How many times have you heard that failure is a “teachable moment”? That you learn more from failure than success? In a 2017 commencement speech, U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts actually wished the graduating class “bad luck,” so they'd have something to learn from. Yet my colleague Ayelet Fishbach and I find that failure has the opposite effect: It thwarts learning. In a recent study, we presented over 300 telemarketers with a quiz. The telemarketers answered 10 questions on customer service, each with two possible responses (i.e., “How many dollars do U.S. companies spend on customer service each year?” The answer choices: 60 billion or 90 billion). The telemarketers received success feedback on questions they guessed right (“You are correct!”) and failure feedback on the ones they guessed wrong (“You are incorrect!”). However, since each question had just two options, they could have learned the right answer from success or failure.