content or diagnostic status, exhibited a stronger negative response to failure that persisted even after subsequent success. Higher PT over the course of the experiment was associated with later behavioral avoidance, with negative affect and other traits closely linked to anxiety and depression, and with the presence and severity of GAD and MDD. These findings provide evidence for a broadly-defined PT trait that is shared by GAD and MDD and contributes to adverse outcomes in these disorders.

Personal, Interpersonal, and Situational Influences on Behavioral Self-Handicapping

ABSTRACT This study explored the combined effects of personal factors (participant sex), interpersonal factors (experimenter sex), and situational factors (performance feedback) on two forms of behavioral self-handicapping. Participants received non-contingent success or failure feedback concerning their performance on a novel ability and were given the opportunity to self-handicap before performing again. Behavioral self-handicapping took the form of (a) exerting less practice effort (practice) or (b) choosing a performance-debilitating tape (choice). Men practiced least after failure feedback and chose a debilitating tape if they were interacting with a female experimenter. Generally, across all participants in both choice and practice conditions, high performance concern and the presence of a male experimenter led to the most self-handicapping. Results are interpreted in terms of self-presentational concerns that emphasize a desire to impress or an awareness of the female or male experimenter's acceptance of self-handicappers.

Diagnosing the Poor Performance of Self‐worth Protective Students: A product of future outcome uncertainty, evaluative threat, or both?

Self‐worth protective students characteristically perform well on some occasions yet on other occasions they perform poorly. In this study, two accounts of the poor performance of self‐worth protective students are assessed. The first is that their poor performance is an outcome of evaluative threat. The second is that their poor performance is an outcome of future outcome uncertainty: a product of their uncertain global self‐esteem and uncertainty about the causes of achievement outcomes. Students high or low in self‐worth protection were exposed to either noncontingent success (creating future outcome uncertainty), noncontingent failure (evoking evaluative threat), or contingent success. Their ability to solve two tasks that involved a high degree of uncertainty was then assessed. Students high in self‐worth protection performed poorly following both noncontingent failure and noncontingent success, supporting the roles of both evaluative threat and future outcome uncertainty. The implications in terms of enhancing the achievement of students high in self‐worth protection are discussed.

Performance and persistence of worriers and non-worriers following success and failure feedback

Worry is a cognitive phenomenon that involves rumination over future events accompanied by feelings of anxiety. This study utilised a 2 (worry status: worrier vs. non-worrier) × 2 (performance feedback: success vs. non-contingent failure) × 2 (strategy advice: advice vs. none) between subjects factorial design to investigate the effects of worry on performance and persistence by manipulating performance feedback and strategy advice. n=48 worriers and n=48 non-worriers completed measures of state anxiety, cognitive interference, and perceptions of performance. Following an induction to make participants believed they had failed on a task, worriers showed poor performance, elevated anxiety, and greater cognitive interference than non-worriers. No evidence of nonproductive persistence was evident for worries given strategy advice. The roles of anticipated difficulty levels, item solubility, problem solving confidence, and the perceived value of dogged persistence are discussed in assessing situational factors conducive to nonproductive persistence.

Type A behavior, uncontrollability, and the activation of hostile self-schema responding

Research on Type A behavior is focusing on cognitive variables, and A B differences in schematic processing have been found. The present investigation sought to identify A B differences in hostile self-schema responding. Expectations based on Glass' theory were that Type A hostile self-schemata would be activated by brief exposure to uncontrollable failure, while depressed content self-schemata would emerge after extended exposure. JAS- and SI-defined Type A and B students were assessed for self-referent recall of hostile and depressed content adjectives following exposure to brief or extended noncontingent failure feedback or nofeedback. While the feedback enhanced recall for hostile adjectives among As, recall for depressed content adjectives was unaffected by noncontingent failure. Thus As retained hostile self-schemata which were activated by noncontingent failure. These results were discussed in relation to both Type A and self-schematic processing theories.

Computer Experience, Self-Concept and Problem-Solving: The Effects of Logo on Children's Ideas of Themselves as Learners

The effects of LOGO programming experiences on children's ideas of themselves as learners were examined. Two measures of children's ideas about themselves as learners, the Intellectual Achievement Responsibility (IAR) Scale and performance on an attention task after noncontingent success and failure feedback, were employed with third-grade children before and after four and a half months of LOGO computer programming experiences. The selection of these measures was based on previous work by Carol Dweck and her colleagues on achievement motivation. The control group received computer programming experience, which in contrast to LOGO, did not emphasize the decomposition of complex problems or the recognition of errors as a natural part of problem-solving. As predicted, the children who received LOGO experience showed significant increases on the IAR scale (i.e., increases in internal locus-of-control) and a differential pattern of responding after noncontingent success feedback as compared to the control group. No differences existed between the two groups on noncontingent failure feedback. Results support our proposal that particular qualities of LOGO can increase incremental or mastery-oriented thinking in young children.

