PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE Research Report EXPLANATORY STYLE AS A MECHANISM OF DISAPPOINTING ATHLETIC PERFORMANCE Martin E.P. Seligman, 1 Susan Nolen-Hoeksema,2 Nort Thornton,3 and Karen Moe Thornton3 1University ofPennsylvania, 2Stanford University, and 3 University ofCalifornia at Berkeley Abstract-Two university varsity swim- study to date has tested the mechanism reviews see Peterson & Seligman, 1984; ming teams took the Attributional Style by which pessimistic style impairs Sweeney, Anderson, & Bailey, 1986.) Questionnaire (ASQ) at the start of the achievement. season. Swimmers with a pessimistic ex- We asked if pessimistic explanatory Coaches' judgments. The coaches planatory style wellt on to show more un- style predicts poorer than expected ath- rated each of their swimmers in the be- expected poor performances during letic performance and if it works by the ginning of the season on a I to 7 scalb, competition titan optimistic swimmers. mechanism of lowered response initia- judging how the swimmers would per- We then testedthe purported mechanism tion specifically following defeat. form after a defeat, where I was much ofthis effect by experimentally simulat- worse than average and 7 was much bet- ing defeat, giving each swimmer falsely ter than average. There was one coach negative' times. Performance deterio- STUDY 1 per swimmer: Nort Thornton for the rated for tllOse swimmers with a pessi- men, and Karen Thornton for the mistic explanatory style for bad events .Method women. Throughout the studies the on their next swim, whereas perfor- coaches remained blind to explanatory mance for those swimmers with an opti- Subjects style scores. mistic style did not. The subjects were members of the varsity men's and women's swim teams at the University of California at Berke- Swim season ratings. Following Some people habitually explain bad ley in 1987-1988. Both ofthese teams are each competitive swim during the sea- events by causes that are stable in time, nationally ranked and several swimmers son, the coach rated each swimmer's global in effect, and internal, but explain on the teams hold national or world performance on a I to 7 scale, where 1is good events by causes that are unstable, records. Twenty-one men and twenty- much worse than expected, 4 is as ex- specific, and external. The reformulation six women participated in Study I. pected, and 7 is much better than ex- of the learned helplessness model of de- pected. Every swim on which a swimmer received a rating of I, 2, or 3 was pression (Abramson, Seligman, & Teas- Instruments dale, 1978) predicts that individuals who counted as a poor swim. Each swimmer have this pessimistic style of explaining also rated pis or her performance using To measure ex- events sh0!1ld do worse than expected in Explanatory style. the same scale. Since the correlation be- planatory style, we administered the At- achievement situations, whereas people tween coach and swimmer approached tributional Style Questionnaire (ASQ; 'with a more optimistic style should do 1.00, we discontinued the swimmers' rat- Peterson, Semmel, von Baeyer, Abram- better. A pessimistic explanatory style is ings after a few meets. son, Metalsky, & Seligman, 1982; Selig- claimed to lead to poor performance be- man, Abramson, Semmel, & von cause it contributes to the expectation Baeyer, 1979). This self-report instru- Results that bad events will recur in several do- ment yields scores for explanatory style mains. In tum, this expectation leads to for bad and good events along three cau- ASQ Results lowered voluntary response initiation sal dimensions: stable versus unstable, following failure (Seligman, 1975). The global versus specific, internal versus prediction that people with a pessimistic Regression analyses (prediction external. A composite score for explana- We performed a se- explanatory style"will show poorer ofperformance). tions of bad events (CN) is obtained by ries of regression analyses to test our achievement than"people with an opti- summing the subject's score on the three predictions about the main independent mistic style has been supported in field dimensions for the bad events. A com- variables predicting the number of poor studies of academiC performance posite score for good events (CP) is ob- swims. In the main analysis CPCN, sex, (Dweck & Licht; i980; Nolen-Hoekse- tained by summing the subject's scores and coaches' judgment were simulta- ma, Girgus, & Seligman, 1986; Peterson on the three dimensions for good events. neously regressed against percentage of & Barrett, 1987) and the workplace (Se- A full scale score (CPCN) is obtained by poor swims. The squared multiple R was ligman & Schulman, 1987). But no field subtracting the composite score for bad .53 and each of the predictor variables events from the composite score for contributed significantly: CPCN (t = Send correspondence and reprint requests good events. Cronbach's alphas (a mea- 2.62, p < .012), sex (t = 2.51, p < .016), to: Martin E.P. Seligman, Department ofPsy- sure of inter-item consistency) in this and coaches' judgment (t = 3.28, p < chology, University of Pennsylvania, 3815 sample were .71, .76, and .79 for CPCN, .