Writing

Jennifer Henderlong Corpus, a professor of psychology at Reed College, specializes in developmental psychology and academic motivation. She directs the college’s Children’s Motivation Project, which works with children from preschool to adolescence to learn what motivates them to learn. Failure, she thinks, cannot be understood without considering its relationship with and effect on other concepts, such as goal setting, praise, and motivation.

_What is failure? _

True failure is hard to define. It is the feeling that we have not met goals—when we haven’t done what we wanted to do or done what we considered acceptable. Whether an individual feels that she’s failed is based on her standards, whether she’s adopting those standards of the society or her internal standards.

_Is one type of goal-setting standard more important than another? _

In general, it matters whether a goal is self-set or externally imposed. A lot of literature suggests that internal goals or activities are more beneficial in a number of ways than the ones that externally imposed. Internal goals demonstrate our need for autonomous expression. Intrinsic motives are generally associated with well-being. Failing one of those goals is perhaps more detrimental for some individuals. In other cases, an extrinsic goal becomes internalized, and it’s all they care about. I’d imagine that the experience of failure depends on where you stand. Do you focus more on internally set standards or are you keyed into these external constraints?

_Is there a strong relationship between the goals we set and failure? _

Yes. That seems to be what failure is—feeling like you didn’t do something you wanted to do, or you didn’t do something you would have been able to do, or you didn’t reach your potential. There’s some disconnect between what you think would have ideally happened and what actually happened. Whether the goal is explicitly set and can be articulated cognitively or not seems slightly less relevant. There probably has to be some role of the self in that. That is to say, you want to win the lottery, and you don’t. I wouldn’t put that in the same category. Your behavior has no impact on the outcome.

I would say the same thing if you have an evaluator who you know to be biased. Say you’re African American and you know this evaluator is biased against African Americans. I don’t know that you would experience failure. You would attribute it to this biased person, rather than to something for which you were culpable. If you didn’t have that attribution, you would think you failed because you didn’t do good work. Failure would be experienced to a greater degree if you feel like the outcome is due to something about yourself.
What are the short-term and long-term consequences of failing?

The consequences are determined largely by why we think the failure happened. If we think we failed because we’re African American and have a biased evaluator, who knows how much failure we might experience. But we might decide to stop being in places with people like that, or take social action to change the policies. Your behavior would be different if you thought you failed because of some controllable thing. Like you did not do as well on a test. Then you’ll probably redouble your efforts, which is something you can control in the future.

_What if you fail at meeting an intrinsic goal? _

You’re much more likely to feel shameful, despair, or give up. The thing that incites positive change is when you feel some control, even though that makes you feel more responsible and can make you feel more guilt. For example, if I failed an important test because I didn’t study, I might have an emotional hit that might be different from that external place. There is an emotional cost, but it tends to spur you toward positive behavior change if you believe it’s something that you can change.

If it is something that is not changeable, then you have the emotional hit and no benefit. You think “I’m bad” and that you might as well just give up. A lot of research suggests that in situations that are negative, even if it’s not the person’s fault … seizing control of that situation and figuring out what you can do differently helps emotional coping down the line.

If we fail at meeting a goal set intrinsically, are those goals and values something we can change? Or are they integral to who we are?

That’s a hard one. Those are failures that we feel are due to controllable causes. But that is different for every person. Some people are going to say they lack the ability to study well. People make all different kinds of attributions. That gets into attribution theory.

What is that?

Behavior happens—good, bad, whatever. How we explain that outcome has implications for how we cope and deal with it in the future. How we attribute causes to things determines our future behavior, emotions, and persistence. From an educator’s perspective, the question is how do you get people to attribute failures to things that are controllable, changeable, or malleable? It’s helpful to have failures happen in a context where somebody is there to help shape the attribution. Say someone does poorly on a test. You have someone who says, “I don’t think you used the right strategy” or “That process wasn’t the right process.” And by extension, when people do well, you want to encourage process-oriented thinking and not just give praise.

It seems that a person’s past life experiences and the environment they’re in is important to how they think of failure.

All those factors, and also why you think you’re failing. Some people might think their [teacher] is someone who doesn’t know what they’re doing. A lot of things are going into it. It’s miserable to be stuck in a situation where your performance is uncontrollable.

