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Week 3 - Learning

The document discusses an experiment from Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking Fast and Slow" where people had to resist eating indulgent foods like chocolate after completing a depleting task like eating radishes and celery. It found that depleted people gave up faster on subsequent mental tasks. One student suggests modifying the delivery method could yield new insights, such as conducting Walter Mischel's marshmallow experiment over Zoom versus in-person. They also propose exploring new online learning models that ensure active student participation remotely like in a classroom.

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Trey Nguyen
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22 views

Week 3 - Learning

The document discusses an experiment from Daniel Kahneman's book "Thinking Fast and Slow" where people had to resist eating indulgent foods like chocolate after completing a depleting task like eating radishes and celery. It found that depleted people gave up faster on subsequent mental tasks. One student suggests modifying the delivery method could yield new insights, such as conducting Walter Mischel's marshmallow experiment over Zoom versus in-person. They also propose exploring new online learning models that ensure active student participation remotely like in a classroom.

Uploaded by

Trey Nguyen
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Trey Nguyen, Nathan Kumiega, Ross Kaminski

Group 7

MKTG: 3200

Thinking Fast & Slow Discussion

Although you're probably only a few chapters in, what are some of your favorite

experiments/findings he discusses?

In the book “Thinking Fast & Slow” by Daniel Kahneman, he discusses the concept of system 1

and system 2 that make up the thought process of the brain. He describes system 1 as your initial

immediate reaction that operates with little to no effort or sense of voluntary control while

system 2 the thoughtful and attentive mental process, these two systems work together to help us

perform our daily lives.

One of my favorite findings that Kahneman discussed was “that an effort of will or self-control is

tiring; if you have had to force yourself to do something, you are less willing or less able to exert

self-control when the next challenge comes around.”(Kahneman 38) He described this as “ego

depletion” and it was proven multiple times through experiments conducting by psychologist

Roy Baumeister. The experiment that had intrigued me involved people being depleted by a task

such as eating radishes and celery while resisting the urge for chocolates and other indulgences.

This experiment found that these people give up faster than normal when faced with a more

difficult mental task. There are countless situations that are known to deplete self-control, some

of the ones Kahneman mentioned that stuck out to me were, trying to impress others, responding

kindly to a partner’s bad behavior, deviating from one’s diet, impulsive overspending, and

reacting aggressively to provocation.


Can you think of ways to modify the experiment(s) to discover something new? For

instance, perhaps changing the participants (strangers/friends/enemies), the mode of

delivery (most experiments are carried out live, what happens if you did them on Zoom?)

or something about the stimuli (pictures vs. text).

Changing the mode of delivery could discover something new. Most experiments are in person,

and thus studying the participant in real time. If some of the experiments were moved to Zoom

persay, the outcome could be different. For example, if Walter Mischel’s experiment with Oreo

cookies were to be done on zoom and in-person, the choices the kids make could be very

different. This could study the way technology affects the kids' choices, and how they could

choose differently whether the experiment is conducted in person or online. As someone who has

participated in studies, I found that I am much more attentive while participating in person versus

online. In fact, some online studies have given participants the option to not include their data in

the study because they rushed or weren’t very attentive. Changing the environment of the

experiment would change the data, and change what is studied.

Would any of your ideas be worthy of pursuing for the group project? (Note: The idea(s)

don't have to be related to what you have read)

It is important for people in this world to be able to learn remotely, especially after everything

that we as a society have gone through the last few years. In recent years we have gone through a

pandemic which moved everything to an online learning platform that had not been used very

much prior to the pandemic. It may be a good idea to explore a new way of online learning

instead of what we currently have, such as Zoom and Canvas. After talking to many different
people, of all age groups, I have come to the conclusion that overall people tend to learn better in

person and that it is very difficult to learn over Zoom. It may be interesting for us as a group to

look into possibly exploring a new idea as a form of online learning to make it possible for

student to learn better online. For example, if we could come up with a way that students have to

show that they are actively participating in class while learning remotely, just like in a classroom,

it may be something that could be very successful and helpful for students. It is too easy for

students to zone out in class and do other things on Zoom when they have their camera or

microphone off. If there was a way that this possibility could be eliminated many students would

benefit from this.

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