Positive fantasies predict low academic achievement in disadvantaged students

Unlike other forms of positive thinking (e.g., expectations), research finds that positive fantasies (experiencing one’s thoughts and mental images about the future positively) predict low effort and little success in several domains. However, for vocational education students of low socioeconomic status and minority ethnicity, for whom the present environment is especially difficult, perhaps it would be appropriate to indulge in positive fantasies that depict the future as bright and easily attained. Three studies show that this is not the case. Positive future fantasies measured early in the program predicted more days absent (Studies 2–3) and lower grades at the end of the program (Studies 1–3), even when adjusting for initial academic competence, expectations of successful achievement, and self-discipline. Expectations of successful achievement predicted fewer days absent and higher grades only when measured midway through the school year, once participants had experience with their own academic standing (Study 3). Results indicate that positive fantasies, which allow people to indulge in images of a bright future, predict poor achievement even in vocational students immersed in a particularly difficult environment. Copyright # 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Most people have associations to the word “fantasy” that are distinctly positive—daydream, fancy, hope, desire, castle in the sky, flight of the imagination. Positive fantasies are the causes of some of people’s richest andmost embellished experiences, so it’s not surprising that the human mind is designed to have them plentifully. In their fantasies, people gather figures from film and fiction, experiences of friends and family, and far-removed aspects of the world in an attempt to adorn their present with non-existent but potentially implementable bounty. This bounty makes the world more pleasant and the hardships more bearable, and one might think that the ability to fantasize has allowed humans to thrive. However, one may also argue that these embellished fantasies, while good for the moment, in the long run hamper effort and success by seducing people to experience mentally rather than achieve in actuality. In line with this latter idea, Oettingen and Mayer (2002) argued that positive fantasies allow people to mentally experience a desired future in the present, which yields little motivation to take action and invest effort toward achieving this future. Indeed, a series of studies testing this idea showed that positive fantasies predict poor achievement in domains including health and interpersonal (Oettingen & Mayer, 2002; Oettingen & Wadden, 1991) as well as academic (introductory psychology grades for university students, Oettingen & Mayer, 2002, Study 3). The studies reported here build on this research and investigate whether positive fantasies would also predict poor achievement for disadvantaged students who have *Correspondence to: Heather Barry Kappes, Department of Psychology, New Yo E-mail: [email protected] Copyright # 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. enrolled in vocational school in order to advance their education and improve their career prospects.