More on Cognitive Biases that Undermine Student Success
Posted March 3, 2015
By Stephanie Freis
For Part 1 go here -
http://nobaproject.com/blog/2015-02-12-biases-that-influence-our-motivation-and-ability
If you’re a student at a college or university (like me) you’ve clearly made the decision to develop new skills, expand your knowledge and put your cognitive abilities to the test. Each week your conscious mind takes on tough new challenges like group assignments, presentations and research. This is a lot of heavy mental lifting and like most students you no doubt want to be successful and do well at every task. But like it or not we’re all susceptible to cognitive biases that can trip us up by sapping our motivation and weakening our abilities. Our biases are not unique personal failings, they’re just one aspect of how all of our brains work. But all too often we’re not really aware of these biases so we don’t know that they’re hurting us and can’t take steps to change and improve. So I’d like to point out some of these biases and offer you ideas about how you can better manage them.
Psychologist Fritz Heider referred to people as Naïve scientists; we are naturally motivated to explain the cause of behavior. We can attribute the cause to internal (dispositional) or external (situational) factors. For example, if a student volunteers to be the first to give a speech in class, is it because he’s extroverted (a dispositional attribution) or is it because he was pressured to go first by the teacher (a situational attribution)? While we can make attributions about others, we can also make attributions about ourselves. These attributions can then later impact our motivation or ability to perform well on future assignments or pursue certain majors.
SELF-SERVING ATTRIBUTIONS
In self-serving attributions, students tend to attribute their successes to dispositional factors and blame failures on situational factors. For example, if you fail a test, you may tell yourself “that test was just hard.” In comparison, if you do well you might remark, “I knew I was smart.” Because both types of attributions are self-enhancing, they make us feel better and allow us to take responsibility for only the good and not the bad. Again, this is only going to help you feel better in the moment, not improve your performance later on.
This bias is also present in behavior referred to as self-handicapping. Self-handicapping is when a person creates obstacles to successful performance. For example, a student might go out partying the night before a big test. In other words, they provide themselves with a ready-made excuse for failure. Of course, if a student gets a good grade after partying all night, it makes success seem even more impressive. In this way, self-handicapping protects self-esteem and self-image. People can’t really know why you failed (including yourself!).
THE FIX?
The whole reason students go to such lengths in using biases such as self-handicapping is from the fear of negative emotions and consequences that accompany poor performance. However, social psychology shows that people are fairly bad at predicting their future emotions. This is often because we focus too much on a central feature of an event while neglecting to consider the impact of other aspects. For example, when imagining the outcome of failing an exam, we are very focused on that single failure instead of remembering all else we have going on in our lives that will help us recover and be resilient. In essence, if you can overcome the desire to self-handicap you’ll likely find that the pain of doing poorly will not hurt as much as you think. (Bonus: less self-handicapping also means more time to improve performance!)
Another helpful strategy is to focus on continual improvement through effort. Carol Dweck calls this having an incremental or “unfixed” mindset. By believing your intelligence or ability can be improved you are less likely to see exams or projects as daunting judgments about your capability. Instead you see it as helpful feedback on how you might do better in the future. If students can remember this philosophy, they stand to advance greatly in their academic careers.
OVERJUSTIFICATION EFFECT
Another attribution students can make is over the source of their motivation. For instance, sometimes we read a book because we are told to by our professor, for a grade, and other times we do it for ourselves, for enjoyment. This type of attribution can transform into a bias called the Overjustification Effect, where people underestimate intrinsic motivation and overestimate extrinsic motivation. In other words, individuals place too much importance on extrinsic rewards like good grades or compliments from a teacher.
These extrinsic rewards can destroy intrinsic motivation. A student might come to believe that, “I only read the book to get a good grade, not because I actually enjoyed it.” In essence, students ask themselves, “Why am I doing this?” If their conclusion is, “because of the external reward,” they are vulnerable to losing interest in the material or the class and ultimately decreasing their effort or performance.
THE FIX?
Take a step back and reassess what might be influencing your behavior or enjoyment of a course or the material. You once again need to think about your thinking. Try to recognize the tangential or external motivations that might be biasing you and instead come up with reasons why you enjoy the material yourself. It’s okay if you truly are motivated by the career the class will help you obtain, still an external motivation. But don’t let other indirect course aspects, such as your dislike of the teacher or your desire to earn an A, impact your judgment about the information. If you can find a way to relate the material to yourself, this is one way that can help improve your performance and enjoyment of the material.
Do you see yourself when reading about either of these common biases? If so, welcome to the human race! But there is hope for all of us. Knowing more about biases can help us do something about them. Hopefully with some of the suggestions above (and others in Part 1 of my post) you can maintain higher motivation and the ability to achieve the academic goals you’ve set for yourself!
[Stephanie D. Freis is a Social Psychology PhD student at The Ohio State University. Her interests revolve around the self, social influence, and motivation. More specifically, she is interested in the psychological experience of entitlement at the intrapsychic and interpersonal levels, as well as individual differences among grandiose and vulnerable narcissists. After graduation she hopes to obtain a university faculty position so she may continue her passion in research and teaching.]
