How Letters A And F Influence Student Test Performance

Admittedly, guys, I'm kind of out of the loop on school these days.

Well, unless we're talking about that dream I have where I realize I haven't been to a class all year and I have to attend the test or fail out. I don't know where that one comes from, honestly.

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But here's the thing - I still remember the pressure to get good grades. And it's not just young kids that have it, it's also college kids and anybody who might be taking adult classes. So this idea, which funnily enough was tested in Missouri, might help.

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There was a study done a couple of years ago at MU. It was led by Dr. Keith Ciani and Dr. Ken Sheldon, and it looked at whether exposing students to the letters A or F before a test affected how they performed. Short answer: it did.

"The letters A and F have significant meaning for students, A represents success and F, failure. We hypothesized that if students are exposed to these letters prior to an academic test it could affect their performance through non-conscious motivation."

So How Did This Work?

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Basically they sat about 130 college kids down and had them fill out some information before they took a test.

All of the tests were the same, however half of the tests were labelled 'Test Bank ID: A', and the other half 'Test Bank ID: F'. Before starting the test the participants were asked to write their Test Bank ID letter in the top right hand corner of each sheet.

On their sample test, the "A" group got an average score of about an A-minus. The "F" group got an average of a C-plus grade. They also did a second experiment (as a control, I'm sure you remember that from Mr. Ledgerwood's science classes) which also had a third group look at the letter "J." Those kids did better than the "F" group but worse than the "A" group.

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So basically, we associate an F with Failure, and we associate an A with a good grade. So there may be something to it. And other studies have shown people do better when they're trying to succeed than when they're trying not to fail. Maybe the key to great grades isn't an all night cram session - but just manifesting an A?