RESEARCH METHODOLOGY IN EDUCATION

 Research Methodology books in Education 

DEFENSIVE PESSIMISM: A COVER FOR SELF-PROTECTION

 

DEFENSIVE PESSIMISM: A COVER FOR SELF-PROTECTION

In day to day life, few people dare to admit and acknowledge their mistakes when they encounter failures. Rather, most of the people love playing the “Blame” game. They would try ways and means to excuse themselves and without any hesitation they would say: “It’s not my fault.” But when they encountered success, they would take pride in telling the world: “It’s all my sole efforts.” So, different persons construct different strategies to declare their innocence in protecting their own ego.

Nancy Cantor coined the term “Defensive pessimism”. This term refers to the strategy of the mind in which people termed as Defensive Pessimists set unrealistically low expectations for themselves and their performance ability. This setting of low expectations is done specifically before engaging in any risky situation with the intention of preparing themselves for the “potential failure” and thus intrinsically get themselves motivated for hard-work, so that failure can be escaped. In every defensive pessimist, burns a strong desire for success and fear of failure. They cannot dream of tarnishing and eroding away their own self-esteem by failure. They are thus always haunted by anxiety and nervousness before entering any risky situation, say academic exams. But what is interesting to know about them is this: anxiety is being used by them as the motivating factor pushing them to work hard (Guth, 2018) and thus achieve higher than the level they have set for themselves. In this way, they are protecting their own self-esteem from social defamation.

Defensive Pessimism is a “cognitive strategy”: a strategy which narrates how people dispose themselves in order to get their goals or their tasks in life fulfilled (Norem, 1989). It gives a description of what the individual is expecting, appraising, planning as he pursues his intended goal (Norem, 1989). It is due to the existence of the goals formulated that the strategies are simultaneously developed. Thus the same individual may use different strategies as he strives towards achieving his goal. This implies that an individual in one situation may resort to the use of defensive pessimism, in another situation he may use strategic optimism, and some other strategy in a third.

Goals direct one’s attention and action and lead to higher performance (Guth, 2018). That is the reason why goals are set. Time and again, children are being asked by their teachers to discover their aim in life (goal). This is done to make them understand that having an aim in life is a must for achieving improvement at every stage of their life. Setting a goal is also a prerequisite for success and higher performance till the goal is reached. Thus, the higher the goal set, the higher will be the performance (Guth, 2018).  Of course, we cannot deny the fact that the Defensive Pessimists do also set goals for themselves. But what differentiates them from others is this: They set very low goals, low expectations, and low performance levels for themselves (Guth, 2018).  For the Defensive Pessimists, setting low expectations is done with the motive of avoiding failure rather than aiming for success (Guth, 2018). They cannot think of plunging themselves into the ocean of failure. They cannot think of losing or distorting their image by failure. They are rather anxious and nervous all the time because they fear failure (Norem & Cantor, 1986). Ironically, they use failure to motivate themselves to attain goals that are much higher than those they have set for themselves (Parra, 2009).

            Defensive pessimists harness anxiety to motivate them to achieve higher (Parra, 2009). These people might have not failed in their life. Rather, their past was full of success and high achievements (Eliot, 2003). They might have even performed better than the optimists. But whenever they are entering any risky situation, say an upcoming exam, they would be always be nervous and anxious and repeatedly insist that they are going to fail. They hold firmly to the conviction that they are sure to perform poorly in that upcoming event. Any sort of encouragement and reinforcement from their friends will only lead them to experience more anxiety and confusion. None of what their friends say or do, can give them the conviction that things will not happen the way they expect.

Having anxiety is a must for the Defensive Pessimists because it motivates them to perform better in their tasks (Guth, 2018; Parra, 2009). In other words, anxiety boosts their performance. If the ‘anxiety’ element is absent, it is quite sure that they will not be able to do well in the upcoming task. Rather their performance will for sure suffer. Thus, before undertaking any task, they will brood over their performance and foresee themselves encountering with failure. In this way, a feeling of anxiety is developed. They will repeatedly say to themselves: “I am afraid……I will fail in this task”. Thus, they will use this feeling of anxiety as a motivating factor and will resultantly make plans and strategies to avoid confronting with failures (Guth, 2018; Parra, 2009). This is concretely done by setting low targets for themselves, targets that are easily achievable.

Everyone, in one way or the other, experiences anxiety in his life. This particularly happens when he is dealing with a situation that involves a lot of risk and sacrifice. Anxiety is generally believed to disrupt the performance (Wong, 2013), unless it is well managed and skillfully coped with. According to Eysenck and Calvo (1992), anxiety often weakens performance especially under test conditions. A highly-anxious person has the tendency to perform poorly than the one with low test anxiety. For Wine (1971), the difference between a person who has high level of anxiety and one whose level of anxiety is low is marked by the loss of focus in the task at hand. But the defensive pessimists utilize anxiety as a means to motivate themselves in preparation for examinations (Norem & Cantor, 1986).

