We often hear that we need to experience failure to learn from our mistakes, grow, and be better. Understandably, knowing the reason for our lack of success may prevent us from repeating the same errors in the future. 

But is that really true? It turns out that when it comes to human psychology, things aren’t as simple as they may seem. In a 2022 paper, researchers claim that most people are highly resistant to learning from their failures. And when they do, they tend to take away the wrong lessons.

The first reason for such human behavior is associated with emotions. Our species is mostly invested in feeling good about ourselves. Being a failure isn’t really compatible with this; that’s why we tend to walk away from it and protect our egos. 

The authors further explain, “Contemplating failure is hard because failure is a threatening experience. Indeed, when a failure threatens people’s sense of self-worth, they can react in ways that undermine not just their learning but also their mental and physical health in an effort to preserve their sense of self.”

They continue saying, “Thus, although people may want to learn from failure, they often hold a competing goal that wins out: to feel good about themselves. The desire to see oneself as a good, competent person is a strong motivational force. When this goal triumphs, people disengage from failure."

The second factor that influences our dissociation from failure is cognitive. We tend not to like hearing information that contradicts our beliefs and expectations. Our lack of success does exactly that—disagrees with our anticipation for triumph. Why take on a project you know you won’t shine at?

“No one aims for failure. People almost never expect to fail. This makes learning from failure cognitively difficult because people tend to overlook contradictory or unexpected information.” In addition, when we feel defeated, we might start losing capacity and control. Therefore, it further diminishes our commitment and reduces the odds of success in the future.

What’s more, learning from a negative experience like a failure is a more demanding task than taking something away from success, which tires our cognitive system that has adapted to save energy. 

“For failure to be informative, people need to deduce what an incorrect response teaches about the correct response. Learning by elimination requires more mental effort. Because people are cognitive misers, they struggle to see the information in failure more than the information in success.”

However, there’s a way to improve our chances of learning from our mistakes, despite the inborn emotional and cognitive barriers. The first strategy that the authors propose is to remove the ego from failure. This can be done by learning from other people’s mistakes that we’re not personally and emotionally involved in. Another option is to work up our ego so it can withstand the possibility of failure. Improving our competence, knowledge, and expertise is a great way to do it. That’s why experts are often better at learning from failure, as they’re less threatened by it.

To overcome the cognitive barriers, it may be useful to eliminate any tasks that may overload our brains. This means putting more time and practice into learning from failure instead of trying to juggle five other things at the same time.

In general, learning from failure is important, but it doesn’t happen without effort. Training ourselves to overcome the emotional and cognitive hurdles helps us reflect on our lessons and improves the odds of success.