Many believe teaching to be an easy job, however these people often do not understand the psychology of teaching. Even many teachers themselves believe their job involves simply presenting information to children and think no further than making clear PowerPoints and lectures to sponge like students who only need correct and concise information spewed at them to be able to learn.
In reality, teaching involves much more than simply injecting students with information and expecting them to remember everything. The psychology of teaching is an often overlooked aspect in the educational world despite it being much more considered in other types of interactions.
The common saying “it isn’t what you say, but how you say it” encapsulates one major idea explored by neuroscientists in a recent study. However, rather than using a teaching context directly, they used broccoli. Interested? Read more about the study below and how the results can impact your classroom to get students more engaged and actually excited to come to class.
The Research
Many parents know that you can often trick children into trying or even liking certain foods by pretending they are especially delicious for the parents themselves. Parents over exaggerating satisfied faces and saying “yummy!” while tasting food can make wary children more open to trying unknown foods.
While not always effective, especially if the child has already tried and decided they don’t like a certain food, this interesting childhood trick reveals a basic psychological principle that when children see a positive reaction from trying something, they are more open to trying it themselves. The inverse is also true as often when one sibling shows disgust when trying a food, their siblings may also be influenced to not want to try the food that created such a negative reaction in their sibling.
While this seems like a simple trick for children, recent research has shown that this trick is even effective with adults. A study published on January 11th, 2024 found that adults too are more likely to feel positive feelings towards food when others eat it with a smile on their face. (Edwards et al.)
A study of over 200 women found that when shown a video of someone eating broccoli, their opinion of the food was affected significantly by the facial expression of the person they watched eating the food. For example, when someone showed disgust for the broccoli the participant watching also had their opinion of the vegetable reduced. Similarly, when watching a video of someone eating broccoli with a smile, their opinion of broccoli improved as well.
This finding did not, however, translate to a general liking of all vegetables as participants were also asked about cucumbers and 6 other vegetables after watching the broccoli video, but their opinions for them remained unchanged. This shows that the intervention specifically targets the psychology surrounding the specific food targeted and did not simply make the participant more positive and generous in their ratings in general.
Additionally, it is important to note that despite their positive feelings being increased, they were not necessarily more likely to report a desire to consume the broccoli at that moment. This may seem like a point against the research, but the desire to eat is more strongly controlled by current hunger signals rather than simply positive feelings in general.
In addition to this, researchers suggested that the videos were not entirely convincing as “smiling whilst eating is not a typical reaction to liked tastes”. So simply pasting a fake smile like a stock image on your face while eating something may not be the most effective in creating a desire to eat even if it is proven to improve a general sense of positivity for the food.
Previous research has also found similar results. A 2012 study also looked at the relationship between watching others eat and a desire to eat and found that smiling while eating was not convincing to create a desire to eat, but importantly, a negative reaction while eating did significantly reduce the desire to eat in both studies. (Barthomeuf et al.)
Teacher Takeaways
The applications of a study on broccoli may not be immediately clear to a classroom context. However, the main idea shown here is that how something is presented plays a large role in how it is perceived.
This makes sense in a teaching context as we all love to hear people talk about things they’re excited and passionate about and quickly get bored with dry lectures or dull writing. Not only is it more entertaining, but it is much easier to learn from someone who brings energy and excitement to whatever they’re talking about.
While most teachers are passionate about their subject and love their jobs, there are some that don’t bring the same energy or excitement to school each day. Some teachers are simply jaded after years of frustrating students who put no effort into their work, but other teachers sometimes say things such as “It isn’t my job to entertain children. It’s my job to give them information and their job to learn it.”
While technically true, this attitude may have a negative result on their students’ level of engagement and have a negative cycle of frustrating the teacher more as they see less effort from their students. While it may not come naturally to all teachers, class should generally be a fun and interesting experience, otherwise students will simply not be able to learn to their fullest.
If teaching were simply about presenting information, it would actually be quite an easy job. Schools could simply prepare video lectures and fire all of their teachers to save a lot of money!
In reality, teaching requires more flexibility and personal engagement than any video can provide. Students need to get excited, be involved in discussions and be convinced by the teacher that the subject is worth learning through an example of a teacher who is passionate about their subject.
Teachers should focus first on explaining why their subject is so important and also why it is utterly fascinating to study. Just immediately jumping into content without explaining why it is worth learning will lead to children who ask “why do we have to know this!?” which is a sign that the teacher has made a vital mistake and should go back and explain the practical applications of what they are teaching before continuing with content.
As with the broccoli example, this won’t always be effective. Some children will have already decided they don’t like a certain subject or aren’t interested in school in general, but this study shows that the way a teacher presents their subject matter will absolutely have an impact on how students approach the subject for the rest of the year.
While teachers aren’t robots who can paste on a fake smile every day and dance for their students like a monkey, they need to bring energy, excitement, and passion to their classes each day or they can not expect their students to bring the same level of engagement in return. Teachers need to realize they are more than just information givers, but experts who can instill passion in their students and create a new generation of people who are interested in learning rather than just trying to pass a test and forget what they learned as soon as they leave the course.
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References
Barthomeuf, L., et al. “Emotion and food. do the emotions expressed on other people’s faces affect the desire to eat liked and disliked food products?” Appetite, vol. 52, no. 1, Feb. 2009, pp. 27–33, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2008.07.002.
Edwards, Katie L., et al. “Exposure to models’ negative facial expressions whilst eating a vegetable decreases women’s liking of the modelled vegetable, but not their desire to eat.” Frontiers in Psychology, vol. 14, 11 Jan. 2024, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2023.1252369.
