Failure Can Be Rewarding, Study Finds

Making a mistake can be a rewarding experience – as long as your brain has a chance to learn from it.

Researchers at University of Southern California used an MRI study to determine that participants’ brains could activate the “reward circuit” or the “ventral striatum” if they were put in a situation that allowed them to figure out what they did wrong.

The study, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, looked at 28 participants, with an average age of 26. The subjects responded to a series of questions. If they chose wrong they lost money, but if they chose right they earned money.

There were three types of trials. The first trial prompted participants’ brains to respond to getting the wrong answer with avoidance learning – which is a punishing negative experience that trains the brain to avoid repeating mistakes. A second trial prompted reward-based learning, which is a positive experience where a person feels rewarded for getting the right answer. A third round tested if subjects learned from their failure and could understand what they got wrong.

Brain scans show that in the third round people’s brains responded positively, mimicking a reward-based learning response.

“We show that in certain circumstances, when we get enough information to contextualize the choices, then our brain essentially reaches towards the reinforcement mechanism instead of turning toward avoidance,” said Giorgio Coricelli, a USC Dornsife associate professor of economics and psychology, in a press release.

Coricelli compared the process to the experience of regret, where doing something wrong results in a change of behavior in the future.