THINKER'S ALMANAC - November 10

When taking a multiple-choice test, should you ever change your answers after marking your first choice?

Subject: First Instinct Fallacy - Multiple Choice Tests

Event:  Birthday of Benjamin Wood, 1894

Sometimes I lie awake at night and I ask, "Is life a multiple-choice test or is it a true or false test?" ...Then a voice comes to me out of the dark and says, "We hate to tell you this but life is a thousand-word essay.”  -Charles M. Schulz

On this day in 1894, Benjamin Wood, professor of education at Columbia University, was born in Brownsville, Texas.  The most notable of Professor Wood’s achievements was the invention of the multiple choice test.  He also played a role in designing the first scoring machines that automatically read the pencil-in bubble sheets and tabulated the scores.

Since the birth of multiple choice tests in the 1930s, a folklore has developed around how to approach these types of tests.  The most popular conundrum encountered is the question of whether or not to change an answer; in other words, are test takers better served by going with their gut instinct on multiple choice questions or should they second-guess their answers? 

                                                                         Image by eslfuntaiwan from Pixabay 

Psychological researchers have identified what they call the first instinct fallacy, the test taking error of believing you should never change the initial answer you make on a multiple choice test.  Instead, the research shows that students should be more strategic, using a metacognitive approach.  In a 2016 study, students were coached to approach each question with a two part strategy.  First, they should select what they think is the best answer. Second, they should indicate their level of confidence in this answer as high, medium, or low.  For answers that were labeled high, students were instructed to stay with their first answer.  With answers that were labeled medium or low, students were encouraged to consider revising their answers.  Using this two-part strategy, students more often changed their initial answer from incorrect to correct.  Furthermore, students who had a high degree of confidence in their initial answer got it correct more often.  

When in a multiple choice testing situation, this kind of strategy makes sense.  Students should jettison the fallacious folklore of going with their gut (intuitive, System 1 thinking) and instead go with the intentional, metacognitive approach (conscious, System 2 thinking). 

There are, no doubt, some who will retain the first instinct fallacy.  After all, it is an intuitive approach.  Who hasn’t had the frustrating experience of getting back a test paper and seeing that you erased a correct answer and replaced it with an incorrect answer?  It’s natural for this kind of vivid error to stand out more than all other answers on a multiple choice test.  The rational student, however, will understand the power of the counterintuitive, two-step approach.

Recall, Retrieve, Recite, Ruminate, Reflect, Reason:  What is the first instinct fallacy, and how does it relate to taking multiple choice tests?

Challenge - Test Taking Tactics:  Test taking is a reality of most classrooms.  Do some research on recommended test-taking strategies.  Then, pick the tip you like the best.  Explain it along with a rationale of why you think it is effective.

ALSO ON THIS DAY:

-November 10, 1975:  On this date in 1975, the SS Edmund Fitzgerald, a bulk freighter, sank in a storm on Lake Superior.  The entire crew of the Fitzgerald, 29 men, were lost.  Approximately two weeks after the tragedy, singer-songwriter Gordon Lightfoot read a short Newsweek magazine article on the ship’s sinking.  The first lines of the article read:  

 

According to a legend of the Chippewa tribe, the lake they once called Gitche Gumee 'never gives up her dead.' (3)

Inspired by the article and the plight of the Fitzgerald and its crew, Lightfoot began writing what was to become one of popular music’s most recognizable ballads, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.”

Sources:

1-IBM. Icons of Progress. Automated Test Scoring. ibm.com

2-Richmond, Aaron. “The First Instinct Fallacy: Metacognition Helps You Decide to Stick With It or Revise Your Answer.”  Improve With Metacognition. 2 June 2017.

3-Gains, James R. and Jon Lowell.  "Great Lakes: The Cruelest Month.”  Newsweek magazine 24 Nov. 1975.