I assumed they had also shown some isolated improvement from a specific memory of failure alone, which was indeed surprising to me.
Some of the participants were asked to reflect on a number of their past successes or failures by completing the sentence: “In general, I’m successful (I fail) when....”
The other participants were focused instead on a single episode of success or failure, by completing the sentence: “I succeeded (failed) once when I had to....”
The results were remarkable. People who were asked to reflect on their many past successes or a specific failure scored roughly 10% better on tests of mathematical ability, as well as verbal, spatial, and abstract reasoning, than those who reflected on either many past failures or a single specific success.
So my report of the article was correct. So, if what you say is true, then the article misrepresented the study (which I also have not read).
Yeah I started reading the article and then after a few paragraphs realized “this isn’t a physics paper, it would be quicker to just read the original”. If I wasn’t busy/lazy, I’d read the full paper and comment on the article to point out that it misrepresents its source paper, but it’s not a wikipedia article, so I don’t care so much. Happens all the time.
I assumed they had also shown some isolated improvement from a specific memory of failure alone, which was indeed surprising to me.
So my report of the article was correct. So, if what you say is true, then the article misrepresented the study (which I also have not read).
Yeah I started reading the article and then after a few paragraphs realized “this isn’t a physics paper, it would be quicker to just read the original”. If I wasn’t busy/lazy, I’d read the full paper and comment on the article to point out that it misrepresents its source paper, but it’s not a wikipedia article, so I don’t care so much. Happens all the time.
Cool. The average quality of thinking on the blog (psychologytoday) is really low, so I should probably treat it like you do.