Our brains learn more from rewards than from failures. Breakthrough research from a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) has shown the remarkable power of rewards on the brain. The MIT study was published in the journal Neuron last summer and was summarized in this month’s Harvard Business Review.
In short, the data shows that success is a lot more informative than failure. If you receive a reward for a successful action, the brain remembers what it did right. But with failure, the brain isn’t sure what to store so it doesn’t change at all (unless there is a clear negative consequence such as the shock a child feels when sticking something into an electrical outlet).
Now neuroscientists have long known that the brain can rewire itself in response to experience—what’s known as neuroplasticity. But until this research scientists didn’t know what causes brain matter to begin changing. Positive environmental feedback in the form of a reward for success triggers plasticity. Equally important and somewhat surprising: It’s opposite, failure, has no impact on our development.
We can glean two things from this new research. First, if we are managers, know that our employees’ brains will learn when we reward them for their successes. They’ll do more of the same positive behaviors. But second, we learn that we need to pay more attention to our failures and ask ourselves why we are failing. Obviously we are not hardwired to learn from failure, and must push to ask why we failed.
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