As you may have noticed from my podcasts and lectures, I am a devoted scholar of error and how we can learn from it. I research the latest studies on the subject, interact with leading experts, and am even writing my next book on the topic. So, you might imagine that I am a master at learning from my own mistakes… but I’m not.
Even though we know we can first avoid repeating avoidable mistakes and also learn from intelligent errors, we still have a hard time doing so. At least, that’s what happens to me: many of the mistakes I make are repeated, and this is due to a variety of factors, including ego and confirmation bias, among others. Therefore, in this article, we will explore the neuroscience of failure and error.
Dr. Lila Landowski is a neuroscientist at the School of Medicine at UTAS, Director of the Australian Society for Medical Research, and Director of Epilepsy Tasmania. In addition to being a regular science communicator for the ABC, Lila is an award-winning scientist: she was the recipient of the Premier’s Young Achiever of the Year Award, a finalist for Young Australian of the Year in Tasmania, and the winner of the Young Tall Poppy award. Listen to her speech below:
“So here’s what you should do: you should set yourself up for a little bit of failure, right? Quiz yourself on that topic, as you go. Don’t wait until you’re ready. If you’re learning something, like soccer, don’t just simply kick it straight to the goal, change the angle, make it more difficult, so that you make mistakes. Don’t wait for everything to be perfect, before you have a go, because at the end of the day, if you make a mistake, you’ll be releasing neuromodulators that improve your attention, and if you’re doing it right, you’ll be releasing dopamine in your reward circuit, which makes you feel good, makes you feel more motivated, and consolidates the learning of the thing you just did correctly, right?That’s why turning learning into a bit of a game can work so well. It’s a bit of a win win situation, for our brain, either way, right? So when you make a mistake, you know, don’t view that anxiety as a bad thing, Lean into that feeling and keep going because it’s really your brain’s way of helping you be your best. It’s helping you to be better than you were yesterday”.
In ancient Greece, in the 3rd century BC, Hieron, King of Syracuse, commissioned a craftsman to make a crown of solid gold. The King offered a handsome sum of money and provided the necessary gold. After a few days, the craftsman delivered the crown to the King, but Hieron, upon receiving it, suspected that the craftsman had not used all the gold provided. To confirm, he had the crown weighed and found that its mass was indeed equal to the gold given for its fabrication. Even so, Hieron still suspected that silver had been mixed with the gold. Unsure of how to resolve the matter, he hired Archimedes, a renowned mathematician and physicist, known for his inventions and the discovery of the number π, as well as the formulation of Archimedes’ Principle.
Archimedes, dedicated to the King’s request, found the solution while taking a bath. As he immersed himself in the bathtub, he noticed the water overflow. He then conducted an experiment: he submerged the crown in a bucket full of water and measured the displaced water. He repeated the process with bars of gold and silver of the same mass. He observed that the crown displaced more water than the gold, but less than the silver, concluding that it was made of an alloy of the two metals. Excited, he ran through the streets shouting “Eureka!”, which means “I have found it” in Greek.
This story exemplifies the human ability to think creatively, but it is also important to note that the word ‘Eureka’ derives from the Greek verb ‘heurísko’, meaning ‘to discover’, and is the origin of the word ‘heuristic’. Heuristics are mental ‘templates’ that speed up decision-making, conserving brain energy, but they can also lead us to repeat mistakes.
But first, what happens to our brain when we make mistakes? Understanding errors at the neurological level, psychologist Jason Moser discovered that, when we err, synapses fire in the brain. There are two possible brain responses: the ERN, an increase in electrical activity independent of error awareness, and the Pe, a signal reflecting conscious attention to the error.
Moser showed that we don’t need to be aware of the error for brain activity to occur. This indicates that the brain grows in the face of challenges, with ‘growth’ understood as an increase in connectivity rather than brain volume. A growth mindset can enhance this brain growth when facing errors.
But why is it difficult to learn from mistakes? This is due to mental barriers related to heuristics. Although we are taught that we can learn from mistakes, we often fail and repeat the same mistakes. Science shows that this repetition is common, highlighting the importance of overcoming these barriers for effective learning.
And why do we repeat mistakes? This happens because the brain creates a threat response to painful stimuli based on past experiences, but still, in thoughts, behavioral patterns, and decisions, we often repeat mistakes, like being late, procrastinating, or judging people hastily. Neuroscientist Pragya Agarwal, in her book ‘Sway: Unravelling Unconscious Bias’, explains that humans are not naturally rational. Information overload exhausts and confuses us, so we filter the excess to see only parts of the world. We notice repetitions and tend to generalize memories, forming conclusions from limited data and using cognitive shortcuts. This creates a reduced flow of information, hindering us from connecting points and filling gaps with previous knowledge, which impairs our learning from mistakes.
What are some of these obstacles? Let’s start with “confirmation bias”: our brains, lazy by nature, require effort to change established patterns and shortcuts. This leads us to revert to old behavior patterns and actions, even when aware of the mistakes, a phenomenon known as confirmation bias. We often resort to ‘instinct’, which is an automatic and subconscious thought based on past experiences.
A second obstacle is the “ego”: Sometimes, we maintain behavior patterns and repeat mistakes due to an ‘ego effect’, which makes us preserve existing beliefs. An experiment conducted in a study called: Haunts or helps from the past: Understanding the effect of recall on current self-control, by Hristina Nicolova, Cait Lamberton, Kelly Haws (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1057740815000728) showed that when reminded of past successes, people tend to repeat those behaviors, but the same does not happen with failures. When thinking about failures, it is common to feel discouraged and resort to comfortable behaviors, even if they are not beneficial. Our brain has a bias for old information and models, known as the familiarity bias.
Even so, it is possible to learn from mistakes!
In an experiment conducted at NYU (https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/809286), monkeys and humans watched dots moving on a screen, judging their direction. Researchers found that both slowed down after a mistake.
The larger the error, the greater the post-error slowdown, showing that more information was being accumulated. However, the quality of this information was low. Our cognitive shortcuts can force us to ignore any new information that could help prevent repeating mistakes.
When making mistakes in a specific task, the ‘frequency bias’ makes us repeat them. Our brains might consider these mistakes as the correct way to perform the task, creating a habitual ‘error path’. The more we repeat the same tasks, the more we strengthen this path until it becomes a permanent cognitive shortcut.
Given this scenario, what can we do? We have a mental ability known as ‘cognitive control’, which can override heuristic shortcuts. Recent neuroscience research has identified brain regions with ‘error self-monitoring neurons’, which monitor errors and are part of a process of learning from them. This discovery could help develop treatments for diseases like Alzheimer’s, where preserved cognitive control is essential.
Although we do not yet fully understand the brain processes involved in cognitive control and self-correction, there are simple measures we can take. One is to become more comfortable with the idea of making mistakes. Our society often shuns failures and mistakes, generating shame. However, the less guilty and ashamed we feel, the more open we are to absorb new information that can help correct our mistakes.
Taking a break after failing a task can be beneficial. Recognizing failures and reflecting on them can help reduce the frequency bias, making us less likely to repeat the same mistakes and reinforce error paths.
