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Source: Global Science
Author: Wang Yu
Image source: Unsplash
From childhood to adulthood, we have always been taught that "failure is the mother of success", as long as we continue to work hard, the past failure is just a ladder to success in the future. These words are meant to develop our tenacity, but are they really, objectively, statistically speaking?
The answer is no.
At least according to a recent paper published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, the benefits of failure are often overestimated. Ideally, people learn from their failures, become stronger, and ultimately succeed. But the results of the survey, which included more than 1,700 people, show that what we expected to see is not happening.
Failure is not the mother of success
The experiment was conducted in the form of an online questionnaire, which was divided into 11 groups with a total of 7 directions. In group 1, for example, the researchers asked the subjects a question in the questionnaire: If a law graduate fails the bar exam the first time, how likely is it that he will pass the second exam? Or randomly replace the lawyer with a nurse or teacher. According to the responses given by 300 subjects, they averaged that the probability of a lawyer, a nurse, and a teacher passing the retest was 57.95%, 62.65%, and 67.16%, respectively. In reality, however, only 35 per cent of lawyers, 42 per cent of nurses and 58 per cent of teachers passed the retest. Subjects significantly overestimated the likelihood of success after failure.
The light color is the estimated probability of passing the retest, and the dark color is the real probability of passing the retest. From left to right, are the lawyers, nurses, teachers, and students who took the exam. Participants significantly overestimated the probability that someone else would pass the exam after failing. Image source: Original paper
The researchers looked at seven directions in a similar way and found that people were more likely to overestimate the benefits of failure from any angle.
1. If a participant fails in the exam, the outside world will often overestimate the probability of the participant passing the retest.
2. If the outside world is told that the participant has failed in the exam, then the outside world will often overestimate the probability of his success in the next exam; Conversely, if the outside world is not informed of the success or failure of the participants, then the outside world's estimates will be more accurate.
3. Ask the subjects who are nurses by profession to estimate how likely their colleagues are to learn from their mistakes at work. As a result, nurses tend to give more optimistic expectations than they realistically do.
4. Ask the subjects to answer three questions and guess the meaning of some ancient words, along the lines of "Which of the following ancient words for animals?" "None of the subjects knew the text, and the results were either right or wrong. However, if the subject guesses incorrectly at the beginning, then he will relatively overestimate the probability that he will guess correctly in subsequent experiments.
5. Subjects will still be asked to guess the meaning of those ancient words, but at the end of the test, the researcher will hand the subject the standard answer with analysis and inform the subject that if they pass the retest, they will receive a prize. At this time, the subject estimated that the probability of passing the retest and getting the bonus was higher than the actual situation.
6. Subjects were asked to guess how many people with heart disease would improve their health habits after a heart attack. Subjects were divided into two groups, one group would answer the question normally, and the other group would receive a prompt that only a small percentage of people with heart disease would think about heart health as a daily topic. ResultsThe former group significantly overestimated the proportion of people who improved their habits, and the latter group overestimated the possibility of improving their lifestyle habits even when prompted, but to a lesser extent.
7. Subjects tend to overestimate the possibility of addicts succeeding in drug rehabilitation and not relapsing; It also overestimates the likelihood that offenders will reintegrate into society and stop committing crimes. After understanding the true probability, the subjects will support the society to invest more resources in drug control and crime suppression.
From the experiments in these 7 directions, we can draw the following conclusions: people will overestimate the probability of success after failure; Erasing previous successes and failures makes people's estimates of the probability of success more accurate; People overestimate the likelihood that a colleague will learn a lesson; People overestimate the likelihood of success after their failures; People tend to overestimate how many lessons they have learned from their failures; Optimism about failure can be corrected by facts; When this optimism is corrected, it has important implications for policymaking.
Whether it's for one's own failures or the failures of others, people tend to overestimate the probability of success after failure. The researchers gave their guess – it's because people are unconsciously weighing the pros and cons. Avoiding negative information about oneself is a very common psychological defense, such as when a stock is falling, investors tend to look less at their own stocks, and sometimes even say, "I don't want to see anything." So, people unconsciously run away from the fact of failure. When the perceived threat of self-consciousness trumps the rational desire to learn from failure, people ignore the experience of failure. And when looking at the success stories of others after failure, this "heroic arc" often goes deeper into people's hearts, making people mistakenly believe that previous failures led to later success. But that's not the case, failure just makes the story better, it's not the reason for success.
Efforts can fall into a trap
So if after failure, bravely face the reality of failure and work hard, can we finally achieve success? Unfortunately, the result is still not necessarily, especially for those who are already at the bottom of society in their original families. This is the conclusion of the paper, "Effort Traps: Socially Structured Striving and the Reproduction of Disadvantage," published in the latest United States issue of the American Journal of Sociology. The author is Tom · Wooten, Department of Sociology, Louisiana State University, United States.
The paper followed eight black men for two years. The subject with the pseudonym Dorian is the most typical example. Coming from a low-income family, Dorian's high school emphasized the importance of hard work, and he was taught that if you work hard enough, you can overcome any odds. After entering university, he followed his dream and chose to major in art and photography, while working part-time as a photographer to earn money to buy computers and photography equipment.
At first, things were going fairly well. He excelled both academically and professionally, which strengthened his belief that his hard work would lead to success. But as the course became more difficult and the part-time company raised the requirements, Dorian was soon overwhelmed and physically and mentally exhausted. But his decision was to work even harder, even filling his weekends from 7 a.m. until dark.
Finally, he was overwhelmed by the pressures of life and academics in his second semester of college. I have a tendency to be depressed, I have difficulty getting up to school on time, and I have more quarrels with my family. He thought about improving the situation and quit his part-time job as a photographer. But his frugal habits prevented him from focusing on his studies and instead found a job as a valet parking at night. This made him exhausted, his depression worsened, he hung up the English class he was good at, his physical and mental state could no longer work, and he even had suicidal tendencies. Eventually, Dorian was dissuaded from the school because of multiple failures.
The other seven participants followed in the study, who, like Dorian, were black men who had just entered college and were all from New Orleans, United States. Of the eight people the study tracked, seven people, including Dorian, fell into the trap of overtrying, with the exception of Juan, who was not much better: he had a long commute because of his mother's move, and he had a young son to raise, so he had to give up college and choose to work. The remaining 7 people all fell into the trap of overtry, they always pursued multiple goals at the same time, and when dealing with difficulties, they fell into the trap of wrong coping, mechanically choosing to overexert themselves instead of adjusting their strategies, and focusing their limited energy on one point.
However, there is a track record of them doing so. Children from low-income families always receive the message that "if you work hard, you can overcome difficulties" in school. Moreover, poverty exacerbates their desire for success, and they become more desperate to pursue multiple goals at once, overwork, overpromise, and eventually become overwhelmed and fail. For children from high-income families, in addition to hard work, they have a better family background and social relationships to rely on, and they will naturally think that success does not only depend on hard work.
Life is cruel, and there really isn't that much chicken soup. In other words, blind optimism, or emphasizing the role of effort for no reason, is often not the most effective option.
References:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38856918/
https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/731316