ONE MLM

  The ‘sour-grape effect’ Let’s first examine  the sour-grape effect , discovered by Hallgeir Sjåstad, a professor of psychology and leadership at the Norwegian School of Economics, and colleagues. He says he was intrigued by people’s tendency to abandon their dreams prematurely. “The research was an attempt to understand why we sometimes give up too early, even though we could have succeeded if we had been a bit more patient and willing to give it a second try,” he says.  In his first experiment, Sjåstad asked participants to take a practice trial of a test said to measure the precision of their intuition. They were asked to estimate how much 20 apples would weigh, for example – and they were told that a guess falling within 10% of the real answer would be considered a sign of strong intuition. High performance on several questions, they were told, correlated strongly to “positive outcomes in life, such as extraordinary achievements in work and a well-functioning social ...

  Many of us make mistakes on endless repeat – but new insights can help us to learn valuable lessons from our failures. I In today’s motivational literature, failure is often viewed as something to be celebrated. Disappointments are an essential stepping stone to success; a turning point in our life story that will ultimately end in triumph. Rather than falling into despair, we are encouraged to “ fail forward ”. If only it were so simple. In the past decade, a wealth of psychological research has shown that most people struggle to handle failure constructively. Instead, we find ways to devalue the task at which we failed, meaning that we may be less motivated to persevere and reach our goal. This phenomenon is known as the “sour-grape effect”. Alternatively, we may simply fail to notice our errors and blithely continue as if nothing has happened, something that prevents us from learning a better strategy to improve our performance in the future. Inspirational speakers are fond of...