Disentangling the effects of optimism and attributions on feelings of success

• We disentangled the effects of dispositional optimism and attributions on affect.
• We measured feelings of success relating to success at three tasks.
• In a convenience sample internal attribution predicted greater feelings of success.
• An extreme groups design showed affective benefits of pessimism.
• Effects depend on the characteristics of the examined samples.

Two experiments examined the effects of dispositional optimism and attributions on feelings of success in a performance setting. In Experiment 1, participants successfully solved three cognitive tasks and attributed the success either internally (i.e., to themselves) or externally (i.e., to a teammate). We found no effect of optimism, but a significant effect of the attribution: Internal attribution predicted an increase in feelings of success. In Experiment 2, we replicated the design and adopted an extreme groups approach in order to include the extremes of the optimism dimension. Only optimism affected feelings of success in this sample: Pessimistic participants showed higher increases in feelings of success than optimistic participants. We conclude that optimism, if disentangled from attribution, may have an effect on affect, with pessimism showing potential affective benefits. However, this association may be concealed if samples with a restricted range of the optimism dimension are studied.