swimming {WRS2}

Optimistic and Pessimistic Swimmers

Description

At a swimming team practice, all participants were asked to swim their best event as far as possible, but in each case the time that was reported was falsified to indicate poorer than expected performance (i.e., each swimmer was disappointed). 30 min later, they did the same performance. The authors predicted that on the second trial more pessimistic swimmers would do worse than on their first trial, whereas optimistic swimmers would do better. The response is ratio = Time1/Time2 (> 1 means that a swimmer did better in trial 2).

Usage

swimming

Format

A data frame with 4 variables and 58 observations:

Optim

Optimists and pessimists

Sex

Gender of the swimmer

Event

Swimming event: freestyle, breaststroke, backstroke

Ratio

Ratio between the swimming times

References

Seligman, M. E. P., Nolen-Hoeksema, S., Thornton, N., & Thornton, C. M. (1990). Explanatory style as a mechanism of disappointing athletic performance. Psychological Science, 1, 143-146.

Examples

summary(swimming)