Team Success Can Hide Individual Mistakes

New research finds that people learn less from mistakes when their team succeeds.

Is failure necessary for learning? In many cases, yes. Scientists have long known that success can reduce how much people learn from their mistakes (Al-Fawakhiri et al., 2023). But what happens in a team setting, where outcomes depend on more than one person?

New research from Hokkaido University shows that team success or failure can strongly influence how individuals learn, even when their own actions do not directly determine the outcome. The researchers found that when an individual makes an error, they are less likely to correct it if the team succeeds.

Consider a soccer match. A player makes a poor pass, but the team still scores. In this situation, the player is less likely to adjust their behavior the next time around. However, if the same mistake leads to a missed goal, the player becomes more likely to learn, adapt, and improve.

"Interestingly, this happens without any change in how people consciously perceive their own error," explains Professor Masaki Abe, who led the research at Hokkaido University.

Scientists reached this conclusion when they recruited 36 participants and asked them to play a video game in pairs. One participant acted as the "passer," aiming a ball toward an intermediate target, while the other acted as the "shooter," trying to score a goal. Both players received monetary compensation every time their team scored a goal.

"To isolate the effect of the team result on individual learning, we used a simple trick," says Abe. "In some games, we secretly controlled the ball's movement. So, regardless of how the participants played, the passer's mistake was kept the same, while the final outcome was manipulated so that the team either scored or missed."

The study found that when the team succeeded, the passer adjusted their behavior less on the next attempt. When the team failed, the passer showed greater correction and learning.

"In team sports, a good result can overshadow individual mistakes. A sloppy pass is quickly forgotten once a goal is scored," says Abe. "Our findings suggest this effect runs deeper than expected and influences learning at the level of the nervous system."

These findings provide important insights into training, education, and teamwork. Simply focusing on team outcomes, such as winning or losing, may not be sufficient to support individual learning and improvement. Instead, individual actions should be evaluated independently of the team's overall success.

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Funding:

This work was supported by the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) and the Establishment of University Fellowships toward the Creation of Science Technology Innovation (JPMJFS2101), and by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) (23K10655).