Thus we see that anxiety plays a very important role in the life of the defensive pessimists. Without anxiety, it might be impossible for the defensive pessimists to perform better in their tasks. It on account of this anxiety that at times they are able to outperform the optimists. For the optimists, anxiety might be a disturbing and unpleasant factor which may thwart their progress towards the achievement of the goal. Thus they would try different ways and means how to cope with the anxiety and stress. But for the defensive pessimists, anxiety is a necessity. It is motivating factor for better performance and so they use it to their advantage.  If the defensive pessimists are able to protect their self-worth and preserve their image from getting distorted, it is all because of the anxiety. This element of anxiety motivates them for hard work and helps them to avoid failure.

 

REFERENCES:

 

Eliot, Andrew J. (2003). “A Motivational Analysis of Defensive Pessimism and Self-Handicapping”. Journey of Personality. 71(3), 370 – 396.

Eysenck, W. Michael & Calvo, Manuel G. (1992) “Anxiety and Performance: The Processing Efficiency Theory”. Cognition and Emotion. 6(6), 409 - 434.

Guth, E. A. (2018). “Defensive Pessimism and Goal Setting”. College of Science and Health Theses and Dissertations. 265.

Norem, J.K. & Cantor, N. (1986) “Defensive Pessimism: Harnessing anxiety as motivation”. Journal of Personality and social Psychology. Vol. 51, No. 6, 1208 – 1217.

Norem, J.K. & Cantor, N. (1989) “Defensive Pessimism and Stress and Coping”. Social Cognition. Vol. 7, No. 2, 1989, 92-112.

Parra, E. L. (2009). “The Effect of Encouragement on Defensive Pessimism as an Anxiety Amplifier”. Social and Personality Psychology.

Wong, I.Y. “The Impact of Anxiety on Processing Efficiency: Implications for the Attentional Control Theory.” The Open Behavioural Science Journal. 7(6), 7 – 15.

 

 

 

MUSIC SPEEDS UP LEARNING ABILITY

 

             MUSIC SPEEDS UP LEARNING ABILITY

                Music speaks. The language spoken by Music is symbolic. It has the power to play with the emotions of many people, if not all. It can make them feel happy or sad. A sad music will evoke tears and a feeling of sadness in the listeners.

                Music, be it instrumental or vocal not only has the power to influence people’s heart. But it also has the power to influence the learning abilities of the learners. In the pre-primary classes, nursery rhymes are taught to the small ones. It will be found out that those rhymes when taught to be sung will help the small ones to have a better retention power of those rhymes and thus can improve further at a faster rate to the higher level. So singing those rhymes is a better way of rote learning.

                It would also be shocking to find that those students who complained of having weak memory power, would be able to reproduce from their memory the school anthem and many more songs without looking at the diary or the lyrics of the song.  This manifests the power of music upon their memory power. I personally even have the feeling that if all the lessons delivered in classes are taught to be sung, then maybe only the few or none of the students would complain of having weak memory power. Again, Music has got the power to refresh a person’s mind. Any person, who is tensed due to overthinking or over-concentration in any activity, will find his mind fresh when he turns to listening music, or singing songs or playing musical instruments. I even have experienced myself that while practicing mathematical calculations during my secondary classes, whenever music is played on, I have the feeling my mental ability is honed and I can do the task better.

                I therefore come to the conclusion that music does not obstruct learning. Rather it helps learning, and it speeds up the learning ability. I have not heard of any person so far who talks of having a feeling of disgust for music. If he does not find favour with one kind of music, then he will love another kind. Thus, music helps and complements learning.

LEARN "PARTS OF SPEECH" EASILY

 PARTS OF SPEECH 

If you have read many of the books on English Grammar, you will find that many of them agree on the point that there are eight parts of Speech in English Grammar. These are:

Noun, Pronoun, Adjective, Verb, Adverb, Preposition, Conjunction and Interjection.

Let us learn them one by one:

1. NOUN: By Noun, we simply mean a Name. It can be the names of persons, animals, places, things or states.  The easiest way to know what a Noun means is to keep in mind that the word Noun starts with the alphabet 'N' and the word Name also starts with the 'N' alphabet. So Noun stands for Name. Pen, Desk, House, Henry, Alexander, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, cow, tiger, happiness, sorrow, man, children, students are some of the many examples of Noun.

2. PRONOUN: To learn Pronoun easily, we break the word into two: 'Pro' and 'Noun'. 'Pro' means for. So Pronoun literally means 'For the Noun'. In other words, Pronoun means a word which stands for the Noun, a word which replaces the Noun, a word which supports the Noun.

