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 It is often assumed that optimism is likely to have a positive impact on performance – but have you ever wondered how much does it really help? 
 
 According to a study by Elizabeth Tenney, assistant professor of management at the David Eccles School of Business, “optimism seems to help persistence but not necessarily performance as much as people would expect,” she said. 
 
 In the study, Tenney put a group of participants through two different tests – a math test and to hunt for Waldo in “Where’s Waldo”. 
 
 She found that in the math test, making participants optimistic by telling them that they would do great did not help much with their performance. 
 
 In fact, optimistic participants did equally well as those who weren’t optimistic. 
 
 “So it seems like optimism wasn’t super helpful for performance on a math test, at least when we tried to give it to people as opposed to it occurring naturally,” Tenney concluded. 
 
 In the second test, she found that the participants who were told that they have good Waldo-finding abilities searched for Waldo longer than those who were told they were not as good. 
 
 “I think eventually they probably would have found him more, but basically what we concluded from that was that optimism seems to help persistence but not necessarily performance as much as people would expect.” 
 
 However, this does not mean that optimism is completely useless. Tenney pointed out optimism could still be helpful – especially for leaders or managers and for entrepreneurs. 
 
 “If it’s time for deliberation then the followers would really value accurate input and advice, but when they need motivation because now it’s time to move, they will value positivity and optimism from their leader.” 
 
 “But how much that optimism actually ends up helping you well that’s another question.” 
 
 Image: Shutterstock 

 We’ve all been told to whistle while we work because a cheerful, hopeful worker is better at a job than one who isn’t. But is that really true? 
 
 Elizabeth Tenney, assistant professor of management at the University of Utah David Eccles School of Business, explored the subject in the paper she co-authored, “(Too) Optimistic About Optimism: The Belief that Optimism Improves Performance” in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 
 
 “I am interested in the question of when do people value optimism and think it is a really useful or good mindset for people to have, and when do they think that other mindsets might be better,” Tenney said. “I kept hearing about how optimistic mindset was so great, but then you think about all the times that striving for accuracy might be better for the individual.” 
 
 In the end, her study found that optimism didn’t help a person’s performance as much as people thought it would. 
 
 However, Tenney speculates that there are two places where others would value optimism. The first would be in a situation where business executives or leaders needed to motivate their employees. 
 
 The second situation would be when a business leader or entrepreneur needed to win someone over to a new idea or to invest in a new company. 
 
 “People are going to think that you need that optimism in order to perform, and they will expect your optimism and value it, but how much that optimism actually ends up helping you, well that’s another question,” Tenney said. 
 
 Listen to a podcast of Tenney discussing her findings here: eccles.link/optimism. 

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– A new study delivers a somewhat depressing message: Positive thinking may not be all it's cracked up to be. "I kept hearing about how optimistic mindset was so great, but then you think about all the times that striving for accuracy might be better for the individual," researcher Elizabeth Tenney says in a press release and podcast from the University of Utah. She offers the example of a person standing at a crevasse: "Do you really want that person to be optimistic about their chances of making it over this crevasse, or do you want them to be accurate about their chances?" To reach her conclusions, she conducted multiple experiments in which "predictor" subjects were charged with guessing how well "task completer" subjects would do on a given project. The predictors were convinced that the more optimistic task completers would do better than others, but the results didn't bear that out, BPS Research Digest reports. In one case, task completers were asked to do some Where's Waldo? searches, Tenney says in the podcast. Predictors figured optimistic task completers would do 33% better at the work, BPS notes. In fact, the optimistic participants did spend longer trying to find the character—but they only performed 5% better than others, and that wasn't statistically significant. "What we concluded from that was that optimism seems to help persistence, but not necessarily performance as much as people would expect," Tenney says in the podcast, as HumanResourcesOnline.net notes. (If optimism doesn't get you ahead, at least it may be good for your heart.)