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Who hasn't heard the saying, the only way to heal from pain is through it. Now a new study is saying that it's the way to recover from failure , too. According to newswise.com, our emotional responses to mistakes can lead to improvement. Feeling the pain of failure leads to more effort to correct your mistake than simply thinking about what went wrong, the study says. Researchers found that people who just thought about a failure tended to make excuses for why they were unsuccessful and didn’t try harder when faced with a similar situation.  In contrast, people who focused on their emotions following a failure put forth more effort when they tried again.  “All the advice tells you not to dwell on your mistakes, to not feel bad,” says  Selin Malkoc , co-author of the study and professor of  marketing  at The Ohio State University’s  Fisher College of Business , at newswise.com.  “But we found the opposite. When faced with a failure, it ...

Who wouldn't rather not explode when their spouse forgets their anniversary?  Or their kid leaves his dirty clothes on the floor one last time?  How about when your mother-in-law says, "That would look nice on you, if you could lose a few pounds"? Believe me, I've been there.  But now a new study is saying that there's a way to control our emotions by streamlining them. You heard me right.   Streamlining. The many strategies people use to manage their emotions fall into three core groupings, according to newly published research from the University at Buffalo, as reported by newswise.com. The idea is to help people manage, or more constructively deal with, their emotions, since a lot of psychopathology is related to difficulty in regulating emotions. “The groupings can be useful for clinicians who are trying to better characterize the nature of the emotion regulation difficulties their clients are having,” says Kristin Naragon-Gainey, an assistant...

I've never been a group person.  Leave me in a room alone with my work and let me at it. Though groups are necessary in the business world, and other places, a new study has found that maybe I'm more normal than I know (nah). According to newswise.com, whether people enjoy working in groups or not, the cohesiveness of a team can be instrumental in the success or failure of group activities and each person's fulfillment of individual goals. But can teamwork be taught? Patrick Sonner, PhD, and Michelle Newsome, PhD, instruct a core natural sciences course for undergraduates in which students work in groups of four for the duration of the semester. “Anecdotally, students report poor experiences working in teams even though, individually, all students in the team are intelligent and capable of completing the task. This suggests that there are certain skills that must be learned in order to work effectively in a team,” the researchers wrote in their abstract.  ...

That's right.  All the guts and grit and get-up-and-go you have may turn out not to matter so much in the long run, according to a new study. Seems it's been over-hyped, say researchers.   There are many paths to success, but the significance of grit in helping you reach that goal has been greatly overstated, says an Iowa State University psychologist at newswise.com. The study found no evidence that grit is a good predictor of success. While some educators are working to enhance grit in students, researchers say there’s no indication that it’s possible to boost levels. And even if it were possible, it might not matter. Grit is defined as perseverance and commitment to long-term goals. The research – often associated with University of Pennsylvania professor Angela Duckworth, who first studied grit – is relatively new, compared to the decades of work on performance indicators such as conscientiousness and intelligence. Researchers say their analysis of almost 1...

A new study has found that teenage girls who skip school are probably doing much more than that. And none of it's good. Failing tests and engaging in risky sexual behavior have a lot in common with skipping school, researchers found, after flipping through 18,000 reports written daily by 14- to 17-year-old girls, according to newswise.com. The findings are based on a 10-year study of the development of 387 teenage girls' romantic/sexual relationships and sexual behavior, the Web site notes. During the study, the teens entered their daily activities and mood into a log. "This study demonstrates that young women’s weekday reports of skipping school and failing a test were significantly linked to more frequent vaginal sex, less frequent condom use and different sexual emotions, on that same day," said lead author Devon J. Hensel, Ph.D. Prior studies have shown that academic success is linked to lower sexual risk, but researchers have relied on retrospective infor...

Remember the last time you were terrified to take a test because the teacher threatened you might fail and your future was over? Research is now showing that that's not, well, a great way to warm students up for the exercise, says a new study . Seems like common sense but research has found that t eachers may want to avoid reminding students of the bad consequences of failing a test because doing so could lead to lower scores.  And in our test-score-crazy world, OMG. Even my son, who's a straight A student (no thanks to me) is nervous about the upcoming Common Core test that's about to be administered at his middle school, even though it won't count and won't even be scored. (So why are the kids taking it? Beats me.) “Teachers are desperately keen to motivate their students in the best possible way but may not be aware of how messages they communicate to students around the importance of performing well in exams can be interpreted in different ways,” said le...

This may surprise you.  Entrepreneurial experience doesn't guarantee success. According to smartplanet.com, a new study has found that, in fact, serial entrepreneurs have a dismal record. The study was based on the success and failure rates of 8,400 entrepreneurial ventures in Germany, and concludes that previous experience in the entrepreneurial realm doesn't really predict success going forward. Joe McKendrick writes that the study says that previously failed entrepreneurs are less likely to survive and, in common with entrepreneurs with mixed prior experiences, are more likely to experience bankruptcy. "We find that portfolio and serial experience is unrelated to survival or avoiding bankruptcy. Our results showed that venture survival outcomes are unrelated to prior successful entrepreneurial experience and that failed entrepreneurs are more likely to fail again," he writes, from the study. But not everyone agrees.  Where you get your business education i...