Our fundamental instinct to resist changes reflects well in the first-instinct fallacy of answering multiple-choice questions. However, studies have time and again suggested in favour of rechecking and updating the initial ‘gut feel’ as a test-taking strategy. One such example is the test conducted by Kruger et al. in 2005.
Following the eraser
The study followed eraser marks of 1561 exam papers for a psychology course at UIUC. The researchers categorised the changes in answers into three, viz., wrong to right, right to wrong and wrong to wrong, based on the 3291 changes they found. And here is what they found:
| Answer change | Numbers | % |
| Wrong to right | 1690 | 51 |
| Right to wrong | 838 | 25 |
| Wrong to wrong | 763 | 23 |
An important statistic is that about 79% of the students changed their answers. It is significant because, when asked separately, 75% of the students believed that the original choices were more likely to be correct in situations of uncertainty.
Switching to the wrong hurts
The level of fear or shame on a decision to shift from right to wrong overwhelms the misery of failure by sticking to the incorrect one, even though the data showed the advantages the second thinking brings. In a subsequent study, the team asked 23 students of the University of Illinois asked which of the outcomes would hurt them most – 1) you made a switch from a correct answer to a wrong and 2) you did not move away from the initial instinct after considering the eventually correct answer. The response from the majority of respondents suggested that people who were in the first situation regretted it more than the second.
[1] Counterfactual thinking and the first instinct fallacy: Justin Kruger, Derrick Wirtz, Dale T Miller
[2] Our first instinct is far too often wrong: FT
