Burning My Toast and Why It Matters for Research

My sad burnt toast.

I kept burning my toast. Not once, or twice, but three times. First bread, then a bagel.

Was my brand new toaster oven defective? I wondered.

Then I thought about it again. Maybe I did something wrong. I went to get the user manual and on top of the manual was a sheet with a picture of . . . the toasting rack set up higher than I’d placed it.

Why am I talking about burnt toast here?

Because I’ve worked on so many studies where I watch people interact with a new device and not look at the instructions at all. That always struck me. I thought I was someone who looked at instructions.

Turns out I’m not.

At least not when it’s an appliance I think I know how to use. I had a mental model in my head of how it would get set up, and I did that. Even when something was clearly not working (ie, I was burning my toast), it still took me a few times to reconsider my assumptions.

Okay, so what am I really saying about this burnt toast?

This burnt toast shows that we aren’t who we think we are, a lot of the time. We think we behave and act in certain ways, but we don’t, always.

This highlights so many things. One is the importance of distinguishing between attitudinal versus behavioral research.
If someone asked me what I normally do when I get a new appliance and am setting it up, I would say that I read the instructions. That’s what would be found in attitudinal research. If someone observed me, in behavioral research, they would see that I do not.

We therefore shouldn’t mistake a finding from attitudinal research as equivalent to a finding from behavioral research.

We need to consider this gap between beliefs and behaviors in designing research projects of all sorts. I am certainly seeing this burnt toast as a humbling reminder of it.

This post was originally written on Spark Insights’ LinkedIn page, and appeared in May 2023.

Very clear instructions (that I didn’t read) about where to position the rack for toast and bagels.