“I don’t care about the mark - I didn’t revise anyway.”
Many teachers have certainly heard this statement, or a version of it, from a student - especially during exam season. It is frustrating, and is underpinned by a cognitive bias that can trap us all in passivity and self-defeating choices.
In 1979, Kahneman and Tversky published . This article contributed to Kahneman being awarded a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences.
What Kahneman and Tversky revealed was what is termed . Simply stated, the bias shows that people feel a loss more strongly than the delight of an equivalent gain.
For example, the pain of losing £50 might be felt roughly twice as strongly as the joy of finding £50 would be. This mentality leads us to work harder to avoid losses than to pursue gains.
The protection strategy
We can see this play out in schools, too. It can be the student, like the one above, who wants to avoid the loss of a sense of competence, so decides not to revise for the exam.
Rather than idleness, this is a protection strategy driven by cognitive bias. If you don’t put in any effort, there is a “reason” to have failed the exam, thus avoiding a loss of pride that would occur if they had revised and failed.
The phenomenon is not limited to exams, either.
Imagine a 10-year-old pupil who loves maths but always stops when they reach the extension task. It seems too hard, and they worry they may not get it right. They decline to try, thereby avoiding the loss of their mathematical competence. The possibility of getting it right brings less pleasure than the pain brought about by getting it wrong.
Both of these examples display the irrationality of loss aversion - and it affects us all.
Turning losses into wins
This is why there is so much research on the academic implications of self-limiting beliefs, in particular fixed and growth mindsets. Loss aversion brings a whole new lens to this issue by showing why the pull towards negativity can be so powerful.
There is a way to tackle this, though - and it begins with stories.
Into the woods
In his book Into The Woods, screenwriter and producer John Yorke shows how storytelling is more than a way to while away the hours; it is a psychologically essential sense-making tool. Without stories, the world is complex and unintelligible.
If students prone to loss aversion are to make the change, we must begin by helping them write a different story. This can be done in three different ways:
1. Reframe the losses
When trapped in loss-aversion thinking, students are caught in the short term. They see the present losses as acceptable but lose sight of the longer-term and more negative consequences of inaction.
Take the 10-year-old pupil above who doesn’t want to work on the extension task in maths. The reframe could be about the biological fact that the brain grows through exertion: “What do you think would happen to your muscles if you never got out of bed?”
This question can unlock a narrative reframe that puts the short-term loss in perspective, comparing it to an even greater loss in the long term.
2. Perspective shift
Climb the mountain. Get a bird’s eye view. By getting up high, we shift the horizon, and our confined world actually becomes far larger than we anticipated.
Loss aversion relies on short-term thinking. The student who did not want to study for the exam could be asked what they will do for the next exam, and the one after that. In this story, where will they end up? Is it somewhere they want to be?
Broaden the horizon and unlock the whole story, not just the scene.
3. The portfolio effect
Why do people always feel as if it rains when they don’t have an umbrella? Is it that the clouds watch and wait for such moments to shed their loads? No, of course not. The feeling comes about because we notice, amplify and remember the isolated negatives.
This thinking is the same for students. A poor exam performance, a low score on a test or a lesson that didn’t go as hoped can seem like all there is to see. However, life is a portfolio of experiences that, when viewed as a whole, makes a far stronger position.
Reminding students of the growth they have achieved over time - perhaps by pointing to advances in performance and aptitude - can help them see the context of their improvement, and help them realise that any immediate outcome is not the whole story.
Loss aversion becomes gain potential
By trying to avoid losing, students find themselves closer to the loss they were trying to avoid. The protection is the trap. The student who didn’t revise loses the pride they were trying to guard.
The student who defers to safe familiarity rather than taking on the extension task forfeits the competence they attempted to defend.
Our job, then, is to help students tell a different story. A story where the bad mark is a pixel rather than a portrait; where the next exam is a chapter, not the whole book; where the muscle grows because it is used. Loss aversion is powerful, but it is avoidable.
The way out is being able to tell a better story.
Alex Hebbes is head of primary and ECT induction lead at the British School of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia
