Importance of following instructions

The Psychology of Following Instructions and Its Implications

Am J Pharm Educ. 2020 Aug; 84(8): ajpe7779.

doi: 10.5688/ajpe7779

, PharmD,^a, BS,^a and , PhD^a,^b

Author information Article notes Copyright and License information Disclaimer

The ability to follow instructions is an important aspect of everyday life. Depending on the setting and context, following instructions results in outcomes that have various degrees of impact. In a clinical setting, following instructions may affect life or death. Within the context of the academic setting, following instructions or failure to do so can impede general learning and development of desired proficiencies. Intuitively, one might think that following instructions requires simply reading instructional text or paying close attention to verbal directions and performing the intended action afterward. This commentary provides a brief overview of the cognitive architecture required for following instructions and will explore social behaviors and mode of instruction as factors further impacting this ability.

Keywords: following instructions, working memory, metacognition, social psychology, teach-back method

Following instructions is an important ability to practice in everyday life. Within an academic setting, following instructions can influence grades, learning subject matter, and correctly executing skills. In this commentary, we provide an overview of the primary factors that influence the ability of an individual to follow instructions. We translate these findings from the psychological literature into practical guidelines to follow in the educational setting.

Literature on following instructions first surfaced in the late 1970s.¹ Researchers observed a subset of housewives who demonstrated a preference to tinker with a new home appliance to get it started or watch a demonstration video on how to set it up rather than read the accompanying instruction manual. Since then, numerous factors that influence following instructions have been investigated including a person’s working memory capacity,^2-6 societal rules,^7-9 history effects,⁷ self-regulatory behavior,^10,11 and instruction format. ^3,6 Although not completely independent of each other, these factors warrant some individual attention to better understand their implications on following instructions.

Working Memory and Following Instructions

Working memory is the brain’s workbench, linking perception, attention, and long-term memory.^12,13 As an example, in the classroom setting, learners may receive information visually from slides and/or auditorily from instructor narration. However, only items that learners pay attention to within the environment enter their working memory. These items are then processed, resulting in the formation of a mental representation (ie, encoding) that effectively moves from working memory to long-term storage. Thus, working memory performance is an important intermediary between perception and learning. Because working memory capacity is limited,¹⁴ a person’s ability to follow instructions may be impacted if the instructional load is greater than that capacity, ultimately leading to information loss (for more information, explore cognitive load theory^15,16). This loss of information may be more pronounced when a task must be performed immediately and the presentation rate of instructions cannot be controlled by the user. Imagine a student named Dennis. During class, Dennis is nervous about an upcoming examination and this emotional state preoccupies his working memory, leading to, in that moment, a lower working memory performance. As a result, when the professor gives verbal instructions for an upcoming assignment, the amount of instructional load supersedes Dennis’ capacity to hold on to those instructions in his working memory. Because he cannot hold on to those instructions, he is less likely to store them in his long-term memory and will not be able to refer to them later when completing the task. To summarize, the ability to hold instructions within working memory is necessary to execute the desired function; thus low working memory performance can compromise a student’s ability to follow instructions.² If a student cannot process or hold instructions in working memory, they will probably fail to complete a given task correctly.

There are two potential strategies to assist the learner in this situation. One strategy is to have the learner immediately act on the received information.¹⁷ A common example of this is the teach-back method, which is a practice of enactment. The practice of enactment has demonstrated greater retention of new information.^4,5 This line of research has shown that the accuracy of recalling instructions was increased when immediately after instruction, actions were performed at both the initial learning phase (ie, encoding) and later during recall. The second strategy is to use different forms of instructions (eg, written and verbal), which allows the learner to control the rate of presentation. If the learner can control the rate, they can review the instructions as needed or go at a slower pace to fully encode the instructions.^18,19

Societal Rules and History Effects

Following instructions is a behavior, and most human behavior depends on social context. Part of the social context is the presence of another individual. The mere presence effect is the phenomenon that human behavior changes when another human is around.⁹ The presence of another person can make an individual more pliant. Being more or less pliant, or pliance, describes behavior that is controlled by a socially mediated consequence. As an example, if an instructor tells a student to write their name at the top of a test sheet and the student does so to gain the instructor’s approval, this is a ply and the student is being pliant. Imagine a student, Angela. She follows instructions because she feels it is a professional expectation that her mentors and peers have. Angela will be pliant because following instructions has a social consequence. For this to occur, however, the instructor must monitor the completion of the task, possess the ability to impose a consequence, and observe the effect of the consequence on the student. Donadeli and colleagues⁸ explored the effect of the magnitude of nonverbal consequences, monitoring, and social consequences on instruction following. They observed that the presence of an observer and social reprimand for not following instructions improved the rates at which people followed instructions. This suggests that societal constructs, such as following authority figures and the fear of reprimand, may be drivers in motivating people to follow directions.