Strategic “Alcohol” Use: Drinking to Self-Handicap

An investigation of the self-handicapping theory of alcohol and drug use (Jones & Berglas, 1978) was conducted to control for methodological problems that have clouded interpretation of previous findings. Seventy-two male heavy social drinkers were assigned to either noncontingent success, noncontingent failure, contingent success, contingent failure, no-feedback, or low-stress conditions. All but low-stress subjects worked on solvable concept-formation problems and received feedback appropriate to their conditions. In anticipation of a similar retest, subjects consumed an “alcoholic” beverage (actually a placebo). Noncontingent success subjects drank more than contingent success, contingent failure, and low-stress subjects. Noncontingent failure subjects drank more than contingent success subjects. These results correspond to previous findings, but due to improved controls, nonhandicapping interpretations of the results for noncontingent success subjects were effectively eliminated. Self-handicapping was...

Perceived control and instruction in the college classroom: Some implications for student achievement

Recent research suggests that loss of control by students interferes with the quality of instruction in the college classroom. The present study examined how four types of feedback affected perceived control and student achievement in different instruction settings. College students wrote an aptitude test which provided either contingent, low noncontingent failure, high noncontingent failure, or no-performance feedback. The amount of feedback was varied by modifying the length of the test: short, medium, long. The students then observed a videotaped lecture, presented by a low or high expressive instructor, and completed a postlecture achievement test. High noncontingent failure feedback reduced students' perceived control over their performance and created an external attribution profile. For expressive instruction, achievement deteriorated in accordance with the severity of students' uncontrollability. Implications are discussed regarding loss of control and effective instruction.

Learned helplessness and learned resourcefulness: effects of noncontingent success and failure on individuals differing in self-control skills.

We designed two experiments to investigate the role of self-control processes in learned-helplessness studies by assessing the differential reactions to uncontrollability of subjects who presumably had either a rich (high resourceful, or HR) or poor (low resourceful, or LR) repertoire of self-control skills. HR and LR subjects received noncontingent success feedback, failure feedback, or no feedback on a task that ostensibly assessed "therapeutic abilities." Subjects were subsequently tested on insolvable puzzles (Experiment 1) or on solvable anagrams (Experiment 2). According to Kanfer and Hagerman's (1981) self-regulation model, self-regulatory activities are evoked primarily in situations in which subjects are faced with repeated failure. Hence we predicted that individual differences in self-control would influence performance on the insolvable puzzles and not anagram performance after exposure to noncontingent failure. This prediction was confirmed: Only the performance of LR subjects on the insolvable puzzles was debilitated by the helplessness induction, whereas HR and LR subjects showed equal helplessness-induced deficits on the anagrams. The latter finding was interpreted in terms of the learned-helplessness model without the mediating effects of self-regulatory processes. As predicted from the self-control model, HR subjects more frequently checked statements indicating positive self-evaluations and task-oriented thoughts and less frequently checked negative self-evaluations than did LR subjects during exposure to uncontrollability in both experiments. We concluded that the self-control model accounts best for subjects' self-reactions during exposure to uncontrollability or failure, whereas the learned-helplessness model accounts for the generalization of helplessness from uncontrollable situations to controllable ones.

Noncontingent SuccessVersusNoncontingent Failure and Learned Helplessness

Summary In order to study the effects of the valence of the outcome on learned helplessness, 40 undergraduate psychology students were assigned to one of four different groups for pretreatment on an instrumental task having a neutral buzzer as outcome: contingent failure, noncontingent failure, non-contingent success, or long noncontingent success. Both noncontingent success and noncontingent failure produced significant (p < .05) impairment of subsequent performance in a test task as measured by mean latency and number of failures to escape the buzzer. These results indicate that learned helplessness can be produced by experiencing uncontrollable positive, as well as uncontrollable negative, outcomes.

The role of pretest and test similarity in producing helpless or reactant responding in humans

In three experiments, the similarity between the pretest unsolvable training task and the subsequent test task for helplessness was examined. When pretest and test were dissimilar in both content (arithmetic vs. anagram problems) and mode of presentation, performance was enhanced on the test, compared with solvable and control groups (Experiments 1 and 2). The use of some solvable problems in the pretest was found to reduce the variability of results. When pretest and test were composed of similar problems, the typical helplessness pattern was exhibited (Experiment 3). External locus of control subjects were found to respond less under all experimental conditions (Experiment 1). The relationship between these data and the helplessness and reactance models of the effects of noncontingent failure is discussed.