Failure, Effects of

All people face obstacles and failures in a variety of life tasks. In academic, athletic, and business settings, failure feedback is often clear—receiving a poor grade, losing the game, or not getting a promotion. On a personal level, failures can range from the breakup of a relationship to not accomplishing a goal. For many psychologists, the question is not if an individual will experience failure, but how will he or she respond to it. Failure can have devastating consequences for an individual because it may confirm preexisting negative beliefs or require downward revisions in self-image or goals. Repeated failures may lead to feelings of helplessness and depression. Children experiencing failure in school may experience decreases in self-efficacy and self-esteem (maladaptive reactions). However, not all people experience these events as negative. Failure may motivate some by presenting challenges or opportunities to demonstrate competence in the future. They can use this information to change behavioral strategies to obtain success or establish attainable goals (adaptive responses).

There are many reasons why individuals respond differently to failure feedback. The general model used to assess reactions to failure consists of antecedent conditions and post-feedback reactions (including affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses). Antecedent conditions include performance expectations, personality characteristics, and the investment in the task. After receiving failure feedback, individuals will likely experience some negative affect, make attributions about why they failed, and then behave in certain ways.

It is important to note that failure feedback is a relative term: For some individuals, a grade of C is an abysmal failure, whereas for others, it represents an outstanding accomplishment. Personal expectations and reactions from others influence one's perception of failure. When failure is unexpected or when others respond negatively to the outcome (e.g., by saying ‘How could you have failed?’ ‘Everyone else did very well,’ or ‘This task was so easy’), the individual's response to the feedback will likely be stronger.

Although personality dimensions also affect how individuals respond to failure (e.g., those high in neuroticism or having a high need for achievement will likely respond differently than those who are low on these scales), most educational research has addressed the individual's orientation to the task. Carol Dweck and Ellen Leggett argue that motivational orientation can predict adaptive and maladaptive responses to failure feedback. An individual's motivational orientation influences how he or she will evaluate feedback based on his or her goals. Those who have learning (or mastery) goals focus on understanding, knowledge, and improvement. These individuals are motivated to [Page 394]understand, and the feedback informs them if they have mastered the material. Individuals setting performance goals seek to demonstrate ability or to gain favorable judgments from others. These individuals are motivated to defend or enhance their self-worth, and therefore, feedback is something used to make social comparisons of themselves with others. Carol Midgely and colleagues developed the Patterns of Adaptive Learning Survey to assess performance orientation. This test assumes that motivational approaches are independent, such that individuals can be high on one, both, or neither dimension.

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