There are two possible ways to address societal effects on following instructions. The first way is to establish an expectation of professionalism by explaining why instruction following is important. This would be consistent with aspects of social identity theory.^20,21 The second way is to create the fear of reprimand. In this case, faculty members hold students responsible for following the rules. This could be with respect to assignment formatting, assignment deadlines, or other aspects that might be tied to a penalty.

Following instructions is affected by the presence of another person even if there is no history of reinforcement for such behavior, suggesting that instructional control may be strengthened by social contingencies. ^7,8 However, societal rules can lead to history effects. If students never receive feedback on or consequences for their inability to follow instructions, history effects dictate they will continue that behavior. Now imagine a student named Amber. Amber wrote down the instructions during class but did not follow them because she generally does well on her assignments despite not completely following the instructions. As such, she abstained from following the rules because a consequence was not associated with not following them.

Metacognition and Self-regulation

Following instructions also depends on self-regulation, ie, a person’s awareness of their own behavior to act in a manner that optimizes their best long-term interests.²² To do so, an individual must be aware of their own thoughts and actions. This awareness plays a role in metacognitive monitoring, or a person’s monitoring of their own thoughts and behaviors.

Metacognition has been described as thinking about thinking. ²³ At its core, it is about planning, monitoring making progress, and evaluating the completion of a process. For instance, if a student is asked to conduct a journal club meeting, the planning stage would involve gaining an understanding of what is required to successfully complete a journal club meeting. This could include time needed for completion or where to look for an article. The monitoring phase is the awareness to review the article and pull out key information. The final part, evaluation, involves checking the work to determine whether goals were met.

Imagine a student named Craig. Craig wrote down instructions for an assignment, but after completing the assignment, he did not review the instructions to ensure he followed them correctly. He failed to monitor his progress. As such, the ability to be metacognitively aware can be a key piece in following instructions. In this case, individuals may not follow instructions because they are poor monitors of their learning. ^22,24-28 Students may not adequately plan before tackling their assignment, such as by reading instructions beforehand. Next, they may not monitor their progress during completion of the assignment. And finally, once students think they have completed the task, they may not go back and read the instructions to ensure they have fulfilled all expectations. To help them with this and other aspects of instruction, students may need to use accountability (societal rules) as a primary source of motivation. Without accountability, students may not follow instructions, thus perpetuating poor metacognitive skills, leading to unawareness of what they know, what they do not know, and the process to correct errors. A strategy may be the use of checklists to help students monitor their thoughts during a process (see Tanner²⁹ and Medina and colleagues³⁰ for a review of methods to develop metacognition).

Verbal vs Written Instructions

When examining best practices for conveying instructions to learners, the instructor should consider whether instructions are best retained and applied if received in a verbal versus a written format. To date, no published studies have examined whether one format offers greater benefit over another; however, one study explored both formats in relation to working memory.⁶

Written instructions are efficient because large amounts of detail can be provided that students can read rapidly. Thus, step-by-step manuals can be found for almost all electronic devices. While there is a large body of literature describing the mechanics of how we read, there are some important points to underscore.⁶ When reading and following instructions, a person will act in the same sequence in which action items are presented in the text. In the television show MASH (season 1, episode 20), one of the characters was instructed to “…cut wires leading to the clockwork fuse at the head, but first remove the fuse.” He proceeded to cut the wires before removing the fuses. He acted in the same sequence in which the instructions were presented but failed to follow the actual instructions. This raises an important point: individuals are more likely to remember instructions when the order is consistent with how events occur. ⁶ Writing instructions according to the sequence of actions the reader needs to take may lead to better results. For example, “do A before doing B’ is a superior form of wording instructions than stating, “before doing A, do B,” as illustrated in the above scenario.

