More happiness and gratitude: emotional responses to exam failure depend on perseverance and social comparison

Negative emotions following failure often lead to goal disengagement and have been a major focus of previous research. However, there has been limited research on how to enhance individuals’ positive emotions following academic failure to promote their pursuit of goals. Two studies were conducted to address this issue. In Study 1, we used a 2 social comparison × 2 perseverance group to explore whether different levels of perseverance and various social comparison targets influenced happiness and gratitude after an anticipated exam failure. The results showed that participants exhibited lower levels of gratitude when comparing themselves to others than when no comparisons were made. However, social comparison did not affect happiness. Furthermore, individuals with high levels of perseverance reported experiencing greater happiness when their friends succeeded than when strangers succeeded. Study 2 extended this investigation to both contexts of anticipated and actual exam failures. The results for happiness were consistent with Study 1. In addition, individuals with high levels of perseverance expressed higher levels of gratitude following an actual exam failure when strangers succeeded than when their friends succeeded. These findings indicated that emotional responses to exam failure are influenced by both the target of comparison and individual traits during the social comparison process.