HOW YOUR BRAIN REACTS TO MISTAKES DEPENDS ON YOUR MINDSET

Posted on October 1, 2011 by Jeffrey Newman

People who believe they can learn from their mistakes have a different biological and chemical brain reaction to mistakes than people who think that intelligence is fixed. This is the finding of a new study soon to be published in the upcoming issue of the Association for Psychological Science. Jason Moser of Michigan State, one of the authors found that when measuring electrical activity in the brain, there are two distinct signals. One is the “oh crap” kind of response and a second reveals a person who is consciously aware of the mistake and is trying to correct it. The researchers found that people who think they can correct their mistakes and learn from them successfully bounced back after an error. Their brains also reacted differently by producing a bigger second signal, one which says “I see I’ve made a mistake, so I should pay more attention. The researchers believe that people can be trained to understand and believe that they can work harder and learn more by showing them how their brain reacts to making mistakes.