Nick Michelioudakis (B. Econ., Dip.

RSA, MSc [TEFL]) is an Academic Consultant with LEH (the representatives of the Pearson PTE G Exams in Greece). In his years of active involvement in the field of ELT he has worked as a teacher, examiner and trainer for both teachers and Oral Examiners. His love of comedy led him to start the Comedy for ELT project on YouTube. He has written numerous articles on Methodology, while others from the Psychology and ELT series have appeared in many countries. He likes to think of himself as a front-line teacher and is interested in one-to-one teaching and student motivation as well as Social and Evolutionary Psychology. When he is not struggling with students, he likes to spend his time in a swimming pool or playing chess. For articles or handouts of his, you can visit his site at www.michelioudakis.org.

Psychology and ELT: Decision Paralysis

From Jam to Men Less is More!

Of course you can go ahead and read the article, but it is so much better to watch the great Dan Heath describe the first experiment. Just click here.
Pick a jar any jar!: On a beautiful Californian morning, customers walking into Draegers market came across a tasting booth. On it there were six jam jars. Shoppers could sample as many as they wanted and even buy one if they were so inclined. Naturally, the booth proved quite popular about 40% of the shoppers stopped to have a look and to taste the goodies The following day the booth reappeared, but this time the choice was between 24 different tastes! This proved even more popular in luring customers about 60% of them. Clearly, the greater the choice, the greater the attraction! But here is the thing: amazingly, out of all the people who sampled some of the 24 varieties, only 3% chose to buy any when the choice was between 6 jars the figure was 10 times higher!! (Iyengar & Lepper 2000)

The hidden cost of (excessive) choice: But the researchers were not done. In a fascinating follow-up study, they asked about 200 Social Psychology students to watch the film Twelve Angry Men a classic movie about how a dissenting individual eventually manages to sway the entire jury in a murder case. Students were then told that they could earn themselves two extra credit points by handing in a written response to the film. Importantly, the researchers stressed that the quality of the work did not matter all the students would have to do would be to submit the paper. As it happens, the students had been divided into 10 discussion groups at the beginning of the semester and that suited the researchers purposes perfectly. They gave 5 of these groups a list of 6 topics to choose from; they gave the other 5 groups a huge list of 30 topics. Would that make a difference? It did! One would have expected that with a greater range, students in the second category would be more likely to find a topic they liked and work on it. In actual fact however, while 74% of the students who were given a limited choice submitted a paper, the figure among the others was only 60%! But that was not all; whereas students had been told that the quality of their work did not matter, the researchers actually did go to the trouble of giving the

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essays to independent evaluators to rate. Their findings: the essays of the group with the limited choice were better both in terms of content and language! (ibid)

Applications in the field of ELT: So here is the key idea: On the one hand, choice is a motivational element. Having choice means we exercise control over at least some aspects of our lives and we like that (Nettle 2005). What is counter-intuitive however, is that having too much choice is actually bad (Schwartz 2005). Too much choice leads to decision fatigue, which is one form of ego depletion (Baumeister & Tierney 2012) The process of choosing (e.g. an essay topic) wears us out, so we have less will -power to devote to other things (e.g. the quality of our work). So what does all this mean for us? Simply put, when it comes to choice, very often less is more! But what does that mean in practice?

Topics / Readers / Strategies etc: As the study clearly demonstrated, too many choices can backfire.
Indeed, even two may be one too many! In another study, researchers gave students two articles to read; one was interesting but long while the other was short but dull. The difficulty in choosing between the two led to essays which were of poorer quality compared to others by students who were simply told to write about one of the two (Thomson et al 2009). So as teachers it might make sense to limit the options we give students. Readers are a good case in point: too great a range and students may exhaust themselves before they even get to the first page!

Web sites: In the past, site-designers were so keen to

display the wealth of their material that the result was often off-putting for first-time visitors. Now things have changed for the better. Compare for instance the interface of English Central 1 with the video-zone of Learn English Teens 2. In the former you are faced with 20 choices, while in the latter with 4. My hunch is that ceteris paribus, people will find it easier to click on one of the four choices...

Deadlines: Intending to prove that a democratic

approach to setting deadlines was the best, Ariely split his students into three groups; the first set deadlines for themselves, the second had no deadlines except for the final one and for the last group Ariely set the deadlines himself. Alas, he was disappointed; it was the last group that got the best results (Ariely & Werthenbroch 1999) Now that would seem to argue in favour of authoritarianism in education, but this is not the case; what it does seem to show is that there are tradeoffs. Forcing people to make decisions about every little thing can be counter-productive.

Make up your mind fast!: Ariely (2008 Ch. 8) has also conducted some fascinating experiments
proving that because of loss aversion we tend to want to keep all our options open for as long as possible (we want to keep our husband but we also string our lover along! ) The more we think about our options, the more this drains us. So, if we give our students some choice, it might make sense to force them to make up their minds as quickly as possible! Once they have committed themselves, this depletion disappears. What is more, research shows that once we have decided, we tend to like our choice more! (Gilbert 2007)

NICK

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NB A word of warning: Little things make a big difference. Once people are used to a certain range of
choice, it is generally inadvisable to change the terms of the contract by offering them less. Cialdini (2001) warns us that this might trigger a mechanism called psychological reactance. We like exercising control and we hate it when someone takes it away. The moral: if there are going to be some restrictions, it is vital that they be made clear from the start!

Pick a guy any guy!: There have been numerous studies on the incapacitating side-benefits of choice. We want people to have a choice of investment options when thinking about retirement, yet researchers have found that for every additional 10 programmes offered, participation goes down by 2% (Iyengar et al in Mitchell & Utkus 2004) More worryingly, when doctors were faced with the choice of giving a patient a particular type of medication (instead of opting for surgery) 47% went for it. When they were offered two types of medication however, the rate fell to 28%!! (Schwartz 2000) So here is a final tip: if you are going to attend a speed-dating event, keep the following fact in mind: you are more likely to end up with a match if you are meeting 8 would-be dates that if you are going to meet 20! (Fisman et al 2006)

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http://www.englishcentral.com/videos#!/index/all/all/popular/0 http://learnenglishteens.britishcouncil.org/freetime

References
1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. Ariely, D. & Werthenbroch, K. Doing it Now or Later (1999) American Economic Review Ariely, D. Predictably Irrational HarperCollins 2008 Baumeister, R. & Tierney, J. Willpower Allen Lane 2012 Cialdini, R. Influence Science and Practice, Allyn & Bacon 2001 Fisman, R, Iyengar, S. S., Kamenica, E. & Simonson, I. (2006) "Gender Differences in Mate Selection: Evidence from a Speed Dating Experiment" Quarterly Journal of Economics, 121(2), 673-697 Gilbert, D. Stumbling on Happiness Harper Perennial 2007 Iyengar, S. S., & Lepper, M. R. (2000) "When Choice is Demotivating: Can One Desire Too Much of a Good Thing?" Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 995-1006 Mitchell O. S. & Utkus, S. [eds] "Pension Design and Structure: New Lessons from Behavioural Finance (pp. 83-97) Oxford University Press Nettle, D. Happiness Oxford 2005 Schwartz, B. "Self-Determination: The Tyranny of Freedom" (2000) American Psychologist 55: 79-88 Schwartz, B. The Paradox of Choice HarperCollins 2005 Thompson, D. V., Hamilton, R. & Petrova, P. K. (2009) "When mental simulation hinders behaviour: The effects of outcome- versus process-oriented thinking on decision difficulty and subsequent performance" Journal of Consumer Research, 36, 562-574

NICK