Guest piece- 4 more stupid decisions your TEFL colleagues make and why they make them

A guest piece by “good TEFL Dave” (David of ELT World)

“This is the continuation of a post from my blog, unsurprisingly titled ‘4 Stupid decisions your TEFL colleagues make and why they make them‘, here as a guest article as I love Alex’s blog so much.

Most of the people you know and work with persevere in making dumb decisions that they know are clearly wrong. The worst thing is that you’re also “a person that someone knows” and you’re just as guilty of doing stupid stuff in their eyes. The good news is that there is almost always a good reason why people do dumb stuff, so below are the final few in my list of reasons why we all act like idiots without even knowing it.

‘Don’t try to get anything useful out of him, he’s just a moron.’

We’re all guilty of this less than admirable trait, more commonly known as “attribution error”. Fair enough, that’s pretty much par for the course, as almost all of us tend to over-emphasize personality based explanations for the actions of others

Does this sound familiar?

Is the teacher that dashed in front of you at the photocopier a jerk? Or is he actually a decent bloke who didn’t see you because he’s distracted by something else going on in his life, e.g. the class that started five minutes ago. Judging by your angry response, you think he’s a git and you won’t forget this in a hurry.

Actual research says:

An article by James Surowiecki discusses a famous experiment in which subjects were shown a person shooting a basketball in a gym with poor lighting and another person shooting a basketball in a gym with much better lighting. The assumption was that the second person hit more shots because he was a better player. If we as a species can be fooled into making a decision based on bloody lighting conditions, maybe it’s better to withhold judgment about a person until you’ve actually talked to them, even if he did use all of the paper in the photocopy machine.

‘Well, that just proves my point, doesn’t it?’

People who know a lot more about this kind of thing than me refer to this as “confirmation bias”. Isn’t it a huge coincidence that no matter what happens in the world, politicians can spin it to show why that confirms their opinions? Well, no, of course it bloody well isn’t. A cynical explanation is that politicians twist the truth to get what they want. But a more restrained explanation is that our brains tend to search for and interpret information in ways that support our pre-existing opinions.

Does this sound familiar?

How easy is it to give a bad grade to a student you don’t like in a writing exam, pointing out all of the mistakes he made as evidence why the grade should be so low. Another student that you get on well with makes similar errors in the exam. However, this only become obvious once it is pointed out to you by another teacher. You were being lenient to one (“Well, I know he knows that really”) and harsh to the other (“She never came to class, so I’m not giving here a point for that”) despite the mistakes being the same.

Actual research says:

A Scientific American article by Michael Shermer explains how, in a study before the 2004 presidential election, 30 participants viewed statements given by Kerry and Bush in which both men clearly contradicted themselves. The 15 participants who were strong Republicans were extremely critical of Kerry but let Bush off the hook, and vice versa. In addition, and apologies for the science bit but this is an attempt to summarize rather than plagiarize, neuroimaging results showed that the part of the brain most associated with reasoning, the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, was inactive. In other words, the participants simply weren’t acting reasonably. Most active in the brain were the orbital frontal cortex (processing of emotions), the anterior cingulate (conflict resolution), the posterior cingulate (making judgments about moral accountability), and the ventral striatum (reward and pleasure). Basically, people are able to overlook what goes against them and emphasize what supports their opinion.

‘I’m #1! I’m #1! Don’t you forget it!’

The law of dysfunctional competition states that you want to have at least what everyone else has. Have you ever had mixed feelings when you find out your co-workers gets the promotion that you weren’t even interested in? You’re not alone. People’s happiness is often a function of what they have in relation to others around them. Sad but too often true, your co-teachers might be just as happy with you getting a pay cut as they would with getting a raise themselves.

Does this sound familiar?

Is the teacher that got the director of studies job any better than you? Why was he chosen and you weren’t? OK, he actually showed an interest in the job, but you’ve worked at the school longer. Everyone knows that the extra money isn’t worth the huge amount of extra hours he’ll have to put in, but you’re still unhappy you weren’t at least considered for the position.

Actual research says:

Max Bazerman notes the following, ‘When I ask people whether they would prefer a) $7 for themselves and for another person or b) $8 for themselves and $10 for the other person, people choose ‘b.’ However, when people are simply given ‘a’ or ‘b,’ without the option of being able to choose for themselves, ‘a’ makes them happier.’ If you don’t have a choice in the matter and someone else is making the decisions, you naturally tend to compete harder to be treated fairly.

‘That’s easy; I’ll be able to handle that.’

Overconfidence is a bugger and it can affect the best of us. While confidence is definitely a good thing in many situations, it probably means people don’t work on their weaknesses as much as they should. Do overconfident drivers practice safe driving given their lack of abilities? Do overconfident teachers get the proper training? Do overconfident public officials realize when they are making bad foreign policy decisions?

Does this sound familiar?

A teacher volunteers to do overtime to earn extra cash. Not only doe this mean that they’ll be teaching 40+ hours a week, they’ll also be doing some highly specialized ESP courses that they’ve never taught before. Are you the only one who sees where this is heading?

Actual research says:

The ‘Lake Wobegon effect‘ is the human tendency to overestimate one’s achievements and capabilities in relation to others. According to an infamous survey of drivers conducted by Ole Svenson in Sweden in 1981, 80% of people rated themselves in the top 30% of all drivers. Does that sound OK to you? Anyone who doesn’t see that as a strange finding probably rated themselves among the top 30% in mathematics also. While overconfidence is definitely a good thing in many situations, it probably means people don’t work on their weaknesses as much as they should.

There are many more points to add, of course, and I’m looking forward to your responses.”

Can’t imagine any of you will have anything negative to say about your colleagues, but comments are open

Tags: guest writers

This entry was posted on Monday, May 18th, 2009 at 12:08 pm and is filed under links. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.