Our society celebrates failure as a teachable moment. Yet in five studies (total N = 1,674), failure did the opposite: It undermined learning. Across studies, participants answered binary-choice questions, following which they were told they answered correctly (success feedback) or incorrectly (failure feedback). Both types of feedback conveyed the correct answer, because there were only two answer choices. However, on a follow-up test, participants learned less from failure feedback than from success feedback. This effect was replicated across professional, linguistic, and social domains—even when learning from failure was less cognitively taxing than learning from success and even when learning was incentivized. Participants who received failure feedback also remembered fewer of their answer choices. Why does failure undermine learning? Failure is ego threatening, which causes people to tune out. Participants learned less from personal failure than from personal success, yet they learned just as much from other people’s failure as from others’ success. Thus, when ego concerns are muted, people tune in and learn from failure.

中文翻译：

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不从失败中学习——最大的失败

我们的社会庆祝失败是一个可教的时刻。然而，在五项研究（总 N = 1,674）中，失败的作用恰恰相反：它破坏了学习。在整个研究中，参与者回答了二选一的问题，然后他们被告知他们回答正确（成功反馈）或错误（失败反馈）。两种类型的反馈都传达了正确的答案，因为只有两种答案选择。然而，在后续测试中，参与者从失败反馈中学到的东西比从成功反馈中学到的要少。这种影响在专业、语言和社会领域都得到了复制——即使从失败中学习比从成功中学习对认知的负担更少，甚至在学习受到激励的情况下也是如此。收到失败反馈的参与者也记住了较少的答案选择。为什么失败会破坏学习？失败会威胁到自我，这会导致人们疏远。参与者从个人失败中学到的比从个人成功中学到的少，但他们从别人的失败中学到的和从别人的成功中学到的一样多。因此，当小我的顾虑被消除时，人们就会适应并从失败中学习。