Seductive Details And Learning

By Victoria Clare

Posted October 19, 2020

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Transcript

D: Hey Yaël, did you get a chance to review my presentation?

Y: I think it’s off to a great start. My only suggestion would be to cut down on the seductive details.

D: Are we sure we’re talking about the same presentation? The geology one?

Y: Seductive details just means attention-catching details that make a lesson or presentation more interesting but aren’t relevant to the content. I’m talking about all your cat memes.

D: But you said it yourself—they make the presentation more interesting.

Y: Sure, but unfortunately, they could inhibit learning. A team of researchers looked at 58 studies that involved over 7,500 students and found a pattern: students who learned with seductive details scored lower on learning assessments than those who learned without them. That might be because the students’ attention is diverted from the main content and they spend too much time thinking about a fun detail instead of the relevant information. The researchers also found that the effect was worse when a seductive detail was next to a diagram, or was a constant presence, like the same joke or picture on every page or slide. The effect was also worse on paper than in digital formats, and was a bigger problem in certain subjects like social and natural sciences.

D: It’s a sad day for cat memes.

Y: The researchers do say that more research is needed about trade-offs: maybe a joke or meme can distract a student from content, but also make them less nervous about learning it, and the trade-off might be worth it. We don’t know yet. In the meantime, I’m sure your geology presentation will rock all on its own.

Some attempts to make presentations more interesting can actually inhibit learning. (HBS1908, Wikimedia Commons)

Seductive details are attention catching details that make a lesson or presentation more interesting but aren't relevant to the content. Even though these kinds of things can make the presentation more interesting, they could inhibit learning.

A team of researchers looked at 58 studies that involved over 7,500 students and found a pattern: students who learned with seductive details scored lower on learning assessments than those who learned without them. That might be because the students’ attention is diverted from the main content and they spend too much time thinking about a fun detail instead of the relevant information.

The researchers also found that the effect was worse when a seductive detail was next to a diagram, or was a constant presence, like the same joke or picture on every page or slide. The effect was also worse on paper than in digital formats, and was a bigger problem in certain subjects like social and natural sciences.

The researchers do say that more research is needed about trade-offs: maybe a joke or meme can distract a student from content, but also make them less nervous about learning it, and the trade-off might be worth it. We don’t know yet.

Reviewer: Rayne A. Sperling, Pennsylvania State University.