Would you rather:
- Snack on fruit or chocolate?
- Watch Schindler’s List or Four Weddings and a Funeral?
Your answer may depend – in part – on how far in advance you are asked. When choosing a snack for today or a film for tonight, people tend to choose the less ‘virtuous’ option: junk food, romantic comedy. When choosing for next week however, people choose healthy snacks and highbrow films (Read, Loewenstein and Kalyanarman, 1999). In the moment, we embrace immediate benefits with distant costs, and resist costly actions conferring distant benefits: it seems like a good idea at the time.
This mismatch between what we want in the moment and what is good for us in the long run has important effects. It encourages procrastination: ultimately, completing a task now is no different to completing it later, but we feel an immediate reluctance which outweighs our anticipation of satisfaction. It discourages us from saving for pensions, because the immediate reduction in our income outweighs the distant sacrifice of a poorer retirement. And it discourages us from pursuing education, because the costs are:
Concentrated, and borne by the individual in the present… but the benefits are diffuse, difficult to imagine, and distributed into the future. It is generally not until after skills improvement that the benefits of this became clear (Hume et al., 2018, p.77).”*
If we want to help people make beneficial choices, we need to make these choices attractive when they are deciding. Take saving for pensions: one study invited employees to increase their pension contributions immediately: 72% refused. Those who refused were instead invited to increase their pension contributions each time their pay rose, starting in three months’ time: 78% accepted. Their contributions rose for the next four years, swallowing almost all of their pay rises – but these costs were sufficiently distant to make the decision palatable. Having decided, they stuck to their decision (Thaler and Benartzi, 2004). Reframing the choice (and costs) as future commitments, rather than immediate ones, helped people save more.
When asked in advance, people bind themselves to future costs willingly. Filling the fridge with vegetables binds us to use them when it’s time to cook. One study asked students whether they preferred an Ipod with audiobooks at the gym, or all the time. A sizeable minority preferred access at the gym only. They could have brought it to the gym if they had it all the time, but limiting their own access could encourage exercise (Milkman, Minson and Volpp, 2014). We have a rosy view of our future self: next week we will exercise, eat well, watch art house films and increase our pension contributions; and we are willing to commit to it.
People:
- Embrace immediate benefits and avoid immediate costs
- Are willing to commit to costs when asked in advanced
What does this mean for teachers?
1) We should highlight immediate benefits at the point of decision
Usually, when students decide whether to complete a task, attend extra revision or continue studying a subject, the benefits feel more remote than the costs, such as missing time with friends. We can help students by highlighting future benefits at the moment of decision:
- “It’s going to feel hard, but every extra bit of effort you put in now is going to make understanding this topic easier for you next term.”
- “This concept is going to come in useful again and again in future lessons.”
The more immediate the benefits, the better: that this task will prove useful in the exam – or next week – may not feel important. However, we can emphasise that:
- “This is going to be hard, but you’ll feel proud when you’ve completed it.”
- “Practising now is going to make the second half of the lesson a lot easier.”
There’s a link here to the merits of breaking learning into smaller steps: small steps allow rapid success, so students feel the benefits sooner.
2) We should highlight immediate costs to deter behaviours
If we want to deter a behaviour, the opposite problem applies: current benefits outweigh distant costs. The (likely, immediate) reward of being seen as funny by classmates outweighs the (possible, distant) cost of a call home this evening. Immediacy is at least as important as intensity when imposing a cost on undesirable behaviour:
- A quick word or immediate seat change may outweigh a conversation at the end of the lesson
- A two-minute conversation at the end of the lesson may outweigh a half-hour conversation at lunch
- A half-hour detention today may outweigh a two-hour detention on Friday.
Immediate costs – of which students are aware – should be far more effective than delayed sanctions in deterring undesirable behaviour.
3) We should ask students to commit to future actions
Students may be reluctant to commit to a task with immediate costs and distant benefits, but most students – if asked – are willing to commit to working hard tomorrow. This is not to encourage procrastination: if students have promised to do something today, they should do it. However, we can invite them to weigh future costs and benefits and commit to action before they incur those costs. For example, we may:
- Invite students to commit to actions in the next lesson, term or project: what they will do, how they will do it, how long they will work for, and when.
- Remind them of their commitments when the moment comes.
This allows students to decide based on a rosy view of who they’d like to be, not just what they feel like doing.
Conclusion
In the moment, we embrace benefits and avoid costs. In teaching, we offer distant benefits in return for immediate effort. If we make those benefits feel more immediate and encourage students to commit to future actions, we can help students make decisions as their best selves.
This begs more questions, which I’ll discuss in future posts: when should we ask students to decide, and how can we prompt them to act in the moment?
This is a draft excerpt from Habits of success: getting every student learning. It’s available from Amazon & Routledge.
If you found this interesting, you might like…
How can we get students started on a task: behavioural psychology and practical tips.
The importance of breaking learning down into smaller steps.
* This statement refers to adult skill development: so the word ‘costs’ applies a little more literally – but I believe the point stands for education as a whole.
References
Read, D., Loewenstein, G. and Kalyanarman, S. (1999). Mixing Virtue and Vice: Combining the Immediacy Effect and the Diversification Heuristic. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, 12, pp.257-273.