Failure analysis is about explaining your failures. Describing why you failed can help you succeed in the future because it provides education and increases motivation. Failure analysis and the Attribution Therory is similar to The Secret or the Law of Attraction - but it's more practical and involved.
How you explain your failures or describe why you failed involves your perceptions of success or failure (and your self-esteem). The Attribution Theory is how people explain things. When you explain your failure – whether it's littering or cheating on your spouse – you cite either external or internal causes.
Knowing how you explain your failure helps in building resiliency. Internal causes of failure are more likely to help you succeed in the future.
Explaining Your Failures: External Attributions (External Causes of Failure)
- "There was no garbage can, so I threw the wrapper on the ground."
- "My wife isn't giving me enough sex, so I had to sleep with the other woman."
- "The devil made me do it."
Explaining Your Failures: Internal Attributions (Internal Causes of Failure)
- "I'm a messy person, and I'm not concerned about the world. Someone cleans it up, so who cares if I litter?"
- "I can't stay faithful to one woman. Maybe other husbands can do it, but not me. I need to sow my oats."
- "I'm a good person. I do good things."
Psychological Research About Explaining Your Failures
Describing why you failed can help you succeed because your future behavior depends on your attributions. If you believe you failed because of who you are and what you believe, you're more likely to change.
A psychological study involved teachers and the principal telling students how neat and clean they were. After a couple weeks, the kids littered less and were more likely to clean up after themselves after a messy project – and they had higher self-esteem and more positive behaviors.
This is why rewarding the good and telling people what you appreciate about them is so powerful – and creates even more positive behaviors. It's an upward spiral. If you tell your partner or children how helpful and smart they are, they'll live up to your expectations. They'll begin to believe in their own helpfulness and wisdom, and they'll learn to use internal attributions to explain their behaviors.
This works for you, too.
Explaining Your Failures and Self-Fulfilling Prophecies
Telling yourself that you're helpful and wise works the same way! It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. Reinforcing your successes can spiral upward and cause more success – and it can work with weight loss goals, relationships, and even changing your personality traits. Describing why you failed can help you succeed because it changes your mindset.
Explaining Your Failures: Why External Attributions Are "Bad"
You change your attitudes and beliefs about yourself when you assign an internal cause to your behavior. For instance if you admit that you cheat on your spouse because of an internal cause, then you have the power to change it (or not). If you're cheating for external reasons such as because your wife is lacking somehow, then you have no control and you're simply reacting to your relationship. This leaves you feeling powerless and inept, and more likely to engage in self-destructive behaviors.
When you explain your failure as caused by factors outside of you, then you'll keep failing.
External attributions aren't in and of themselves "bad." It depends on the situation. External attributions are most effective when people believe their internal factors caused them to earn an external reward (eg, "I studied hard, so I earned an A on the test").
Internal attributions are more likely to cause changes in behavior and lead to success in life, which is why how you explain your failure can help you succeed later on.
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