People are systematically unaware of the mishaps, problems, and failures around them, a phenomenon we dub the failure gap. Across 30+ domains, failure occurred an average of 61% of the time; yet people believed the failure rate was around 41%.
The Failure Gap
Research
74 Pages
Key Takeaways
Sports: People believed teams in the National Hockey League collectively lose fewer than 50% of their games—a logical impossibility in a sport where each time one team loses, another wins.
Ego: When a failure occurs, it is psychologically costly for someone close to the failure to share it. Negative information about the self—especially failure—is ego-threatening. Contemplating it, let alone sharing it, runs counter to two of the most foundational human motives: the desire to feel competent.
Human Nature: People closest to a failure—those with the clearest access to information about a failure that occurred—will tend to be those with the strongest motive not to share it. This could seriously impede the accessibility of information.
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