Why You Shouldn't Always Trust Your Gut | The First Instinct Fallacy

You've probably been told at some point or another to "trust your gut", but is that actually good advice?

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[SleepyPossums]

What about when teachers make students go crazy by having 5 answers in a row "C". So evil 😂

[andredepaulagomes]

I feel like many people will pay attention to these situations on tests and get better grades because of this video, myself included.
Thank you SciShow!

[elleon]

My strategy was to answer any questions I knew, put a mark next to the ones I didn't know, move on without answering it, and then go through the test again when I was finished to see if I had learned a clue from another question, or if not then I just put my best guess. Worked out very well -- you didn't have to erase because you never initially guessed.

[waltermundt]

I remember studying for the SAT (years and years ago), learning that in a series of similar questions they always arranged them based on how likely students were to get them right. As a result, the obvious answer to an early question in a series was probably right; an obvious answer to one of the last questions is often misleading.

Knowing when to trust your gut and when it pays to put in the time to double check helps in a lot of contexts.

[suly]

If it’s about food I always trust my guts

[victor-oh]

There's always only one answer: I should've studied more...

[UnknownFlyingPancake]

The first study is strange to me because I'd assume that of course the answers that were changed went from wrong to right, because a person is probably more likely to switch their answer if they're confident about it.

[doomdoot]

Mmm, I feel like the two studies might have been presented a little too similarly in this video. My first instinct (ha) was to think that they had just run the same study and gotten the opposite results, when (again, as I understand it) the actual study itself looked at a different thing. I feel like highlighting that difference a little more might make it a little clearer.

From what I understand: First study looked at answers that were changed and found that the largest portion of changes were for the better. The second study looked at the amount of times people were THINKING about changing their answer, and in that case it was mostly the correct choice to not change your answer. So essentially one looked at the "after" state of changing the answer, and the other looked at the "before" state. If I misunderstood that, please let me know, because otherwise the two datasets just seem really confusing to me.

[TheYuvimon]

I've got a solution! Get rid of multiple choice questions.
Use questions were you have to answer in your own words, to show that you have understood the underlying concepts.

[Varizen]

As someone who has worked in University level education, I can tell you this: the point of telling someone to go with their gut is not now and has never been to help them figure out the best answer. It's to get the student to hurry up and choose SOMETHING because 1.) Any answer is better than a blank answer, and 2.) There are students who will sit there and wait out the entire test period to pick something when they have no idea to begin with. When you design a test to take 1 hour in a 2 hour test session, you're always gonna have 2 or 3 who take the whole 2 hours. You're functionally being held by them. I mean... That's part of the job. Fine. But do you really want to be forced to stay some place because a student is paralyzed by indecision? If they just put down SOMETHING, they can come back and revisit it later, or at the very least, having SOMETHING down reduces some degree of anxiety.

[eligoldman]

And yet whoever I go back in a exam and doubt my self I do worse.

[aidanhennessey]

3:30 bruh 59% is not “almost two thirds.” If want a neat fraction use 3/5. 2/3 is almost as wrong as 1/2.

[crovax]

Here is a test tip. Never waste time changing answers when you have unanswered questions

[WWZenaDo]

On tests - study ahead of time. Meeting a person you've been talking to online, for the first time - have a safe exit planned ahead of time, and then trust your gut if you notice any questionable actions. Survival instincts are different from guessing on tests.

[ChristofferOlofsson]

How about: Right->Wrong->Right or Wrong->Right->Wrong
That will hide what the first gut choice was. ☹️

[gingerscholar]

I kept a small track of this in some of my early classes in college, and found that switching helped less, so I answer questions I know first and then go back rather than trying to answer and lose track of which ones I'm second-guessing

[blahsomethingclever]

My gut has been making smelly gas. There's something wrong with it. Gotta take some heavy metal salts:)

[jonathansallows]

I think these types of studies are very important. The amount of standardized testing in America in elementary, middle school, and high school is a little overboard (especially if you're trying to get into a good college, private school, U.S. military branch, etc.). I think having better controls on stopping people from cheating, giving them more opportunities and time to study, and allowing them to reasonably change their answers after-the-fact will only help students and test-takers. I don't know if any of that is already happening in the background but people definitely don't talk about it enough.

[alisendj.s.c.]

Remember: Goin' with your gut may not always be _right_, but life in general teaches us it's more than getting the _answer_ "right" the first time. It's about learning to accept pains and _mistakes_, so we can better improve our first guesses in thee long run, via thorough, experiential awareness. This is all to state the obvious, too: Life is more than living in judgement and correction, conditioning states of the ego-mind.

[nicolaiveliki]

I have a pretty good test strategy: study, study, study. And if you're unsure of an answer, leave it for the end. Answer everything you can where you're confident, then cycle back to the ones that require deeper reasoning. Before I applied nthis strategy I would run out of time on questions I wasn't sure of while still having many questions ahead which I could solve easily