56 Developing Mental Toughness sound with food, resulting in the finding that in the end the sound on its own would produce the desired response from the animal. Seligman paired the auditory tone with a mild shock to a dog suspended in a hammock. The idea was that the tone itself would induce a fear re sponse. This element worked as predicted. The `trained' dogs were then put into a box which was split into two areas, separated by small barrier. The re searchers expected that the dogs would jump the barrier when they sounded the tone ­ to avoid the shock. However, they just sat there! They had learnt (falsely) that there was no point in trying to avoid the pain. This early animal work has been extended to human behaviour. It is argued that some individuals' life experience has shown them that there is no point in trying ­ no matter what they do they cannot change their life experience. So, for example, a small child who constantly finds that when he cries he is ignored will in the end simply stop trying to influence the world in this way. This can have both positive and negative consequences. Some childcare experts suggest that it is important not to run to the baby every time he cries and in the end this leads to more independent children (and better sleep for all). At the opposite end of the `care continuum' a small number of children experience parental neglect. This often results in serious mental health and adjustment issues in later life. It has been argued that it is not simply exposure to uncontrollable events that produces helplessness. Peterson and Barrett (1987) argue that individ uals must attribute the lack of controllability to their own inadequacies. Other authors have suggested that it is not simply a disconnect between ac tions and outcomes, rather it is repeated failures that are the vital ingredient. The evidence is far from clear. T h e i m pac T o f fa i lu r e o n p e r fo r ma n c e A case study The criterion-related validity of the MTQ48 was investigated by a study that examined the moderating effects that mental toughness has on performance. The study explored the ability of individuals to compartmentalize or show resilience when faced with `failure'. The study involved 79 participants (42 males, M age = 22.74 years, SD = 3.43; 37 females, M age = 22.43, SD = 3.85) who were given either positive or negative feedback after completing a number of motor tasks. They then carried out a cognitive task (planning exercise) as an objective measure of performance. The motor tasks and cognitive tasks should have been completed independently, involving very different skills. Feedback tasks Task 1 The shooting task entailed shooting a `laser' gun at targets. The task was initially and successfully demonstrated by the experimenter. For each of the 30 trials, the experimenter