Rather than informing an appropriate course of action, the more immediate, visceral, intensely powerful, emotional - possibly blunter - response can overwhelm the slower, more elaborately calibrated, evaluative system. We become paralysed by fear. We lose a sense of control and panic ensues. Our thoughts are distorted and we become disorganised by fear. In this frenzied state of mind we cannot respond to reason.

Numerous studies show that we process negative and positive information differently. You might say we’re saddled with a “negativity bias.” We take in “bad” information, including small mistakes and failures, more readily than “good” information. We have more trouble letting go of bad compared to good thoughts. We remember the negative things that happen to us more vividly and for longer than we do the positive ones. We pay more attention to negative than positive feedback. People interpret negative facial expressions more quickly than positive ones. Bad, simply put, is stronger than good. This is not to say we agree with or value it more but rather that we notice it more.

First, fear inhibits learning. Research shows that fear consumes physiologic resources, diverting them from parts of the brain that manage working memory and process new information. In a word, learning. And that includes learning from failure. It is hard for people to do their best work when they’re afraid. It’s especially hard to learn from failure because doing so is a cognitively demanding task. Second, fear impedes talking about our failures. Today’s never-ending chore of self-presentation has exacerbated this ancient human tendency. The pressure to look successful has never been greater than in this age of social media. Studies find today’s teens, in particular, are obsessed with putting forward a sanitized version of their lives, endlessly checking for “likes” and suffering emotionally from comparisons and slights, real or perceived. Our emotional reaction to a perceived rejection is the same as to an actual one, because it’s how we interpret a situation that shapes our emotional response. And it’s not just the kids who worry. Whether in professional accomplishment, attractiveness, or social inclusion, keeping up appearances can feel as necessary as breathing to full-grown adults. The real failure, I’ve found, is believing that others will like us more if we are failure-free. In reality, we appreciate and like people who are genuine and interested in us, not those who present a flawless exterior.

When presented with the choice between admitting our mistakes or protecting our self-image, the decision is easy. We want to believe we are not at fault, so we find every reason to justify what we did as correct. That makes it hard to learn! A psychological bias known as the fundamental attribution error exacerbates the problem. Stanford psychologist Lee Ross identified this fascinating asymmetry: when we see others fail, we spontaneously view their character or ability as the cause. It’s almost amusing to realize that we do exactly the opposite in explaining our own failures—spontaneously seeing external factors as the cause. For example, if we show up late for a meeting, we blame traffic. If a colleague is late for a meeting, we may conclude he is uncommitted or lazy.

We are saddled with what psychologists call prepared fears. These include fears of dangerous animals, loud noises, and sudden movements. To this list of prepared fears add that of being expelled by the tribe. University of Virginia professor James “Jim” Detert and I consider being rejected by a group as a survival-based prepared fear. The risk of coming up short in the eyes of an authority such as one’s boss triggers a prepared fear in the brain related to being expelled from the tribe, a reality that might long ago have resulted in death from exposure or starvation. But today when we’re afraid to speak up about failure, our colleagues lose valuable opportunities to learn vicariously. Also, we miss out on opportunities to avoid preventable failures. Meanwhile, distracted by irrational prepared fears, we miss signals of longer-term peril that require slower thinking but constitute true threats to survival, such as the impact of climate change on food supplies and sea levels. Fast, automatic low road processing feeds the confirmation bias, encourages complacency, and hides failure’s useful lessons. Slow high road processing happens when we stop to question the automatic to wonder what is happening and what it might mean. Most important, it happens when we stop to ask ourselves, How might I have contributed to the failure?