_If we are not praised but did not fail, would we feel like we did, in fact, fail? _

That depends on the person and his or her history of praise and reinforcement. Constantly receiving praise for very minor things can lead a person to feel he or she failed when there is an absence of praise. The trick is to communicate. It’s best to get out of that praise rut and figure out what is it about the work that was strong. Then you focus on the process rather than being the evaluator that doles out feedback. Because when [the feedback] is gone, people may feel this sense of failure.
_
Is the distinction between process versus the evaluation a distinction between actions versus words? _

You pull off the judgment in evaluation. It can focus on how the person got to that point, or what he or she was thinking. You’re trying to put less weight on the outcome, and a little more weight on everything that led up to that. It’s not to devalue the product, but to teach the emphasis of those underlying things. It’s the self-discovery along the way, like, “I don’t learn well from flashcards.” That will be beneficial in the future, even though this particular test didn’t go well.

So failing can help us grow as individuals?

Right. Research shows that if you take kids who are failing miserably in school and give them a bunch of successful experiences, they keep on failing when they go back to their regular classrooms. Maybe they lack some skills or don’t know how to persist. But if you take the equivalent, add some success, yet purposefully rig it so they fail, you teach these kids how people cope with failure. Then they do much better in a classroom.

_How do we cope with failure? _

Some people give up. Some people feel terrible about themselves, which has costs to their self-worth. Some people decide to take chances. The right answer is not always “try harder and keep doing what you’re doing.” Failure can be an important marker to say that maybe you need to redirect your efforts. We value persistence in our culture, but blind persistence is not always the best thing.

In such cases, people will tell us, “Well, you failed.” But the person would need to have the confidence to say, “No, I’m doing something more in line with my talents.”

That is why it’s hard for people to change course. When you’ve gone down a certain path, it’s hard to reconstruct your identity. It depends on how keyed you are in societal rules, norms, and values. To some people, it would bother them a lot, and others would say that wasn’t their thing. You would have to shore up inner resources and feel like you’re making the right decision.

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Contributors

Eric Gold

Eric Gold is a freelance writer in Portland and regular contributor to Oregon Humanities.

Kristy Athens

Kristy Athens’ nonfiction and short fiction have been published in a number of magazines, newspapers, and literary journals, most recently High Desert Journal, Eclectic Flash, Diverse Voices Quarterly, and Five Fishes Journal.

Rich Wandschneider

Rich Wandschneider was the founding director of Fishtrap, a literary nonprofit in eastern Oregon, and is now building the Alvin Josephy Library of Western History and Culture at Fishtrap. He writes a regular newspaper column and has written for the Oregonian, High Desert Journal, High Country News, and others. He is on the editorial advisory board of this magazine and on the board of directors for Oregon Humanities.

Ellen Santasiero

Ellen Santasiero is a freelance writer whose work has appeared in Northwest Review, The Sun, Marlboro Review, Oregon Humanities, and in a recent anthology from the University of Oklahoma Press. She is at work on a memoir.

Caroline Cummins

Caroline Cummins is the managing editor of Culinate.com.

Jedidiah Chavez

Jedidiah Chavez is a visual artist and writer based in Portland. His work has been showcased in a variety of venues nationally and in the Pacific Northwest. Chavez was awarded a 2010 project grant by the Regional Arts and Culture Council.

Kristin Kaye

Kristin Kaye is a Portland-based writer. Her book, Iron Maidens, was an Oregon Book Awards finalist. She has recently completed her novel To Catch What Falls.

Lucy Burningham

Lucy Burningham is an independent writer and journalist who lives in Portland. She holds a master’s degree in nonfiction writing from Portland State University.

Eric Gold

Eric Gold is a freelance writer in Portland and former communications assistant at Oregon Humanities.

Sarah Gilbert

Sarah Gilbert is writing a book about mothers looking for emotional healing in food. In February, she decided to begin homeschooling her eldest son.

Courtney S. Campbell

Courtney S. Campbell is the Hundere Professor of Religion and Culture at Oregon State University. You can try friending him through his Facebook page.

Barry Johnson

Barry Johnson has written about the arts since 1978 when he started writing about dance for the now-defunct Seattle Sun. He has edited arts sections at Willamette Week and The Oregonian, where he recently finished a twenty-six-year stint. You can find his up-to-the-minute thoughts on the arts at http://artsdispatch.blogspot.com.

