Answer Business Trust College Test Taking Gut Wrong

"To trust your gut" means to believe and follow your instincts, that internal voice that speaks to you about whether something is right or wrong, good or bad. "Anatomically" (as related to the body), the word "gut" refers informally to the area below your lungs - your stomach and intestines - but we use it in expressions such as "gut instinct" to mean our deep feelings and emotions.

The advice of trusting your gut is often used and recommended by people when it comes to making decisions about things both large and small. One area where you see this belief is at school. According to one recent book, 75% of college students belief that it is better "to stick with" (to keep; not to change) the first answer they write down for a question on a test instead of changing it later. "Surveys" (polls; questionnaires) of college professors show a similar attitude among teachers. Only 16% of college professors think that changing an answer will improve a student's "score" (mark; grade) on a test. Even people in the test-preparation or "test-prep" (getting ready to take an exam) business believe this is true.

But all of this is may be wrong, at least when it is related to taking tests. More than 70 years of research on test taking shows that most of the time a student changes his or her answer, the change is from a wrong answer to a right one. It doesn't matter what kind of test you are taking - "multiple-choice" (where you are given three or four possible correct answers) or "true/false" (where you say whether a "statement" (sentence) is right or wrong), "timed" (where you are given only a certain number of minutes) or "untimed" (where you can take as long as you want to finish). One review of 33 studies on the issue found that in every study, students typically did better when they decided to change their answer for difficult questions, when they did not trust their guts.