Help me find a pop-psych book on Confidence by the vaguest hints?

August 26, 2023 10:57 PM

I read a pop-psych-slash-self-help book that covered additions to a previous body of research. The next wave identified two key factors to (confidence? Success?). The author was the one that conducted this research.

Read this title in the last few years but it totally escapes me what those two points were, or the title, or broader content.

The book was a bit of a self-congratulatory mess by the author about his own work, but otherwise there were some solid outcomes regarding the research he'd done. It was related to either confidence or happiness, and essentially he revisited older / earlier work on a subject that had been considered exhausted.

It had clinical or laboratory behavioral testing at it's core - either people or rats, and he had a consistent or close partner in research.

I seem to be a fairweather friend to MeFi when I'm searching lost books but you're also amazing at it so thank you!

posted by muppetkarma to Science & Nature (3 answers total)

Best answer: Does anything on this list of books by Martin Seligman ring a bell? Perhaps Flourish is the book you’re thinking of?
posted by MonkeyToes at 10:21 AM on August 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

P.S. From the review attached to that list: “Seligman, a psychology professor at the University of Pennsylvania and the guru of the "positive psychology" movement, abandons his previous emphasis on happiness, which he now views as simplistic, to examine how individuals might achieve a richer, multilayered goal: a life of well-being. He identifies four factors that can help individuals thrive: positive emotion, engagement with what one is doing, a sense of accomplishment, and good relationships. …But Seligman includes too much on the mechanics of conducting his studies. Also, he can be self-congratulatory regarding his own theory…”
posted by MonkeyToes at 11:21 AM on August 27, 2023 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you MonkeyToes, spot on! It was "Learned Optimism" and the key factor was "Explanatory Style", being whether people attribute setbacks and negative experiences as either "Permanent" or "Temporary".

Weiner had an idea why it didn't work with people: Those people who
thought the cause of extinction was permanent (who concluded, for ex-
ample, "The experimenter has decided not to reward me anymore") would
give up right away, while those who thought the cause was temporary
("There's a short circuit in this damned equipment") would keep on going,
because they thought the situation might change and the reward would
resume. When Weiner performed this experiment, he found just the results
he predicted. It was the explanations people made, and not the schedule
of reinforcement they'd been on, which determined their susceptibility to
PREE. Attribution theory went on to postulate that human behavior is
controlled not just by the "schedule of reinforcement" in the environment
but by an internal mental state, the explanations people make for why the
environment has scheduled their reinforcements in this way.

Aligned on the reviews - I gave up on Learned Optimism (the book, but eventually the habit as well I suppose, badum-tish) due to the laborious detail and self-congratulatory tone. Certain kind or hubris to point at old scientific research with a call of "ignorant rubes!" and not assume the same will be done to your works someday.
posted by muppetkarma at 3:48 PM on August 27, 2023