HMN 2026: What are the biological benefits of failure on learning and tools to manage the fallout

Albert Einstein once said, “Failure is success in progress.” Indeed, while failure can be frustrating, painful, even demotivating, research shows it can be an effective tool for learning.

Associate Professor Lauren Margulieux says the research on failure and learning really drew her in.

“There’s so much to learn about learning from how our brains work, but the biological components of learning are often not represented in education research,” she notes.

So Margulieux co-authored an article, published in Educational Psychology Review, to share how we can leverage our biology to learn better.

The goals of the paper were two-fold: to explain how failure primes the brain for learning and to propose behavioral strategies for coping with the negative consequences, focusing on postsecondary students.

Drawing upon neuroscience literature, the authors explain how neurochemicals can affect experiences of failure while learning, especially related to motivation, tolerance for failure and stress. The primary goal in exploring these biological factors was to offer a new framework to better understand and design other factors in education, such as interactions among peers, instructional paradigms and classroom culture.

The paper has two key takeaways, according to Margulieux. The first is that failure and uncertainty are powerful tools for learning, but they go hand in hand with unpleasantness. Secondly, there are many behavioral tools people can use to help them leverage failure for learning while minimizing these unpleasant (and sometimes detrimental) consequences. These include things like breathing techniques, reframing failure to see it as positive and changing our relationship to stressors.

The research shows that people can become better at failing over time to reap the rewards while suffering fewer consequences.

“These findings teach us that, if we know how, we can work with our biology to improve learning,” Margulieux says. “In particular, it shows that we should embrace failure as an efficient path to learning. It also gives practical tools for managing the negative aspects of failure to improve student outcomes.”

Margulieux adds that while most of the paper is about how to overcome failure while learning, it’s important to understand that not all of the tools are a good fit for every learner.

“Our goal is for people to find a tool that works for them, not that they use each of these tools,” she explains. “We view it as exercise. The right exercise for you is the one that you’ll stick with.”