(University of Chicago)
Hidden Failures
Our society celebrates failure as a teachable moment. But do people actually learn from failure? Though lay wisdom suggests they should, I suggest that they usually don’t. I present a unifying framework that points to emotional and cognitive barriers that stop people from learning from failure. Emotions undermine learning since people find failure ego-threatening. Thus, people tend to look away from failure and not pay attention to it to protect their egos. Cognitively, people also struggle since the information in failure is more oblique than the information in success, and thus, harder to decipher and learn from. Beyond identifying barriers, this framework suggests inroads by which these barriers might be addressed. Finally, I explore implications. I outline what, exactly, people miss out on when they ignore the information in failure. Research find that the information in failure is often high-quality information that can be used to predict success.