New research says you should make mistakes on purpose

A new study has confirmed the "derring effect": making mistakes on purpose (and fixing them) can supercharge learning. It’s messy, uncomfortable but wildly effective. Perfectionists, this will hurt!

You probably grew up thinking mistakes were bad. Deep down, you know they’re somehow part of learning, but if you’re honest with yourself, you know you still try to avoid them.

Turns out, they’re not just useful. They’re one of the most effective ways to learn, especially when you make them on purpose. That old saying about learning from your mistakes just got an upgrade!

New research just confirmed it

This just in: a new study for the September 2025 edition of Contemporary Educational Psychology titled “Learning from errors: deliberate errors enhance learning” backed up earlier findings with stronger evidence. Deliberate mistakes fall under what cognitive scientists call desirable difficulties: methods that feel harder but improve long-term memory.

When you knowingly write a wrong answer, then fix it, your brain notices the conflict. That mental friction sharpens how you store the right answer. The trick is doing it deliberately. You need to be intentional about making mistakes. Mindless ones won’t cut it.

Compared to rereading or trying to get everything right the first time, deliberate errors force you to engage. You monitor your own thinking. You dig deeper. And you remember more.

What did the new study find out?

The 2025 paper didn’t just replicate earlier results. It widened the scope. It compared deliberate error-making against restudy and retrieval practice, which is one of the most evidence-backed learning techniques out there.

Here’s what happened: a week later, students who made deliberate errors remembered more than those who restudied (unsurprisingly), but they also outperformed those who used retrieval practice. This is groundbreaking!

The effects were not evident in immediate tests, but they were clear in delayed testing (a week later). Even better, when the errors were close-but-wrong (“semantically confusable”) students got sharper at telling similar concepts apart: no more tripping over terms that sound right but mean something else entirely.

Why does this work? The researchers suggest that fixing an error creates a special kind of memory trace, a unique mental tag that makes the correct version easier to recall later.

But don’t get clever with random guessing. The study underlines that gains only showed up when the mistakes were intentional. If students scribbled something thoughtless or didn’t reflect, the whole thing fell flat.

Making mistakes feels like falling for precisely what you want to avoid when you’re learning, but research shows that this changes if you’re deliberate about making them. Think about it this way: it’s like arguing with your own brain and winning.

But here’s the twist: students didn’t trust the method. Even after the deliberate-error group outperformed the rest, they still believed strategies like restudy were more effective. Classic brain betrayal. That mismatch between perceived and actual learning? It's a classic metacognitive illusion.

It’s not a new thing: the derring effect

This isn’t a brand-new idea. Wong and Yap’s 2024 study already showed that deliberate mistakes helped students retain more, stay engaged and transfer their knowledge better.

Some researchers had doubts. Early results were inconsistent. But the new 2025 study cleared that up: the derring effect is a real thing.

The derring effect: When students intentionally make errors and correct them, they retain more, engage more deeply, and transfer knowledge more effectively than with error-free practice.

Traditional studying is like using GPS. You get there, but forget the way. Deliberate mistakes are like getting lost on purpose, then learning the whole map.

How to fail forward on purpose

I know, if you're a perfectionist (and if you're reading this, chances are you are), the idea of making mistakes on purpose sounds like hell, so this technique may feel like cognitive anarchy. Here are some tips on how to proceed:

• Frame it as a game: Tell yourself, “Ok, now I’m going to make a mistake on purpose and then correct it. How can I answer this question incorrectly?”. This will help reduce the cringe idea of “you being wrong” (drama).

• Start small. Try writing one wrong answer per study session. Fix it right away. The correction is the whole point.

• Explain the correction out loud or in writing. What was wrong? Why does the right version work better? If you're stuck, ask an AI to play devil’s advocate.

• Keep a record of your “best mistakes”. Review them. It’s hard to forget something you caught, fixed, and filed under something that only makes sense to you and your prefrontal cortex.

If you name that record “Chronicles of Regret (Educational Edition),” I won’t judge. Unlike your ex, your mistakes are honest!

Stop fearing the mess

Deliberate mistakes work. Scrubbing them out may keep your notes tidy, but it won’t help your brain. This new study also showed us one of the biggest challenges out there: your own perception of learning. Like the students in the study, you probably doubt the efficacy of making deliberate mistakes.

So here’s the real question: you say you want to learn deeply. Are you willing to feel stupid for five seconds to make that happen?

And remember: it's not about tolerating errors. It's about using them and building around them.

If you’re going to screw up, do it with intent.

Keep learning

Nerd out with AI

Prompt suggestions. Always ask follow-up questions

• I’m trying to study a complex topic (ask me which one), and I want to use deliberate mistakes to understand it better. I will deliberate make 3 example mistakes, can you help me correct them one by one?

• I find it really uncomfortable to make mistakes on purpose, but I’ve read it’s an efficient study technique. Can you help me reframe that discomfort and suggest how to start small without it feeling chaotic?

• Act as a teacher and test me using retrieval practice on “deliberate mistakes and the derring effect.” Ask me 6 questions, one at a time, only proceeding when I answer each one. Make them progressively harder.

• Act as a learning coach. I want to try the “derring effect” while studying. Can you walk me through a step-by-step routine using deliberate errors for a concept I’m learning?