Is That Your Final Answer?

Beating game shows takes more than smarts: Contestants must also
overcome self-doubt and peer pressure. Two studies suggest today's
hottest game shows are particularly challenging because the very
mechanisms employed to help contestants actually lead them astray.

Multiple-choice questions are one such offender, as alternative
answers seem to make test-takers ignore gut instincts. To learn why,
researchers at Southern Methodist University (SMU) gave two identical
tests: one using multiple-choice questions and the other
fill-in-the-blank. The results, published in the Journal of
Educational Psychology, show that test-takers were incorrect more often
when given false alternatives and that the longer they considered those
alternatives, the more credible the answers looked.

"If you sit and stew, you forget that you know the right answer,"
says Alan Brown, Ph.D., a psychology professor at SMU. "Trusting your
first impulse is your best strategy."

Audiences can also be trouble, says Jennifer Butler, Ph.D., a
Wittenberg University psychology professor. Her study in the
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that contestants who
see audience participation as peer pressure slow down to avoid making
embarrassing mistakes. But this strategy backfires, as more contemplation
produces more wrong answers. Worse, Butler says, if perceived peer
pressure grows unbearable, contestants may opt out of answering at all,
"thinking that it's better to stop than to have your once supportive
audience come to believe you're an idiot."