Failure is something that is seldom particularly enjoyable, but it is nonetheless crucial to the learning, and therefore innovation process.  In many organizations, failure is talked about an awful lot, but a new study suggests that there’s nothing as good at focusing our minds on correcting things than physically experiencing that pain.

“But we found the opposite. When faced with a failure, it is better to focus on one’s emotions — when people concentrate on how bad they feel and how they don’t want to experience these feelings again, they are more likely to try harder the next time,” the authors say.

Self-protection

The authors suggest that most of the time, when we reflect on failures we strive to protect our egos.  We cast blame elsewhere or downplay the importance of the task we failed in.  By distancing ourselves from the failure however, we limit the chances of learning from our mistakes.

Several experiments were undertaken that brought participants face to face with the prospect of failure.  The experiments revealed that people would try much harder on subsequent tasks when they thought of their failure in emotional rather than cognitive terms.

Indeed, they would put in 25% more time and effort when framing their failure in this way than their peers.  In other words, the visceral pain attached to failure was much more powerful than merely thinking about it.  Importantly however, the 2nd task had to resemble the 1st for this boost to emerge.

“When the participants focused on how bad they felt about failing the first time, they tried harder than others when they had another similar opportunity,” the authors explain.  “But the situation has to be similar enough to trigger the pain of the initial failure.”

The team suggest this boost might be down to how we think about our mistakes.  When participants thought about their past failures, they would often adopt a self-protective mindset.  So thinking about failure might harm our abilities to move on from them.  Unfortunately, it’s often this form of reflection that people use.

In one experiment, the participants were not instructed how to respond to failures, and the vast majority produced cognitive responses rather than emotional ones, with those cognitive responses usually followed by self-protective thoughts.

The lesson seems to be then that despite the emotional pain of failure being a bitter pill to swallow, it’s crucial to think about failure in this way if we’re to learn from it rather than brushing it off and excusing ourselves from responsibility.

“Emotional responses to failure can hurt. They make you feel bad. That’s why people often choose to think self-protective thoughts after they make mistakes,” they conclude.  “But if you focus on how bad you feel, you’re going to work harder to find a solution and make sure you don’t make the same mistake again.”