Remembering past failures can set you up for present failure.

So, you’re looking forward to that final exam. Trouble is, you didn’t do so well on the mid-term – and now you’re worried sick you’ll fail the final. To avoid a repeat performance, you ready yourself by studying all night, losing precious sleep time in the process. Then, the final exam, and true to your expectation, you fail and have to take the term all over again!

If researchers are correct, your perception of this term’s math tests will be overly negative because you expect to retake the course (and the tests).

According to a study on perception, researchers discovered what seems intuitive to me – that if you have a negative experience and expect to repeat it, you’ll perceive the past and future events even more negatively than had you been done with the experience the first time (in other words, not expecting it to repeat it in the future).

That negative perception can strengthen you against future negative experiences or set you up for far worse due to the power of expectation. In general, what you expect tends to come to pass. So, expecting a future event to be very negative tends to set it up to meet your expectations. Having endured a negative experience with the expectation of more of the same seems to me a perfect setup for an even more negative outcome.

This could explain why fears of future events can be more intense even in the face of overwhelming evidence in support of a positive experience in the future. Our natural proclivity is to exaggerate current negative perceptions when referencing the future; and to exaggerate negative perceptions of past events when considering similar events in the present.

It seems to me the solution to perceptions of intense fear or pain is to deal with your current and past as one – holistically. Then investigate ways to reconsider the intensity of negative perceptions in light of this thinking error – that the negative aspects of an experience are the same regardless of whether or not the event will occur again. Just knowing that the intensity of your negative perceptions may be exaggerated can set you up with a new expectation – and maybe a whole lot less stress.

Next term, take the math class again. This time, pretend it is the first time you’ve taken it – but that you are a whole lot smarter. Notice how many things you seem to just “remember” – and how easy the tests are. “I know this stuff” feels better than “Oh, no! Not this again!”

I’m just sayin’…

Study reference:

“The Pain Was Greater If It Will Happen Again: The Effect of Anticipated Continuation on Retrospective Discomfort,” Jeff Galak, PhD, Carnegie Mellon University, and Tom Meyvis, PhD, New York University; Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Vol. 140, No. 1.