(02). Additional regression analyses us- Walnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104. CN, and CP, respectively. (For validity ing CN and CP showed that each con- VOL. 1, NO.2, MARCH 1990 Copyright © 1990 American Psychological Society 143 Downloaded from pss.sagepub.com at UNIV OF PENNSYLVANIA on July 13, 2015 PSYCHOLOGICAL SCIENCE ., ¥ Swimming and Explanatory Style tributed (1 = 1.89, p < .066; 1 = 2.51, p better following defeat than persons with victories and defeats. The analyses for < .012 respectively), but the strongest a pessimistic explanatory style. Study 2 focus on composite explanatory effect was with CPCN. Thus we imposed defeat on all of the style scores for negative events (CN) swimmers and tested their performance only, because here we were trying to following this defeat. Specifically, each predict reactions to a defeat only. Correlations of ASQ and coach- of the swimmers swam a time trial of his In general, the swimmers with an op- The coaches' judg- es' judgments. or her best event, and were given a timistic explanatory style for negative ments were not significantly correlated falsely slow score. After a rest, the events did at least as well after defeat as with any of the three ASQ composite swimmers swam the event again. they did in their first swim, but the pes- scores. This suggests that the coaches' simists' performances deteriorated. We predictions of swimmers' performances divided the swimmers into two groups are based on something other than an Method based on a median split of CN scores. awareness ofthe swimmers' explanatory The mean ratio ofthe time after the false style (,[CPCN] = .14, ,[CN] = .;... .22, Subjects feedback to the actual first time was .995 ,[CP] = .14). The subjects were 33 swimmers from the original 46. These tended to be the for the swimmers with optimistic explan- best swimmers on the teams who had re- atory style scores, whereas the mean for Sex differences. On the whole, the mained at school after the end ofthe sea· the swimmers with pessimistic scores men- had greater optimistic explanatory son to prepare for the 1988 Olympic tri- was 1.016 (1 = 1.96, p < .059). These are style than the women. The total scale als. Nineteen were women and 14 were not trivial changes as swimming times score,CPCN, was significantly more op- men. go. The absolute improvement and dete- timistic for the men (men X = 6.44, SD rioration in many of the cases would be = 3.15; womenX = 3.15, = 1.96; 1 the difference between winning and los- SD Procedure = 3.46, < .001). The men's composite ing an event. On coaches' ratings of the p Each swimmer was asked by the score for negative events (X = 11.60, quality ofthe second swim, the same dif- SD coach to swim in his or her best event, = 3.12) (CN) was marginally more opti- ference held: Changes in the coaches' and at the end of the swim was given a mistic than the women's (X = 12.81, judgments of the quality of the swims SD slower time. For loo-meter events, the = 1.72; 1 = 1.69, p < .097) and their from time I to time 2 showed a small time given to the swimmers was 1.5 sec- composite score for postive events (CP) deterioration (- .094) among the swim- onds slower than they had actually was much more optimistic than the wom- mers with an optimistic explanatory swum, for 200 meter events it was 2 sec- en's (men X = 18.03, = 1.89; style, but a more substantial deteriora- SD onds slower, for 400 meter events it was women X = 15.96, = 1.41; 1 = 4.3, tion of - .833 among the pessimists (t = SD 4 seconds slower, and for 500 meter < .00(1). These sex differences are no- 2.07, p < .047). It is also relevant that p events it was 5 seconds slower. These table. On average, the men's absolute coaches' judgments of the first swim times were chosen to accomplish two scores are as optimistic as any group we ~ were not different for the optimists and goals: (a) to produce serious disappoint- have tested except for life insurance pessimists, meaning that the optimists ment, and (b) be small enough to be un- agents, whereas the women's scores and the pessimists did as well as each detectable. Both goals seem to have look like typical college student female other initially (means = 3.53 versus been accomplished, although no formal means. Remember that many of the 3.50). The effect of explanatory style ap- manipulation check was made. Swim- women (as well as the men) are world- peared only after defeat.