Students ’ mistaken beliefs about how much their peers typically study could be harming their exam performance in some surprising ways

By Christian Jarrett A lot of us use what we consider normal behaviour – based on how we think most other people like us behave – to guide our own judgments and decisions. When these perceptions are wide of the mark (known as “pluralistic ignorance”), this can affect our behaviour in detrimental ways. The most famous example concerns students’ widespread overestimation of how much their peers drink alcohol, which influences them to drink more themselves. Now a team led by Steven Buzinksi at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has investigated whether students’ pluralistic ignorance about how much time their peers spend studying for exams could be having a harmful influence on how much time they devote to study themselves. Reporting their findings in Teaching in Psychology, the team did indeed find evidence of pluralistic ignorance about study behaviour, but it seemed to have some effects directly opposite to what they expected. Across four studies with hundreds of social psych undergrads, the researchers found that, overall, students tended to underestimate how much time their peers spent studying for an upcoming exam (but there was a spread of perceptions, with some students overestimating the average). Moreover, students’ perceptions of the social norm for studying were correlated with their own study time, suggesting – though not proving – that their decisions about how much to study were influenced by what they felt was ...
Source: BPS RESEARCH DIGEST - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: Educational Source Type: blogs