When I was a child growing up my parents often used phrases like “learn the hard way,” and “learn your lesson” or “learn from your mistakes,” when talking about the consequences of bad behavior. These phrases contained a moral implication that people often deserved what happened to them and they would not change bad behavior without suffering the consequences of failure. Somewhat related is a belief many of my teachers espoused over the years that students learn more from having to muddle through, solving problems on their own, rather than being spoon fed answers by their teachers. These related concepts all tie into a common belief that people learn from their mistakes and that failure is an effective teacher.
A new study found that individuals who believe that people learn from failure, and often succeed after failure, are less empathetic. The following was reported by NBC News:
Exaggerating the likelihood of success after failure may make us less willing to help others who are struggling.The study was published online Monday by the American Psychological Association in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General.
The conventional wisdom posits if failure is an effective teacher, then people tend to learn from their own mistakes. Therefore, no outside help is needed. According to the study:
People tend to overestimate the likelihood of success following failure, which may make us less willing to help others who are struggling, according to a new study.When people believe that others who have experienced setbacks will grow from their failure on their own, they are less motivated to help those in need because they believe these problems will “self-correct,” the report said.The researchers also found that participants wrongly assumed people focus on their mistakes and learn from them after failure.
Now we get to the interesting part of the research: it was politically motivated. Here is some background information: a lot of public policy opinion surveys are for political manipulation. Politically motivated opinion polls are not necessarily to find what voters think. Rather, these polls and surveys are often designed to tease out which words and phrases change how people think. The surveys are often used to test phrases to see which words and phrases encourage noncommitted voters or independent voters to support a given candidate or support a policy initiative they otherwise might oppose. For instance, consider the additional findings of the study I’m describing:
In one of the findings, people who exaggerated the benefits of failure were less interested in channeling taxpayer dollars to support people with drug addiction and formerly incarcerated people.
However, when the researchers corrected exaggerated beliefs about the benefits of failure, the same participants increased their motivation to help.
In other words, if people think others learn (or should learn) from their own mistakes, they tend to vote for Republicans, for example. The idea of personal responsibility is held by Republicans far more than by Democrats. However, if voters are told that people who fail continue to fail and need government help, they are more likely to vote for Democrats. Apparently not discussed in the study was what would motivate people to change destructive behaviors if those bad behaviors are subsidized by government and the consequences lessened with taxpayer support.
Some people will fail and learn from their mistakes. Some will continually fail and fail to learn from their mistakes. Some small percentage of failures will succeed due to an intervention, while others (probably most) will not learn despite any intervention.
At some point too much empathy becomes a pathology. People would be unable to hunt or fish or farm, or to charge customers full price for a product or service. Or to offer criticism or give someone bad news.
Well, Devon, I certainly cannot criticize you for timidity. The question of how much to help people learn from their mistakes is an enormous item in social policy….and it has been, ever since the Moynihan report on black families and the book “Losing Ground” by Charles Murray.
These authors were vilified, because they posited that the more we try and help broken families, the more broken families we will get.
I am not wise enough to know the answer. I think you have to break down the mistakes into those where the miscreant should face the music, versus those where the miscreant should maybe get some help from society.
For example, letting an alcoholic face humiliation or legal problems might be constructive in the long run. But letting a small child suffer for their parents’ mistakes is not right.
Bob you are correct. And for the record I hated teachers who thought students should muddle their way through a problem because they would learn better that way. My criticism of the study wasn’t that it looked at whether people learn from their mistakes. It seemed to take for granted they wouldn’t. The real purpose of the study was whether explaining to regular people that most people cannot learn from their mistakes changes perceptions. I agree that there are an infinite variety of mistakes people make and each one should have a different solution. Some require tough love, while others require intervention, if for no other reason than some mistakes have negative externalities for unrelated individuals.