Seligman, Nolen-Hecksema, Thornton, and Thornton (1990) classified participants in their study (who were members of a university swim team) as Optimists or Pessimists. They then asked them to swim their best event, and in each case they reported times that were longer than the swimmer actually earned, disappointing everyone. Half an hour later they asked them to repeat the event again. The dependent variable was Time1/Time2, so a ratio greater than 1.0 indicates faster times on the second trial. The data follow:

Calculate the mean for each group. Seligman et al. thought that optimists would try harder after being disappointed. Does it look as if they were correct?

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Optimists 0.986 1.108 1.080 0.952 0.998 1.017 1.080 .026 1.045 0.996 0.923 1.000 1.003 0.934 1.009 1.065 1.053 108 0.985 1.001 0.924 0.968 1.048 1.027 1.004 0.936 1.040 Pessimists 0.983 0.947 0.932 1.078 0.914 0.955 0.962 0.944 0.941 0.831 0.936 0.995 0.872 0.997 0.983 1.105 1.116 0.997 0.960 1.045 1.095 0.944 1.069 0.927 0.988 1.015 1.045 0.864 0.982 0.915 1.047