Dionisia Morales

Dionisia Morales is a freelance writer and teaches writing at Linn-Benton Community College. Her essays have recently appeared or are forthcoming in CAYLX, Brevity, Cream City Review, and Silk Road.

Wendy Willis

Wendy Willis is a poet, Conversation Project leader, and the executive director of the Policy Consensus Initiative and the deputy director for Research and Development at the National Policy Consensus Center at Portland State University. Her book of poems, Blood Sisters of the Republic, is forthcoming from Press 53 in fall 2012.

Carl Abbott

Carl Abbott is professor of urban studies and planning at Portland State University. A specialist on the history of cities, his recent books include Frontiers Past and Future: Science Fiction and the American West and Portland in Three Centuries: The Place and the People.

Monica Drake

Monica Drake is the author of Clown Girl (Hawthorne Books),which was optioned for film by Kristen Wiig. Her next novel, The Stud Book, is forthcoming from Hogarth Press in February 2013.

Tara Rae Miner

Tara Rae Miner is a writer and freelance writer and editor, former managing editor of Orion magazine, and author of Your Green Abode: A Practical Guide to a Sustainable Home. She lives with her family in Portland.

John Holloran

John Holloran lives in Portland and teaches at Oregon Episcopal School. His last essay for Oregon Humanities was “After the Fall” (Spring 2011).

Rebecca Hartman

Rebecca Hartman is an associate professor of history at Eastern Oregon University. She received her PhD in history from Rutgers University in 2004. Her current research is focused on twentieth-century U.S. rural history.

Dmae Roberts

Dmae Roberts is an award-winning independent radio producer and writer based in Portland.

Jennifer Ruth

Jennifer Ruth is a professor of English literature at Portland State University and the author of Novel Professions, a book of literary criticism.

Richard J. Ellis

Richard J. Ellis is the Mark O. Hatfield Professor of Politics at Willamette University. In 2008 he was named Oregon Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and in 2007 he was chosen as Oregon Scientist of the Year by
the Oregon Academy of Science. His book The Development of the American Presidency is forthcoming from Routledge in January 2012.

Leigh van der Werff

After ten years in Oregon, Leigh van der Werff now lives in central California, where she runs a record store with her husband and their dog, Edgar. When she’s not at the shop, she’s writing essays and music criticism.

Joanne Mulcahy

Joanne Mulcahy teaches creative nonfiction and humanities classes at the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, where she is codirector of the Documentary Studies Certificate Program. Her writing combines memoir and personal essay with ethnographic exploration. Her book Remedios: The Healing Life of Eva Castellanoz was published by Trinity University Press in 2010.

Marion Goldman

Marion Goldman has passed through the social worlds of Rajneeshees, Jesus People, and Nevada prostitutes. In her latest book, The American Soul Rush (forthcoming in December 2011), she describes how a small group of 1960s seekers at California’s Esalen Institute cultivated and spread spiritual alternatives ranging from transpersonal psychology to yoga to Zen golf. She is professor of sociology and religious studies at the University of Oregon.

Guy Maynard

Oregon Humanities editorial advisory board member Guy Maynard is the editor of Oregon Quarterly, the magazine of the University of Oregon, and the author of The Risk of Being Ridiculous, a historical novel of love and revolution set in Boston in the the late 1960s, into which he managed to slip several Red Sox references. He lives in Eugene.

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri

Kambiz GhaneaBassiri is an associate professor of religion and humanities at Reed College in Portland. He is the author of A History of Islam in America (from which this selection is excerpted) and Competing Visions of Islam in the United States. He was also a faculty member at the Oregon Humanities Teacher Institute in July 2011.

Tim DuRoche

Tim DuRoche is a writer, jazz musician, artist, and cultural advocate. He works as the director of programs for the World Affairs Council of Oregon. Tim hosts the The New Thing, a weekly jazz program on KMHD-89.1 FM in Portland, is currently developing a program on jazz and community values for Oregon Humanities’ Conversation Project, and is the author of the recently published collection of essays, Occasional Jazz Conjectures.