Spoken instructions are advantageous in face-to-face interactions (eg, within the classroom). Spoken instructions are processed through the phonological loop, a component of working memory focused on verbal information, which is more flexible and convenient. Intrinsically, listening requires less effort than reading. Spoken words can also be paired with visual aids to guide action, such as in measuring blood pressure or administering an immunization.⁶ Remarkably, individuals cannot read and follow visual objects at the same time. Combining text with pictures can be more taxing to working memory than combining spoken words and visuals. A drawback associated with spoken words is the rate of presentation. While the speed at which text is read can be controlled by the end user, the instructor’s speed of speech cannot. The phonological loop mediates the ability to hold and process auditory information.^13,31 Items (bits of information) in the phonological store can rapidly decay, and because items are usually chained in such a way that an item primes the next item,³¹ one lost step can lead to the loss of all subsequent steps (eg, if a student cannot remember step 3, she is unlikely to recall any step after that). To prevent this loss, people tend to “rehearse” following instructions by repeating the instructions to themselves.³ Access to both written instructions and verbal instructions may prove beneficial, as written instructions can be referred to if any verbal instruction is missed.

Several factors can impact a student’s ability to follow instructions. Recommendations to increase the probability of learners following instructions are available within the literature (). While these modalities may not guarantee success, these recommendations should increase the probability that most students will follow instructions. Although we cannot extrapolate from current literature whether one mode of instruction delivery is preferred over another, we can apply some of these findings to pharmacy students in a learning environment where instructions are used to guide the completion of deliverables. The first thing the instructor can do is provide both written and verbal instructions. These instructions should be concise, written in student-friendly language, and given in order of operation (ie, step A then step B). Students can read (and reread the written instructions), which should minimize errors resulting from not paying attention or insufficient working memory. Although distracted when verbal instructions were given, a student can review written instructions in a self-paced manner, thus reducing cognitive load and increasing the probability of remembering them. The instructor could then employ metacognitive monitoring and assess the student’s understanding of the instructions by including a checklist within the assignment, ie, a strategy to help Craig monitor his learning and check his work (much like journals have checklists for authors). Finally, the instructor should penalize students for not following the instructions thereby using the social context to reinforce their need to follow instructions. Amber benefits by learning there are consequences for not following instructions. For Dennis and Craig, the threat of punishment in the form of lost points may motivate them to review the instructions to ensure they have done their work correctly, a process which can improve their attention (Dennis) and metacognitive monitoring (Craig).

Table 1.

Common Errors in Following Instructions and Recommendations to Enhance the Probability of Instruction Following

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The Importance of Following Instructions

Imagine if you will for a moment, how easy it is to make a peanut butter & jelly sandwich. Simple, right?

I bet you could even show someone how to do it in under a minute. Now, write it down, step-by-step as though someone had never seen bread, a jar of peanut butter, or jelly before in their life. Trust me; it just got a lot harder.

Following instructions and especially complicated instructions can be a very important tool that serves you well throughout your life. While it is introduced at a young age, many adults still have difficulties following them.

What Does This Have to do With Going to College?

College instruction is full of following directions. One of the most common mistakes that most students make is not fully reading and comprehending instructions. Often students skip over the steps of the instruction with the understanding that they know what tasks need to be done. And before long, they grow frustrated because the tasks they performed did not give them the result they wanted.

Why is Following Directions a Important Life Skill?

Students are not the only people who have to develop this fundamental skill. While students must follow directions when completing homework and quizzes in order to receive good grades, this skill also applies in everyday life.

Imagine having this soft skill in the office environment. Your boss rushes in with a panicked look on their face. They have a meeting in the afternoon, and need you to whip up a presentation as they hand you their sketchy notes before they rush off to another meeting. You have no one to ask. You have to do your best with what you were given.

When individuals become parents, they must also teach their children the good habit of following directions at an early age so they can be successful at school and in life. If you are teaching new skills, be sure to use visual aids and clear directions so they are able to effectively learn.

Start Your Journey Today

Ready to put your direction following skills to the test in college? If you are looking for affordable and flexible degree programs that meet you where you are at, consider Bryant & Stratton College! Request more information today!

Why it's so important to follow the rules

Why it's so important to follow the rules | Big Ideas Personal qualities and skills

Boris Shcherbakov

October 10, 2014

You and I live in a world governed by a variety of rules and conventions that are equated to them. The hostel rule assumes that all participants in the process understand approximately unambiguously what can and cannot be done. For example, you can't laugh out loud in closed rooms, you can't spit on the subway, you can't dress pretentiously for a reception with an important person.

