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April 3, 2026

The Failure Gap

By: Rebecca McInroy

In a forthcoming paper in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Eskreis-Winkler and colleagues describe what they call “the failure gap” — the consistent finding that outside observers dramatically overestimate how often people succeed after failing. In this episode of Two Guys on Your Head, Dr. Art Markman, describes the study and implications of the results with Dr. Bob Duke, and Rebecca McInroy.

Reference: Eskreis-Winkler, L., Woolley, K., Kim, M., & Polimeni, E. (in press). The failure gap. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Preprint available at https://ssrn.com/abstract=5407064