Fear of failure inhibits perseverance towards success

 Tonight as I was reviewing my Mechanics of Materials videos on YouTube getting ready for next semester, I was distracted by a suggested video Tagline "The Super Mario Effect: Trick your brain...".  So of course I clicked on it because I needed to know the rest of the title. What ensued was a Ted Talk on the adverse affect of the fear of failure on achieving success. You can watch it yourself here and I really suggest that you do. 

Essentially, he argues that focusing on one's goal and not on the failures that occur along the way is the most effective way to achieve success. He conducted a study that showed that when failing was associated with negative outcomes (e.g. losing points) compared to no negative consequence, people were less likely to keep trying for success.  These findings caused me to pause as an engineering educator for two reasons: 1) my job as an educator involves getting students to learn highly technical, difficult content, and in this process students inevitably make mistakes, which typically are met with point deductions; and 2) in many cases, engineering largely involves failing again and again before finding success (we call it the engineering design process). 

So after watching this video, it occurs to me that this Super Mario Effect mindset is something that all engineering students need to be exposed to and hopefully develop in order to successfully complete an engineering degree. Otherwise the penalties from the seemingly endless series of errors and misunderstandings we all make in trying to learn something really hard may become too disincentivizing. But after thinking about what students could get out of this video, I wondered what faculty could learn from it. What would an engineering classroom look like in which we didn't penalize students for making mistakes? How would grades be awarded? Would students be less motivated to study if they knew mistakes wouldn't cost them points or would be they be more motivated to persevere, i.e. not quit coming to class after failing the midterm. I don't have the answers, but it's certainly something to explore given the striking implications of his study. I'd love to hear your thoughts.