ILLUSTRATIVE ARTICLE: STUDYING BEHAVIOR
Many people have had the experience of anticipating something bad happening to them: "I'm not going to get that job" or "I'm going to fail this test" or "She'll laugh in my face if I ask her out!" Do you think that anticipating a negative outcome means that a person is less distressed when a negative outcome occurs? That is, is it better to think "I'm going to fail" if, indeed, you may fail? In a study published by Golub, Gilbert, and Wilson (2009), two experiments and a field study were conducted in an effort to determine whether this negative expectation is a good thing or a bad thing. In the two laboratory studies, participants were asked to complete a personality assessment and were then led to have either positive, negative, or no expectations about the results. Participants' affective (emotional) state was assessed prior to-and directly after-hearing a negative (in the case of study 1a) or positive (in the case of study 1b) outcome. In the field study, participants were undergraduate introductory psychology students who were asked about their expectations of their performance in an upcoming exam. Then, a day after the exam, positive and negative emotion was assessed. Taken together, the results of these three studies suggest that anticipating bad outcomes may be an ineffective path to positive emotion.
First, acquire and read the article:
Then, after reading the article, consider the following:
1. For each of the studies, how did Golub, Gilbert, and Wilson (2009) operationally define the positive expectations? How did they operationally define affect?
2. In experiments 1a and 1b, what were the independent variable(s)? What where the dependent variable(s)?
3. This article includes three different studies. In this case, what are the advantages to answering the research question using multiple methods?
4. On what basis did the authors conclude, "our studies suggest that the affective benefits of negative expectations may be more elusive than their costs" (p. 280)?
5. Evaluate the external validity of the two experiments and one field study that Golub, Gilbert, and Wilson (2009) conducted.
6. How good was the internal validity?