Stopping Too Soon

I wanted to share with you a theme that I’ve noticed (or made up—I can’t tell which) as I work with everyone from first-year college students to seasoned professionals. Simply put: They stop thinking too soon! (Stopping too soon can refer to thinking or behaving. For this post, I’m going to focus on thinking.)

When people stop thinking too soon, they are more prone to learn less, make bad ethical decisions, teach badly, and experience a myriad of other bad outcomes. A few more minutes (or even seconds) of reflective thinking, consultation, or delay before taking action sometimes makes all the difference. In one sense, education strives to help students not only think better, but simply think more.

My theme of stopping too soon is related to two concepts of Daniel Kahneman (2011), a brilliant psychologist who won the Nobel Prize in Economics for his work on how people really think—rather than how economists had imagined they thought. His first concept concerns two types of thinking that he calls System 1 and System 2 thinking. System 1 thinking is automatic, reflexive, and subject to cognitive biases and mistakes. System 2 thinking is more reflective and effortful. Stopping too soon is related to using System 1 thinking without the double-check inherent in System 2.

Kahneman’s second concept is substitution: Humans have a tendency, when faced with a difficult question, to substitute an easier question. “If a satisfactory answer to a hard question is not found quickly, System 1 will find a related question that is easier and will answer it" (Kahneman, 2011, p. 97). Then, the easy answer is substituted for the answer to the difficult question. For example, Kahneman describes a study in which students were asked, first, to estimate how many dates they had in the last month. Then they were asked, “How happy you are these days?” Their two answers showed a high correlation; students essentially answered the “date” question and used it as the answer to the “happiness” question. You could say they stopped too soon in assessing their own happiness. (When the students were asked those two questions in reverse order, there was no correlation between the answers!)

I first noticed the tendency to stop too soon in my work with people studying for the EPPP, the huge, 4+ hour multiple-choice licensing test in psychology. People studying for the test, or those who’ve failed it, typically say—to themselves and to me—“I always get down to two answers, and then I always pick the wrong one!” And it’s true: they do! Because they stopped thinking about the information they needed to answer the question and substituted an easier question: “Which answer looks plausible?” Or, “How can I reduce my anxiety by moving onto the next question most quickly?”

A similar phenomenon occurs with first-year college students answering multiple-choice questions. Their easy question is often something like, “Which answer is the first one I recognize?” Rather, they should be asking the more effortful question: “What do I know that would help me answer the question that is being asked?”

In general, when students answer test questions, they ask themselves a System 1 question like, “What sounds like the right answer?” Rather, they need to ask System 2 questions of themselves, such as, “What are they asking me to know and to do, and what do I know that will help me address the question?”

In ethics courses, graduate students often want to know, “What should I do in this situation?” The more effortful question is, “What should I be thinking about to help me assess the right course(s) of action?” Here are a few other implicit question pairs that I notice among both students and professionals:

Easy: “Is there an ethical dilemma in this situation?”

Effortful: “What are the ethical dimensions of the situation?”

Easy: “What ethical principle or standard justifies my action?”

Effortful: “What ethical principles, standards, virtues, and other guides can help me assess the situation and my response to it?”

Ethics and Morality Essential Reads

The Dark Legacy of Forced Sterilization: Carrie Buck's Story

How Patience Is the Virtue of Remaining in Difficulty

Easy: “What does the law say?”

Effortful: “Given that I’m going to obey the law, what do my personal and professional ethics tell me, and to what extent do they overlap?”

Here are some others you might recognize, along with the people who are likely to use them:

College sophomores (and sometimes juniors, or seniors):

Easy: “What should I major in?”

Effortful: “How do I get the most out of college?”

College students, at registration time:

Easy: “Which courses fit my schedule and fulfill requirements?”

Effortful: “Which courses allow me to learn what I need to learn in college, fit into my sequence of studies, and still allow me to graduate in a reasonable time?”

College professors:

Easy: “What should I cover (lecture about) in class today?”

Effortful: “What skills do I want students to practice and improve upon in class today, and how do I help them accomplish that?”

Bloggers:

Easy: “How do I meet my quota?”

Effortful: “How can I write something useful?”

Finally, we can’t forget—

Politicians:

Easy: “How do I get (re-)elected?”

Effortful: “How do I govern?”

Can you think of other examples of stopping too soon, or of substitution?

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© 2018 by Mitchell M. Handelsman. All Rights Reserved