Let us take one example to understand better about Pronoun:

“Henry is a boy of sixteen. Henry loves playing football. Henry studies in Class 10. Henry has fears for Henry’s father. Henry thus never dares to disobey Henry’s father. But Henry is close to Henry’s mother.”

If we read the above example, we will feel bored due to repetition of the word HENRY. But if we think of omitting away the word HENRY, that is not going to provide the solution. We will rather render the sentences meaningless. Let us omit the word HENRY to see if it provides the desired solution.

“Henry is a boy of sixteen…. loves playing football….. studies in Class 10…. has fears for……  father….. thus never dares to disobey …. father. But …..is close to …… mother.”

We thus see that the whole thing has been rendered useless by the omission of the Noun ‘Henry’. We thus have another but best solution. That is, to replace the undesirable Nouns with corresponding Pronouns.

“Henry is a boy of sixteen. He loves playing football. He studies in Class 10. He has fears for his father. He thus never dares to disobey his father. But he is close to his mother.”

3. ADJECTIVE: Examining this word, we can see that it contains the word 'Ad' which brings to our mind the word 'ADD'. This gives us an idea that it is a word which adds something to something. So in simple words we can say that Adjective is a word which adds something new to the Noun or Pronoun. It is a word which qualifies a Noun or a Pronoun.

 For instance, if we say: HARRY IS A BOY, it is mere tautology. it does not give us any new meaning. But if we say: HARRY IS AN INTELLIGENT BOY, then we come to know something new about Harry, that he is an intelligent boy. The word 'INTELLIGENT' adds something new to the Noun Harry.

Let us take another example: “Bombay is a city” gives us no new information. But if we say: “Bombay is a crowded city”, the word Crowded strikes our mind and we come to know that Bombay is more than a city. It is a crowded city.

4. VERB: Verb deals with Action of a Noun or Pronoun. The easiest way to remember the meaning of a Verb is that VERB means ACTION. The action can be of different kinds: commission and omission, loving, hating, sleeping, thinking, imagining, dreaming, etc.

In this example: HARRY KILLS THE SNAKE, the word KILLS is a Verb because it denotes the action of a Noun or Pronoun. It usually comes after the Noun or Pronoun. In the above example, ‘kills’ is the Verb and it comes after the Noun ‘Harry’.

5. ADVERB: This word can be easily learnt and remembered by breaking it into two parts: AD + VERB. Or it is adding something new to the Verb. For instance, if we say THE BIRD FLIES IN THE AIR, the verb FLIES only tells us about the action of the Bird and nothing more is told about the action, But if we say, THE BIRD FLIES SWIFTLY IN THE AIR, then we come to know in what manner is the bird flying. “The girl is prettily  dressed.” In this example, the word “prettily” is an adverb. It adds more to the Verb “Dressed”.

6. PREPOSITION: We can break this word into two parts: PRE meaning Before and POSITION meaning Place. So literally it means a word placed before a Noun or Pronoun in order to bring a relation between this Noun/Pronoun and the antecedent Noun or Pronoun.

For example: THE CAT IS LYING ON THE ROOF. Here the word 'ON' brings a relation between THE ROOF and THE CAT. Another example can be: “The dog jumps into the pond”. Here the word “into” is a preposition which comes after the Noun “pond”. It brings a relation between the pond and the dog.

7. CONJUNCTION: The word Conjunct means joined together, combined or associated. So a Conjunction is a joining word. A Conjunction may join two words, nouns, sentences, etc.

For example: HARRY AND HENRY ARE BROTHERS. The word AND functions as a joining word between Henry and Harry. Another example: they found the boy, but he was very weak. Here the word “But” is conjunction because it connects between two adversative sentences: ‘they found the boy’ and ‘he was very weak’.

8. INTERJECTION. An Interjection is a word which is used to express strong feeling or sudden emotion. It expresses a sentiment such as surprise, disgust, joy, excitement, enthusiasm, love, hate, happiness, anger, boredom, confusion, or unhappiness.  We use words such as Aha,  Wow, Hurrah, Eew, Gosh, Goodness, Ohh, Ouch, Oh no, Yup, Excuse me, etc. to express our sudden and strong feelings or emotions.

 

For instance: 

Hey! Get off that floor! 

Good! Now we can move on. 

Ohh gosh! I can't believe how late it is. 

In the above examples, the word “Hey, Good, Ohh Gosh” are interjection words.

Refences:

1.       https://www.grammar-monster.com/lessons/interjections.htm

2.       https://grammar.yourdictionary.com/parts-of-speech/interjections/what-is-an-interjection.html

3.       Holy Faith: Essential English Grammar and composition, Peechaat, James Thomas, Holy Faith International Ltd. 1984.