Walidah Imarisha

Walidah Imarisha is a founding editor of AWOL, a national political hip hop magazine and has toured nationally and internationally as part of the poetry duo Good Sista/Bad Sista. She has taught in Portland State University’s Black studies department and leads three Conversation Project programs for Oregon Humanities on hip hop, the history of race in Oregon, and reenvisioning the prison system.

Kim Stafford

Kim Stafford is the founding director of the Northwest Writing Institute at Lewis & Clark College and author of a dozen books of poetry and prose, including The Muses Among Us: Elegant Listening and Other Pleasures of the Writer’s Craft. This essay is a section from his book-in-progress, 100 Tricks Every Boy Can Do.

Debra Gwartney

Debra Gwartney is the author of the 2009 memoir Live Through This, which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Oregon Book Award, and the PNBA award. She is currently working on a memoir about growing up in the West and the heritage of Narcissa Whitman, a project for which she received a research grant from the American Antiquarian Society. Debra lives on the McKenzie River with her husband, Barry Lopez, and is on the nonfiction faculty at Pacific University.

Susan Meyers

After growing up selling corndogs and cotton candy at carnivals up and down the West Coast, Susan Meyers extended her gypsy lifestyle by spending several years in Latin American before coming home to the Pacific Northwest. Her work has recently appeared in CALYX, Dogwood, Terra Incognita, and The Minnesota Review, and it has been the recipient of several awards, including a Fulbright Fellowship. She teaches writing at Oregon State University.

Matthew Stadler

Matthew Stadler is a writer and editor in Portland. He writes about cities and urbanism for journals including Volume, Netherlands Architecture Bulletin, Domus, and Camerawork. His book about urbanism, Deventer, is forthcoming from 010 Uitgevrij, in Rotterdam. In 2009 he cofounded Publication Studio (http://www.publicationstudio.biz) in Portland.

Amanda Waldroupe

Amanda Waldroupe is a freelance journalist living in Portland. Whenever she fails, she buckles down and tries, tries again.

John Holloran

John Holloran lives in Portland and teaches at Oregon Episcopal School, where he is the chair of the history department. His last essay for Oregon Humanities was “Under a Spell” (Summer 2009).

Todd Schwartz

Todd Schwartz is in reality a very serious and reserved person who divides his time between being a Calvinist minister and a funeral home director. Wait…wait! A funeral home director and a Calvinist minister walk into a bar…

Scott Nadelson

Scott Nadelson’s most recent book is The Cantor’s Daughter. A new collection of his short fiction, Aftermath, is forthcoming from Hawthorne Books in Fall 2011. He teachers creative writing at Willamette University. His latest essay for Oregon Humanities was “Go Ahead and Look” (Spring 2010)

Courtenay Hameister

Courtenay Hameister is the host and head writer of LiveWire Radio, the co-creator of “Road House: The Play!,” a screenwriter and filmmaker. In her spare time, she likes to imagine what it would be like to have more spare time.

Ariel Gore

Ariel Gore is the author of seven books including Bluebird: Women and the New Psychology of Happiness (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010), from which this selection is excerpted. She is also the founding editor of Hip Mama, and editor of the Lambda-award-winning anthology Portland Queer. She teaches creating writing online at the University of New Mexico and The Attic in Portland.

Jamie Passaro

Jamie Passaro lives in Eugene, where she is a freelance writer and an editor for Northwest Book Lovers, a blog produced by the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association. Her last essay for Oregon Humanities was “Driving Mrs. Spacely” (Summer 2008).

Andrew Guest

Andrew Guest is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Portland. When not watching, playing, coaching or writing about soccer, he does research on youth developmental and educational experiences through sports, arts, and service activities.

David Bragdon

David Bragdon served on the Portland regional Metro Council for nearly twelve years and was elected president in 2002. The major accomplishment of his service was an expansion of the regional parks and natural areas network known as the Intertwine. He resigned from the Metro Council in September 2010 in order to accept New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s appointment as director of the Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability.

M. Allen Cunningham

M. Allen Cunningham is the author of Lost Son, a novel about the life of Rainer Maria Rilke. His first novel, The Green Age of Asher Witherow was a #1 Booksense Pick and was shortlisted for the Booksense Book of the Year. He’s the recipient of an artist fellowship from the Oregon Arts Commission and a Yaddo residency. His third novel, set partly in the Pacific Northwest, is forthcoming.

