[fxtentacle]

Fully agree. If I tell someone that they failed a test, they can either bounce back and work on their skills to pass the re-test, or they can internalize it and stop trying.

In my opinion, the 2nd choice is a very common mental disease, in the sense that I see no benefits but lots of drawbacks from generalizing a failure in one part of your life into a character attribute. So most likely, such a trait would have been evolutionary selected against.

In short, people who internalize failure are evolutionary less fit.