For some reason, the concept of etiquette is attributed only to higher spheres, they say, it is something historical or the lives of diplomats. In fact, etiquette and its established rules exist everywhere, in the most ordinary life, and are of great importance for any person, and especially for a corporate careerist. Following the vowels (regulations, instructions, guidelines) and tacit (accepted norms of socially significant behavior) rules of etiquette in the company is a necessary condition for working in the corporate coordinate system, simplifies many tasks and opens the doors of large offices.

Alas, according to my many years of observation, the Russian careerist is very indifferent to the regulations and rules of corporate etiquette, which complicates his fate, and often simply puts an end to career growth. A vivid example of this is the communication of people among themselves, with colleagues and superiors. As well as communication during public events, such as the notorious group dinners for team building (clumsy translation of the term "team group dinner") - it is customary to actively communicate with colleagues from other countries (including management), take the initiative in a conversation, if you receive guests from abroad, and it is not at all customary to bunch up with colleagues from your office on the principle of common interests, and even communicate in Russian, cutting off foreign visitors from the topic.

Read the material on the topic: Career Impressionism

I often had to force my managers to sit down at such meetings-dinners, to force them to communicate with foreign colleagues, which, in my opinion, is somewhat absurd: “Guys, this is your destiny and career, use the tool take the bull by the horns!" It is quite obvious to me that such a stupid model of behavior crosses out the real production achievements of people, creates a negative background for themselves, as well as for me as their boss. This is a double blow to the reputation of the business unit. The ability to actively, sometimes deliberately active communication in English (which is mandatory) during mass events abroad, conferences, trainings, seminars is an important criterion for belonging to the corporate world, it emphasizes the ability to play by the rules, knowledge of a kind of communication etiquette. It is unlikely that you will be able to sit out and keep silent at a work-shop or an off-site dinner with your superiors, but if you persist and do not get involved in secular or industrial conversations, then blame yourself. In the next possible case, your candidacy from the list of applicants for promotion will most likely be excluded according to formal criteria (“uncommunicative”).

Advice to careerists: whenever possible, use group events abroad or in Russia for maximum involvement in discussions, conversations, disputes on any issues - this is accepted, it is part of business etiquette and a way to show your activity, and just your intelligence at the end ends, if possible. It is especially required to “not be silent” while accompanying top management - in the worst case, you may be asked to “go out”, and, alas, there were such cases in the practice of some of my acquaintances of top managers. During trips to meet with partners or clients, it is customary to actively demonstrate your "sports form", initiate conversations if they fade, and in no case be silent, even if there is nothing more to say. The etiquette of such trips requires your initiative in the conversation, your European or global boss is not obliged to look for ways out of awkward pauses that may arise, despite being tired or late. This is your duty and a condition for a positive perception of you as an active, understanding, energetic "local guy".

Why is it important to follow the instructions essay example

Following instructions is not just an important learning skill; it's a vital skill. From coloring the right frame in preschool to applying for Social Security, referrals are an important part of everyone's life. However, many seem to have trouble following them. Parents tell us that we toddlers shouldn't touch anything that could be potentially dangerous. If we don't heed these directions, we'll either get hurt or have "wait time" to learn our lesson. Throughout childhood and adolescence, instruction in following directions must be strengthened through the education of the individual. Many activities have been designed for this single purpose.

Standardized written exams also test this skill, as many students fail every year due to "not following directions." In the traditional classroom, teachers have developed non-traditional tools to demonstrate the importance of following directions. Some teachers have students follow a recipe for a favorite, age-appropriate food, but intentionally leave out an important ingredient. Others used a simple worksheet, numbered 1 to 10, with task #1 asking students to read all the instructions before doing anything. The result of this lesson is task #10, which will simply say: Now that you have read all the instructions, please go back and just complete #1 and #2. read everything first.

The steps above can be duplicated by homeschooling parents teaching a lesson to young people. At Time4Writing, our goal is not only to help students improve their writing skills; We also want to highlight the importance of the following areas. At the beginning of each course, there are a series of guidelines that students should read before beginning.

They should copy and paste their assignment instructions into their individual text boxes so they can see them in full as they work. Students are expected to follow these directions as closely as possible. So, perhaps in the coming years, students who take Time4Writing courses won't need to reapply for driver's licenses, turn down insurance forms, or spit out tax returns because they were filled out incorrectly. They will remember that online writing course that showed them how to write and how to follow instructions.