Are all errors created equal? Testing the effect of error characteristics on learning from errors in three countries

Research output: Journal contributionsJournal articlesResearchpeer-review

Authors

Errors can be a source of learning. However, little is known to what extent learning from errors depends on error characteristics and the context in which the error was made. We tested the assumption that more learning occurs from errors with severe consequences and when the error was made by oneself. We further investigated if and how learning from errors and organizational error culture differs between countries. In two vignette studies (Study 1, N = 118 from the United States; Study 2, N = 588 from the United States, Hungary, and Germany), participants responded to error scenarios that happened to employees at work. As expected, people learned more from errors in terms of affective error learning (Studies 1 and 2) and cognitive error learning (Study 1) if consequences were severe and if the error was made by themselves. Furthermore, we found differences between countries (Study 2) in that participants from the United States learned more from errors and reported more error management culture than participants from Hungary or Germany. Furthermore, the relationship of country and learning was mediated by error management culture. With our studies, we aim to contribute to a better exploitation of the learning potential inherent in errors.
Original languageEnglish
JournalEuropean Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology
Volume30
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)110-124
Number of pages15
ISSN1359-432X
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 02.01.2021

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
This research was supported by grants from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) [grants no. KE 1377/4-1, FR 638/38-1].

Publisher Copyright:
© 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Documents

DOI

Recently viewed

Activities

  1. Learning through play? Evaluating digital games for language learning
  2. Learning to Rate Player Actions on the Example of Soccer
  3. Quantum Mechanics and Reality, lecture by Antony Valentini
  4. A Simple Likelihood-based Panel Cointegration Test in the Presence of a Linear Time Trend and Cross-sectional Dependence
  5. Methodology of Scenario Technique in Regional Development Processes
  6. Towards an Emotional Geography of Urban Policing: Exploring the Materialization of Police Territoriality with Emotional Mapping Interviews
  7. CES Summer School 2016
  8. Macro Opinion in Comparative Perspective Class policy moods: a new approach to responsiveness inequality
  9. Interpretation and contestation of fracking in a changing context: The case of Germany and its proclaimed energy transition
  10. Time-Induced Political Inequality: Why Future Generations Need Proxy Representation
  11. Anarchism as a Framework for Rethinking Educational Authority
  12. ‘Thinking the Problematic‘
  13. Transition into unemployment and demand for redistribution
  14. Ecological Applications (Zeitschrift)
  15. The hidden power dynamics of organizing through enterprise social media
  16. Emerging Visions of Seamless Travel: (En)Countering Camouflaged Sovereignty at the Frictionless Border
  17. Robots versus Machines
  18. ECPR Winter School in Methods and Techniques
  19. Exploring organizational processes:A tension-based view
  20. Digital Teaching and Learning
  21. Are Self-Employed Time and Money Poor? Dynamics of Interpendent Multidimensional Poverty with German Time Use Diary Data

Publications

  1. Errors in Working with Office Computers
  2. Introduction: The representative turn in EU studies
  3. Duration of Organizational Decision Processes in Organizations in View of Simulation Calculations
  4. Portuguese part-of-speech tagging with large margin structure learning
  5. A Two-Stage Sliding-Mode High-Gain Observer to Reduce Uncertainties and Disturbances Effects for Sensorless Control in Automotive Applications
  6. Archives
  7. Implementing the Kyoto Protocol without Russia
  8. Crowdsourcing
  9. Ob lang oder kurz, berührbar oder nicht: Ist die Längenschätzkompetenz eindimensional?
  10. Energy model, boundary object and societal lens
  11. Soft Skills for Hard Constraints
  12. Advancing Qualitative Meta-Studies (QMS)
  13. Introduction to Philosophy of Management
  14. How people explain their own and others’ behavior:
  15. Development and criterion validity of differentiated and elevated vocational interests in adolescence
  16. Calibration of a simple method for determining ammonia loss in the field
  17. Conceptualizing community in energy systems
  18. Embedding Evidence on Conservation Interventions Within a Context of Multilevel Governance
  19. A highly transparent method of assessing the contribution of incentives to meet various technical challenges in distributed energy systems
  20. Advanced extrusion processes
  21. Geometric control tools for robotic manipulators
  22. Sustainability and management control. Exploring and theorizing control patterns in large European firms
  23. Application of Friction Riveting technique for the assembly of electronic components on printed circuit boards (PCB)
  24. “Making Sense”
  25. A Genetic Algorithm for the Dynamic Management of Cellular Reconfigurable Manufacturing Systems
  26. Evaluating the (cost-)effectiveness of guided and unguided Internet-based self-help for problematic alcohol use in employees