Greener grass or sour grapes? How people value future goals after initial failure

Across six experiments (N = 1304), people dealt with failure by dismissing the value of future goals. Participants were randomly assigned to receive good or poor feedback on a practice trial of a cognitive test (Studies 1–3, 5–6) or their academic performance (Study 4). Those who received poor (vs. good) feedback predicted that they would feel less happy about a future top performance. However, when all participants received a top score on the...