Research paper
Polivy J, Herman CP. If at first you don't succeed: False hopes of self-change. American Psychologist. 2002;57(9):677-689. doi:10.1037//0003-066x.57.9.677
Why we cite it
Introduced "false hope syndrome" — a formal framework explaining why people repeatedly attempt and fail at self-change. Published in *American Psychologist*, this paper reframed the problem: it's not that people lack willpower or fail to try hard enough, but that they approach self-change with systematically unrealistic expectations across four dimensions. For the project, this provides the theoretical foundation for the pragmatist companion — sustainable change requires realistic expectations about speed (slower than hoped), amount (less dramatic than imagined), ease (harder than expected), and consequences (more limited than fantasized). The paper also explains the restart cycle: each failure is interpreted in ways that preserve hope for the next attempt rather than prompting a realistic reassessment.
DOI: 10.1037/0003-066x.57.9.677 · PubMed 12237978 · Publisher