People systematically underestimate how often things go wrong in the world—a bias researchers call the “failure gap.” This mega-project was published in the Journal of Personality & Social Psychology.
We rely on perceptions of how common events are when forming opinions, making decisions, and supporting policies. Prior research shows that these perceptions are often biased. Much of the literature has focused on optimism; for example, people tend to believe good outcomes are more likely and bad outcomes less likely, especially when those outcomes affect them. However, does this tendency extend beyond personal life to broader societal issues, such as crime, health, or economic failures?
Lauren Eskreis-Winkler and colleagues examined this broader question, asking whether people misjudge how often failures occur across many domains of life. They proposed that the issue may not just be optimism, but the way information is shared: failures are less frequently discussed than successes because they are uncomfortable, embarrassing, or socially costly to communicate. As a result, people may develop systematically skewed impressions of reality because they are exposed to incomplete information
The team ran a large, multi-study research program involving approximately 3000 participants, combining controlled online experiments, analyses of real-world data, and field studies to understand how people perceive failure and how those perceptions can be changed. Across the initial set of studies, participants recruited from platforms like Amazon Mechanical Turk and Prolific were asked to estimate how often different kinds of failures occur across more than 30 domains, including national issues (e.g., crime, health care), global problems (e.g., poverty, pollution), and everyday personal experiences (e.g., relationship breakups, product returns).
In some cases, participants estimated multiple items within a single domain, while in others they focused on one type of failure. These estimates were then compared to real-world statistics drawn from official data sources. The researchers also varied how questions were framed, sometimes asking about failure directly and other times about success, to ensure that any bias was specific to failure rather than general misestimation.
To investigate why these misperceptions arise, the researchers examined how often failure versus success is discussed in widely available information sources. They conducted large-scale searches of approximately 2.4 million news articles using databases such as Nexis Uni, systematically comparing how frequently failures and successes were mentioned across domains that participants had previously evaluated. They extended this approach to other forms of shared information, including social media and online consumer reviews, to test whether the pattern held beyond traditional news.
The researchers also designed experiments where participants were exposed to curated information environments; for example, sets of reviews or headlines that either underrepresented or accurately reflected the true rate of failure to directly test whether exposure to skewed information shapes people’s beliefs.
The later studies moved beyond perception to examine when the bias might disappear and what consequences it has. Participants were asked to estimate failures in contexts where sharing negative experiences had recently become more socially acceptable, such as reports of sexual misconduct following the #MeToo movement, allowing the researchers to test whether reduced stigma increases awareness.
Finally, a series of field and online experiments examined how correcting misperceptions influences real-world attitudes and decisions. These included samples of voters, educators, and workplace managers, who were provided with accurate statistics about failure rates and then asked to make judgments about policies such as criminal punishment, school discipline, workplace stigma, and parental leave.
Across the studies, the results revealed a robust and consistent pattern: people substantially underestimated how often failures occur. This was true across national, international, and individual domains, as well as within specific contexts like sports, education, and medication effectiveness. Even when the structure of a situation made the true answer obvious, such as competitive sports, where the wins and losses must balance, participants still underestimated failure rates. On average, failures occurred far more frequently in reality than people believed, indicating a broad and systematic gap between perception and reality.
The researchers also found strong evidence that this gap is linked to how information is shared. Failures were consistently underrepresented in news coverage, social media, and online reviews relative to their true occurrence. When people were experimentally exposed to information environments that downplayed failure, their estimates became even more inaccurate.
Conversely, when the information they encountered accurately reflected real-world failure rates, the gap narrowed. In contexts where discussing failure had become more normalized (e.g., public conversations about sexual misconduct), the usual pattern weakened or even reversed, suggesting that visibility and openness play a key role in shaping perceptions.
Importantly, correcting these misperceptions had meaningful downstream effects on attitudes and decision-making. When participants learned the true prevalence of failures, they became less supportive of harsh punitive measures, such as strict disciplinary actions or mass incarceration, and more supportive of policy changes aimed at addressing underlying problems. In workplace and policy contexts, increased awareness of failure rates also reduced stigma and encouraged more supportive practices, such as extending parental leave.
Taken together, these findings demonstrate not only that people misjudge failure, but that these misjudgments can shape important social and institutional decisions.
One limitation is that the failure gap may depend on context and culture; because most participants came from Western, educated populations, it remains unclear whether the same pattern generalizes globally.
The research, “The Failure Gap” was authored by Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, Kaitlin Woolley, Minhee Kim, and Eliana Polimeni.
