A Verdict or a Data Point
An application is turned down. By evening the thought has chosen a reading. Three readings are common, and none of them needs words to be there. KTT counts them as thoughts, noticed or not, even when they arrive as a sinking feeling. Research gives them other names, and the studies read for this article did not test whether a thought comes first.
| The thought says | What the studies read here say |
|---|---|
| “This proves what I am.” | A 2018 meta-analysis of 273 results found only a weak link between mindset (whether ability is seen as fixed or able to grow) and school achievement, and a small effect of mindset interventions. A later review with stricter rules found such effects not significant. |
| “This shows what to change.” | In a 2001 study, Japanese participants persisted longer on a task after failure than after success, and North Americans did the reverse. The researchers suggested that failure is more often read as a chance to improve in Japan. |
| “Being hard on myself is what makes me improve.” | In four experiments from 2012, people who responded to a personal failure with self-compassion reported more motivation to improve than people in comparison conditions. |
The first thought
The first thought is the verdict. It turns one result into a fact about the person. It is the most argued of the three. Whether it matters, and how, is still disputed, because the mindset findings are weak and contested.
The second and third
The second thought treats the failure as data. It comes from one laboratory study of one kind of task. The third thought treats harshness as the engine. The experiments that tested its opposite used undergraduate students, and they measured motivation, not later results. The authors called the finding a paradox: an accepting approach to failure may make people more motivated to improve.
What is not known
Whether the thought comes before the sinking feeling or after it is not known. The studies read here did not test it.
Whether the three readings differ across cultures is open. The Japanese finding comes from one study of persistence, and the self-compassion work is mostly with students in North America.
Whether changing a thought about failure changes later results is also open.