Error prevention, error management, or both?

All people make errors, but how people think and perform after errors is theorized to be affected by the way errors are framed. The literature differentiates between two error-handling strategies: error prevention, which focuses on removing all errors, and error management, which focuses on catching errors, learning from them, and minimizing their negative consequences. In the present study we develop and test a theoretical model in order to establish whether it is the presence or absence of error management or error prevention instructions, or their combination that influence people's cognitions and performance. Our findings show that error prevention has negative effects on cognition (fewer on-task thoughts; more negative self-related off-task thoughts) and adaptive transfer performance (trend), while error management dampens people's appraisal of errors as threats. Thus, error prevention has more negative effects, whereas error management reduces negative effects rather than strengthening positive effects. The results indicate that the way error prevention and error management act and interact is more complex than previously thought and work that incorporates full-factorial designs is necessary in order to establish what drives the effects we find