Fear of failure is not a fleeting side effect, but a psychosocial mechanism that forms at the intersection of three forces: others' evaluation of us, our own self-esteem, and the cost of getting it wrong (time, money, reputation, opportunities). The question "Is it a hindrance or an engine?" is misleading if presented as a binary choice; fear of failure can act as a brake or a fuel depending on the context and how an individual interprets failure: whether they see it as a learnable piece of information or a final judgment on one's identity.The PISA 2022 school well-being reports capture part of this paradox: in high-performing economies such as Singapore, Macau (China) and Chinese Taipei, more than 70% of students expressed high anxiety about "perceived failure" and anxiety about how others perceive them, despite overall academic excellence (OECD, 2023).
If we ask: How does failure shape our thinking more than success? Part of the answer is that success often confirms what we already believe (I am capable), while failure opens a cognitive gap: Why didn't it work? This gap forces the mind to reconstruct its explanations, adjust its strategies, and sometimes redefine its goals.A study published in Frontiers in Psychology (2025) describes this process as "meaning-making": when an adolescent experiences success or failure, he compares the event to his beliefs about himself (e.g., "I am a good student").If a contradiction arises (failure despite effort), the individual begins to either absorb the experience into a temporary explanation (situational reasons) or modify their beliefs and goals (changing their perception of themselves or their path). This means that failure not only hurts performance; it directly presses the boundaries of identity: Who am I when I don't succeed? Hence its power in shaping thinking and behavior, because reinterpreting failure is essentially a renegotiation of the self (Gao, Wang, Lu, Chen, & Morrin, 2024).
Recent figures indicate that fear of failure is a widespread phenomenon that is not limited to "anxious people" as some imagine, but extends to entrepreneurial and educational environments. The GEM Global Report 2024/2025 detects an alarming trend: in 48 out of 51 participating economies, at least one third of people who see good opportunities but refrain from starting a business due to fear of failure, and 27 out of 40 economies have increased this percentage compared to 2023 (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2025).At the individual level, fear is not a general idea; it is a "behavioral barrier" that prevents action despite the perception of opportunity. This explains why failure may seem more "shaping" in our consciousness than success: because it comes as a threatening possibility before action, not just an evaluation afterwards, it redirects our decisions from the beginning: we avoid, postpone, lower our ambitions, or choose safe goals that do not expose us.
When the fear of failure turns into complete paralysis from trying, we are not talking about laziness, but rather a self-reinforcing cycle: fear raises stress, and the mind looks for immediate stress relief, so it chooses avoidance or postponement, the individual feels a brief relief, the habit of postponement is strengthened as a quick "emotional regulation" tool, and then the fear returns stronger because the skill has not been tested and the confidence has not been built.A study (Duru, Balkis, & Duru, 2024) illustrates this series with quantitative data in university students: Fear of failure was associated with emotion regulation difficulties, and emotion regulation difficulties in turn predicted procrastination, and procrastination reduced academic satisfaction.It also reported that fear of failure explained 47% of the variance of emotion regulation difficulties, and fear and regulation difficulties together explained 25% of the variance of procrastination. This brings us closer to the meaning of "paralysis": not a sudden stop, but a defensive adaptation that the brain learns to reduce anxiety now, but accumulates a greater price later (poorer performance, guilt, less satisfaction, and greater fear of evaluation).
As for the question: Do Arab societies punish or tolerate failure? Generalizing here is dangerous, but indicators from entrepreneurship and economic opportunities can be used to understand social trends. The GEM Jordan 2023/2024 report (published with GIZ support) shows that 54.3% of Jordanians said that fear of failure may prevent them from starting a business, and even among those who see good opportunities, 52% said they would not start because of fear of failure.(Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit [GIZ], 2024). In the GEM Global Report 2024/2025, examples from the region also stand out, such as the suggestion that more than half of those who see good opportunities in Saudi Arabia may refrain from starting a business for fear of failure (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor, 2025).Reading these figures as "cultural punishment" is a gross oversimplification; the institutional and economic environment plays a critical role: difficulty accessing finance, limited safety nets, complexity of procedures, and the high cost of loss to family and reputation.When the cost of failure is high and second chances are rare, society becomes less tolerant in practice, even if it rhetorically encourages experimentation. In contrast, when business incubators expand, bankruptcy laws improve, and job opportunities expand, "tolerance for failure" becomes easier because it does not threaten economic survival.
In this sense, fear of failure can be understood as a dual signal: sometimes it is a smart driver that increases preparedness and attention and prevents impulsiveness, especially when it turns into planning and reviewing risks instead of a final retreat. Entrepreneurship literature among university students describes "entrepreneurial fear of failure" as a psychological barrier related to contextual factors such as parental influence, education and the student's social identity, and notes that the outcomes are not the same: fear may lead to withdrawal, and may lead to seeking support and additional skills if the educational culture supports learning from mistakes (Gao et al., 2024).). Here the role of identity reappears: if self-esteem is conditional on achievement alone, failure becomes an existential threat and results in paralysis; if identity is broader (values, skills, meaning, relationships), failure can be absorbed as experience in a long process.The "meaning-making" model in Liu et al. (2025) helps to explain this: the way success or failure is interpreted (is it situational or substantive?) and whether the individual has clarity in their self-concept determine whether the experience is transformed into growth or brokenness.
Fear of failure becomes a hindrance when it is attached to identity (I am a failure) and when the social, economic, and institutional costs of failure are high, turning it into a chronic avoidance that feeds procrastination, reduces satisfaction, and reproduces fear. It becomes an engine when failure is redefined as data for learning, and the context provides a "margin of error" that allows experimentation (in school, in the family, in the labor market, and in entrepreneurial policies).The numbers from PISA and GEM are clear: even the most advanced societies are not immune to the fear of failure, and fear can rise globally even with opportunity. The real difference lies not in the presence or absence of fear, but in what it does to us: does it drive us to prepare and try, or does it teach us to run away before we start?
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