MetLife hires who failed the aptitude test outsold regular hires by 21% in year one and 57% in year two
The optimistic agents treated rejection as a bad call, not a verdict, and the edge grew over time.
Curiosity Chronicle · The Life Changing Magic of Active OptimismThey had already failed the test.
In 1986, 129 applicants to sell insurance for MetLife took the company's standard aptitude test and did not pass.
MetLife hired them anyway.
The company had been working with psychologists Martin Seligman and Peter Schulman, who were studying how new hires explained setbacks to themselves. Selling insurance means living with rejection, and they wanted to know what agents told themselves after a bad call.
They gave incoming agents a questionnaire. At one end of the spectrum was permanent and pervasive thinking: "I'm no good at this." At the other end was temporary and specific thinking: "That call went badly." Agents who treated rejection as a passing event, rather than a verdict on themselves, were counted as optimists.
That distinction turned out to be worth money. Agents in the top half for optimism outsold agents in the bottom half by more than 37%.
That result raised an obvious question. What mattered more, aptitude on paper or outlook under pressure? MetLife let the researchers test it directly. The company brought in a special force of 129 people who had failed the aptitude test but scored as optimistic on the questionnaire.
The rejects beat the regulars. In the first year, the optimistic group outsold agents hired through the normal process by 21%. In the second year, the lead widened to 57%.
Optimists got rejected too, but kept going after it. Pessimistic agents tended to see closed doors, while optimistic ones stayed engaged with setbacks.
Two years in, results from this one company suggest that how a salesperson handles a bad call is linked to later sales.
Questions people ask
Who are Martin Seligman and Peter Schulman?
Martin Seligman is a psychologist known for work on learned helplessness, optimism, and positive psychology, and Peter Schulman collaborated with him on applying those ideas to work performance. In the 1980s, they studied insurance agents because the job produces constant rejection, making it a clear test of persistence.
Did MetLife keep hiring optimistic applicants who failed the test?
The source reports only the sales results, not MetLife's later hiring policy. It does not say whether the company kept hiring this way.