“I failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.”

It is, of course, basketball legend Michael Jordan’s famous mantra. And he’s not alone in romanticizing failure. Silicon Valley entrepreneurs openly aspire to “fail fast, fail often,” and I tend to share a similar philosophy when attempting new projects, at work or otherwise. (Hand-beating a meringue: oof!)

But there’s a danger in always looking at failure with success-tinted glasses, according to Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, an assistant professor of management and organizations at Kellogg. This week, we learn why.

“Teachers, coaches, and commencement speakers try to be inspirational when it comes to failure,” says Eskreis-Winkler. “But we find that being too inspirational—exaggerating the benefits of failure—is actually de-motivating. The takeaway is that when we talk about failure, we should aim to be accurate.”

Surely I’ll succeed this time …

To be sure, failure really can be a step along the way to success. For instance, Kellogg researchers Yang Wang, Ben Jones, and Dashun Wang have found that scientists who had narrowly missed out on an important grant ended up achieving more professional success than those who’d narrowly received the grant. The act of failing can turn us into better versions of ourselves.

But the operative word here is can. Eskreis-Winkler and her colleagues Cornell’s Kaitlin Woolley, Yale’s Eda Erensoy, and Columbia’s Minhee Kim suspected that factors such as an optimism bias could lead us to predict a higher chance of succeeding after failure than is actually accurate.

The researchers tested their hypothesis across several online studies and found considerable support. For instance, participants consistently overestimated the true number of law-school graduates, nursing students, or education students who, having failed their first attempt at a licensing test, then go on to pass the same exam on their second try.

Participants similarly overestimated the likelihood that someone addicted to opioids would enter treatment—and these estimations were even more inflated for people who had just experienced a nonfatal drug overdose. In reality, people who’ve recently experienced an overdose are less likely to enter treatment.

According to the research, such overestimations seem to arise from an inflated confidence that people will actively learn from their mistakes. “We overestimate resilience,” says Eskreis-Winkler. “We think people learn and grow from failure more than they actually do.”

Nothing to see here …

The researchers further found that much of this comes down to how uncomfortable it is to attend to our own failures. Viewed from the outside, failure offers a spectacular opportunity to reassess and grow. But for the people actually failing, well, that opportunity is a little less appetizing. After all, who wants to interrogate their own personal failures too deeply?

This “failure gap” can be harmful for individuals, who may fail to adequately prepare for their next opportunity or take other steps to ensure they are learning from their mistakes. But it can also be devastating for communities, which may design policies around misguided assumptions, says Eskreis-Winkler.

You can read more about this research in Kellogg Insight.

Jessica Love, editor in chief
Kellogg Insight