Every teacher knows there are students who always seem to be a step ahead of everyone else. And then there are the slackers, who are just as intelligent but who don’t seem to mind being mediocre. The difference seems obvious: some people are inherently motivated to succeed, whereas others simply don’t care. But a study conducted by psychologists William Hart, now at the University of Alabama, and Dolores Albarracin of the University of Illinois suggests otherwise. Simply reframing a task as “fun” caused the underachievers to outperform those who usually excelled—indicating that the way an educator describes an activity might have a powerful influence on how well students do on it.
The researchers first screened participants of comparable academic ability, categorizing them as interested in achievement or interested in fun. They then had the students look at a computer screen that flashed words related to high achievement (for instance, “win,” “excel” and “master”). In subsequent tests of ability such as a word-search puzzle, the participants who were interested in achievement performed significantly better than did those who were not.
That experiment confirmed conventional assumptions, but the next one had a confounding outcome. Participants were again primed with high-achievement words and asked to complete a word-search puzzle. But instead of describing the task as a serious test of verbal proficiency as before, the researchers called it “fun.” The results of that simple semantic change were profound: not only did the supposed slackers perform better on the task this time around, their scores actually surpassed those of the high-achievement crowd.
The study authors point out that for some students, when a task is portrayed as “fun,” not only does their motivation improve, but their performance does, too. Educators and parents should take note, the researchers say, and be careful to frame activities so that they engage students with a range of learning styles.
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14 Comments
Add CommentMy own experience mimics this.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisUnfortunately, I'm one of those slackers. I never failed to get top marks and be the best in class at a subject I enjoyed.
If I wasn't interested in the subject I was very mediocre.
Even today, I can recall trivial facts and figures that I read 20 years ago with high precision. Put me in front of a page of something boring, make me read it 20 times... I still won't be able to remember a thing by the next day.
It's hard to make your brain remember something if you don't really want to know it in the first place.
I'm the same way...for me, things tend to be either trivially easy (computer programming) or too hard to bother with (calculus)...and when things are easy I excel significantly...when they aren't I can get by usually but tend to be at the bottom of the class...I never memorized my multiplication tables for this very reason and to this day, have to split simple multiplications up in my head
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisraf, I you have exactly described me. My teachers and parents never could understand.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDitto
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisYeah, me too, but what puzzles me is how displaying words had such a remarkably controlling influence on the test subjects. In my experience underachieving teenagers are likely to rebel at any such such suggestions. Are you sure these were higher order primates?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisHave we not know for years now that the words we use have a huge impact on our attitude? Saying something is 'fun' simply primes the mind for a game, perhaps even competition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEveryone involved had agreed to take part so they must have been higher order primates. You could not just grab any slacker from any highschool class and expect them to cooperate.
Have we not know for years now that the words we use have a huge impact on our attitude? Saying something is 'fun' simply primes the mind for a game, perhaps even competition.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEveryone involved had agreed to take part so they must have been higher order primates. You could not just grab any slacker from any highschool class and expect them to cooperate.
MTyler8 - Excellent point: the subject selection methodology biased the sampling in favor of cooperative subjects. One has to wonder just how committed these slackers were to underachievement!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@jtdwyer There's a lot of research into a phenomenon called "priming" in which subliminal exposure to words and symbols can affect a person's behavior for a short period of time. I think the authors of this article are familiar with this idea and failed to take into consideration that others are not so familiar with it. With that background the results of this experiment seem much less surprising. :)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@jtdwyer In answer to your question about how words flashing on a screen can influence behavior, there is quite a bit of research into a phenomenon called "priming" in which words and symbols can influence our behavior without our awareness for a short period of time. The authors of this article may have not have realized people were unfamiliar with this idea and so didn't give much background on it. If you'd like to know more do a google search on "automaticity" and "priming" for more information. The first result under priming is a Wikipedia article that gives pretty good info on the topic.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis seems to relate to studies demonstrating that black students score lower on standardized tests than their white peers when the tests are presented as tests instead of as 'exercises'. It seems that expectations, both internal and external have a significant effect on performance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis seems to relate to studies that demonstrate reduced performance for black students taking standardized tests, as opposed to doing 'exercises - which show that taking a test leadsto lowerscores while doing exercises leads to higher scores - scores equal to those of their white peers.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAnd yet again, SciAm's compulsion to seek a hip, catchy headline leads them to misrepresent scientific findings.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo "slackers" are now defined as people who are interested in "fun" rather than "achievement"? First, I doubt that "fun" and "achievement" are really an opposed duality like hot and cold, as the researchers assume. Second, that's not what "slacker" means. To address both points, a "slacker" might better be defined as somebody who is interested in neither fun nor achievement, and "fun-driven" and "achievement-driven" are completely independent, both conceptually and empirically. I.e., there is no reason why a person can't be both or neither, and there actually are people who are both, and people who are neither.
Did the researchers ever stop to think that the reason the "slackers" did so much better when the tests were framed as fun activities was that the "high-achievers" figured that they did not have to try too hard at the task since it was just "fun"?
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