Instinct

Seldom do I get home from work before eight in the evening. I did so today.

After spending an afternoon examining doctors, I left the examination venue without heading back to hospital. On my way home, I visited the public library to pick up a reserved book. That's a must-read: Think Again by Adam Grant.

Cognitive skills from the book reminded me of our examination in which candidates are being asked to give their medical diagnosis, and then second-guess when the first answer doesn't fit the scenario. In other words, rethinking is central to the game of finding out the answer. Unfortunately, the first instinct of many doctors is to stick to the first answer, and prefer not to change.

Which brings me to the Eraser Study at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where psychologists counted eraser marks on the multiple-choice midterm examination taken by more than 1500 students. If you think revising multiple-choice test answers will hurt the score, think again. Many a time, revising the answers makes sense. Only a quarter of the changes were from right to wrong, while half were from wrong to right.

This is a lesson that runs so contrary to human nature, or at least to many examination candidates, that we need to be mindful of: the ability to rethink and unlearn.