Bette Lynch Husted

Bette Lynch Husted lives and writes in Pendleton. She is the author of Above the Clearwater: Living on Stolen Land (OSU Press, 2004) and At This Distance: Poems (Wordcraft of Oregon, 2010). Lessons from the Borderlands, her collection of memoir essays about teaching, class, gender, and race, is forthcoming from Plain View Press. She is a 2004 Oregon Book Award and WILLA finalist and was awarded a 2007 Oregon Arts Commission fellowship.

Bob Bussel

Bob Bussel is associate professor of history and director of the Labor Education and Research Center at the University of Oregon. He has published numerous articles on labor history and contemporary labor issues, including a history of the Oregon Bureau of Labor and Industries. He is currently working on a book about working-class citizens.

Dave Weich

Dave Weich is the president of Sheepscot Creative. The Portland-based company fosters engaging and profitable communication among businesses, consumers, colleagues, and fans. Weich is on the editorial advisory board of Oregon Humanities magazine.

Camela Raymond

Camela Raymond is a Portland-based writer whose work has appeared in Modern Painters, Plazm, the Oregonian, and elsewhere. She was previously an editor at Portland Monthly magazine and the founding editor/publisher of the Organ. She serves on the editorial advisory board of Oregon Humanities magazine.

Scott Nadelson

Scott Nadelson’s most recent book is The Cantor’s Daughter. He teaches creative writing at Willamette University.

Karen Karbo

Karen Karbo‘s three novels, as well as her Oregon Book Award–winning memoir, The Stuff of Life, have all been named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. Her most recent book is The Gospel According to Coco Chanel: Life Lessons from the World’s Most Elegant Woman.

Lisa Radon

Lisa Radon has written about art and design for Portland Spaces (as associate editor), Portland Monthly, Surface Design Journal, SHIFT (Japan), FLAUNT, Hyperallergic, and ultra (ultrapdx.com). She’s written a handful of catalog essays and is working on her first book.

R. Gregory Nokes

R. Gregory Nokes has worked as a reporter and editor for the Associated Press and the Oregonian. His reporting about this incident has resulted in a formal designation of the massacre site as Chinese Massacre Cove. He lives in West Linn.

Christine Dupres

Christine Dupres is the former director of the Office of Sustainability and Community Engagement at the Native American Youth and Family Center in Portland. She is a freelance writer and an Oregon Humanities board member.

Apricot Irving

Apricot Irving is a writer and radio producer whose most recent project, Boise Voices Neighborhood Oral History Project , brought together elders and youth in Northeast Portland. She has lived in Haiti, Indonesia, and the United Kingdom, but currently calls Portland home.

Lucy Burningham

Lucy Burningham is an independent writer and journalist who lives in Portland. During the past decade, she has traveled on assignment for a variety of newspapers, magazines, and Lonely Planet guidebooks. She holds a master’s in nonfiction writing from Portland State University.

Vicente Martinez

Vicente Martinez lives in Portland and works at a fast food restaurant.

Susan W. Hardwick

Susan W. Hardwick is a professor of geography at the University of Oregon. Her research and teaching focus on the geography of immigration, identity, and place in the Pacific Northwest. She is the author or co-author of nine books, including Russian Refuge: Religion, Migration, and Settlement on the North American Pacific Rim (University of Chicago Press, 1993). This article is adapted from Hardwick’s Commonplace Lecture that she delivered for Oregon Humanities in 2007.

Sarah Gilbert

Sarah Gilbert is a writer and photographer who lives in Portland with her husband and three little boys. She writes about food and finance for several web sites, including DailyFinance, WalletPop and Culinate, is cofounder of the Portland parenting resource urbanMamas.com, and keeps a blog, cafemama.com.

Kevin Nute

Kevin Nute is a professor of architecture at the University of Oregon. He is the author of the American Institute of Architects award-winning monograph, Frank Lloyd Wright and Japan (1993) and Place, Time and Being in Japanese Architecture (2004).

Brian Doyle

Brian Doyle is the editor of Portland Magazine at the University of Portland, and the author most recently of Thirsty for the Joy: Australian & American Voices, from One Day Hill Press in Melbourne, Australia.

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Goal Control

An interview with Reed College professor Jennifer Henderlong Corpus about goals, praise, motivation, and coping with failure.

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