For more than a generation, this notion has been popularized – when you’re taking a multiple choice test, it’s best to stick with your initial answer, your “first thought.” But the data reports otherwise, yet the notion persists.
In a recent blog entry (http://www.spring.org.uk), Jeremy Dean, a researcher at University College London, explains that study after study “shows that when you change your answer in a multiple-choice test, you are more likely to be changing it from wrong to right than right to wrong. So actually sticking with your first answer is, on average, the wrong strategy.”
The most compelling analysis was a survey of 33 individual studies on answer-changing behavior, dating back to 1928. According to the survey’s abstract: “The analysis showed that, generally, only a small percentage of test items were changed by Ss, most of the changes were from wrong to right answers, most test takers are answer changers, and most answer changers are point gainers.”
Despite the consistent findings, Dean pointed out, college students, and professors, still believe in first choice. Dean cites a 2005 study (“Counterfactual Thinking and the First Instinct Fallacy,” by Justin Kruger, Derrick Wirtz and Dale T. Miller), which found that 75% of college students believe that changing their first choice would lower their score. Added Dean: “Instructors believe it as well: in one study 55% believed it would lower students' scores while only 16% believed it would improve them.”
So why do people still do it? Dean offers one hypothesis, drawing from the Kruger study: “It’s partly because it feels more painful to get an answer wrong because you changed it than wrong because you didn't change it.”
The bottom line: the fear of regret, it appears, keeps this fallacy alive.
First let's not confuse a guess of what is my lucky number with is A or C the right anserw to my qualifying exam. The human brain will work through such problems and that is a significant part of how we come to an orderly society. Questions re weighted by many things but the consequence of a wrong anserew is always an important consideration. If your actions can affect a love one or a tribe member pause is taken. If the action can cause a violent death great gravity is given to the question, (The Origins of Political Order; F. Fukuyama).
ReplyDeleteSo my first response is, I'll take a hit sitting on 18 I'll take a hit. But if the question is what is the right Chemo therapy agents , I'll study the literature and change my mind as the situation evolves.
JgBack MD