Many facets of sisu, affective states and performance appraisals – predecessors and successors of task performance

Abstract

This study investigates sisu (a word describing grit, perseverance, and mental toughness with Finnish etymology), affective states, performance appraisals and task performance and specifically their interrelationships. The concept of sisu with its positive and negative subcategories is addressed, and the target of this work was to research sisu’s associations with affective states and task performance in a laboratory context. Firstly, (1) the effects of pre-task affective states, performance appraisals and sisu on task performance and secondly (2) the effects of task performance and sisu on post-task affective states and performance appraisals were studied. 81 participants from four IT-companies in Tampere, Finland performed three types of tasks (anagram, verbal reasoning and hand grip endurance task) in laboratory settings, before and after which they self-assessed their mood and performance in the tasks. Covariance analyses showed that sisu had significant main effects and interaction effects in both researched situations (1) and (2). Results for situation (1) showed that both positive and negative sisu variables were associated with higher task performance, although positive sisu variables had higher number of positive associations in this study. Results for situation (2) showed that positive sisu variables had mainly positive associations with affective states (e.g. increased arousal, dominance, enthusiasm, and decreased tediousness and challenge) and performance appraisals, while negative sisu had mainly negative association with affective states (e.g. increased perception of challenge and tediousness) and performance appraisals. Based on the results, it can be concluded that sisu has independent main effects and interaction effects together with pre-task affective states and performance appraisals on actual task performance. The study also suggests that sisu has independent main effects and interaction effects together with task performance on post-task affective states and performance appraisals. Altogether, this study brings validation to the relevance of the concept of sisu and aims to awaken the scientific interest in addition to demonstrating the importance of conducting further research on the topic. Implications for future research on sisu are discussed.