Hi Grace, thanks for reading and commenting!

Regarding your first point, I think one way to look at this study is that yes, we all know having a “positive outlook” must be a good thing, but what specific aspects of having a positive outlook are most significant in terms of making people resilient to failure? The study looked at a whole bunch of different traits, and many traits related to having a “positive outlook” ended up being only weakly associated with resilience to failure or having no effect at all. The idea is that if we get specific about the exact traits that correlate with resilience to failure, we can be more efficient about designing interventions that build resilience rather than telling people to just have a “positive outlook.”

As far as the “attributional style” trait, I guess it depends on what you mean by “taking responsibility” for failures. We can all probably agree that when things go wrong, it’s good to reflect on what you could’ve done differently to avoid repeating any mistakes. On the other hand, it’s not really helpful to internalize your failures and take them as as permanent reflections on who you are as a person.

Of course, no one’s claiming there’s a perfect correlation between being a good person and being resilient to failure — it’s an interesting question of whether people who blame everything on others actually end up being more resilient. And it would probably take another study to answer. 😛

Thanks!