Participation in a priming task predicts persistence

Though previously considered to be a relatively stable factor, emerging research suggests that optimism may be manipulated. Since research suggests a link between optimism and task persistence, the manipulation of optimism may result in greater task persistence. This paper describes two experiments. In both experiments, researchers examined whether participants primed for optimism persisted longer on a difficult anagram-solving task than did participants who were not primed for optimism. Experiment 1 used a future thinking task to prime optimism, whereas Experiment 2 used a scrambled sentences task to prime optimism. Results suggested a trend for participants primed for optimism to persist longer on the anagram-solving task Though these experiments were limited by small sample sizes, trends in the data suggest a relationship between the priming of optimism and task persistence.