Control, Cost, and Confidence : Explaining Perseverance in the Face of Failure

We study perseverance and the development of control beliefs: a student is uncertain whether success can be controlled through effort or is determined by her innate ability, which she also does not know. In each period, what she can learn about her control and her ability depends on the level of effort she exerts. We characterize the student's optimal effort policy in this two-dimensional bandit problem, which may feature repeated switching of the effort level.Moreover, we analyze how control, cost, and confidence impact perseverance. Finally, we relate our results to findings in psychology and discuss policies to foster perseverance