확신이 없는 객관식 답 바꿔야할까?

Question

밑에 영어는 책에서 퍼온 건데 좀 더 자세한 얘기가 있어요

결론하고 알아두면 좋아보이는 부분만 제가 볼드체로 바꿨어요

Across various surveys, large proportions—between 68% and 100%—of college students say that changing their initial answers on a test won’t improve their score. About three fourths say that chang- ing their answers will actually lower their score (Ballance, 1977; Benjamin, Cavell, & Shallenberger, 1984). This myth—sometimes called the “first instinct fallacy”—isn’t limited to undergraduates. In one study, among professors who gave their college students advice about changing answers on tests, 63% told them not to do so because it would tend to lower their scores. Among science and liberal arts professors, only 5–6% said that changing answers would tend to increase students’ scores; the per- centage among education professors was 30% (Benjamin et al., 1984). What’s more, scores of websites, including those designed to provide students with test-taking advice, inform readers that changing their initial answers is a bad strategy and encourage them to trust their first hunches. One website tells students, “Don’t keep on changing your answer—usually your first choice is the right one, unless you misread the question” (TestTakingTips.com) and another advises them to “Trust your first hunch. When you answer a question, go with your first hunch —don’t change your answer unless you’re absolutely sure you’re right” (Tomahawk Elementary School). Another goes further, even citing research support for this belief: “Be wary of changing your mind: There is evidence to suggest that students more frequently change right answers to wrong ones than wrong answers to right ones” (Fetzner Student-Athlete Academic Center).

What do the scientific findings actually say? With over 3 million high school students taking the SAT and ACT (interestingly, in the case of both tests the letters don’t stand for anything) each year, this question is hardly trivial. In fact, the research evidence is surprisingly consistent, and it points to the opposite conclusion presented on these websites (Benjamin et al., 1984; Geiger, 1996; Skinner, 1983; Waddell & Blankenship, 1994). More than 60 studies lead to essentially the same verdict: When students change answers on multiple-choice tests (typically as judged by their erasures or cross-outs of earlier answers), they’re more likely to change from a wrong to a right answer than from a right to a wrong answer. For each point that students lose when changing from a right to a wrong answer, they gain between two and three points on average in changing from a wrong to a right answer (Benjamin et al., 1984; Foote & Belinky, 1972; Geiger, 1996). In addi- tion, students who change more answers tend to receive higher test scores than other students, although this finding is only correlational (see Intro- duction, p. 13) and may reflect the fact that frequent answer-changers are higher test performers to begin with (Geiger, 1997; Friedman & Cook, 1995). All of these conclusions hold not merely for multiple choice tests given in classes, but for standardized tests like the SAT and Graduate Record Exam (GRE).

Admittedly, there are two qualifications to the “when in doubt, change your answer” strategy. First, research suggests that students shouldn’t change their answer if they’re merely guessing this answer might be wrong; changing one’s answer is beneficial only when students have a good reason to suspect their answer is wrong (Shatz & Best, 1987; Skinner,1983). Second, there’s some evidence that students who do poorly on multiple choice tests may benefit less from changing their answers than other students (Best, 1979). So these students may want to change their answers only when they’re fairly certain these answers are wrong.

There’s surprisingly little research addressing the question of why students believe that changing their initial answers is usually a bad idea. But three likely explanations come to mind. First, as we’ve seen, most professors who give their students advice about changing their answers advise them not to do so (Benjamin et al., 1984). So this mistaken belief is probably spread partly by word-of-mouth (Higham & Gerrard, 2005). Second, research suggests that students are more likely to remember items whose answers they changed from right to wrong than those they changed from wrong to right (Bath, 1967; Ferguson, Kreiter, Peterson, Rowat, & Elliott, 2002). Because the bitter taste of incorrect decisions lingers longer than the memory of correct decisions (“Why on earth did I change that answer? I had it right the first time”), our test-taking mistakes typically stick in our minds. As a consequence, a phenomenon called the availability heuristic may lead students to overestimate the risk of committing errors when changing answers. As we learned earlier (see Introduction, p. 15), a heuristic is a mental shortcut or rule of thumb. When we use the availability heuristic, we’re estimating the likelihood of an event by how easily it comes to our minds. Indeed, research shows that students who change right answers to wrong answers recall these decisions much better than do students who change wrong answers to right answers, largely because the former changes create a more last- ing emotional impact (Kruger, Wirtz, & Miller, 2005). Third, research indicates that most students overestimate how many answers they get right on multiple choice tests (Pressley & Ghatala, 1988), so they may assume that changing answers is likely to lower their score.

So to cut to the bottom line: When in doubt, we’re usually best not trusting our instincts. After all, our first hunches are just that—hunches. If we have a good reason to believe we’re wrong, we should go with our head, not our gut, and turn that pencil upside-down.

50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior by Scott O. Lilienfeld Steven Jay Lynn John Ruscio Barry L. Beyerstein

결론: 단순히 찝찝하다는 느낌을 넘어섰을 때 바꿔야 좋다.

나희도 · Accepted Answer

응 바꿔서 수학 4점 날렸어~

밸런스맨 · Answer

근데 고쳐서 틀린게 한두개가 아님

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