Why some students are attentive & others aren't

The buying process for a consumer starts with him being motivated to act on an unfulfilled need. Yet what's interesting to note is that, all unfulfilled needs aren't acted upon. That consumers aren't motivated to find solutions to all needs. They prefer to act on that need where the discrepancy between the existing state (which is judged as unacceptable), ie., status quo and the desired state is the widest. That is, for a lady, if hair falls' more bothersome than fair skin, she will get a shampoo or whatever it is that will arrest hair fall. The fairness cream will have to wait.

In my class today, as I was playing a TED video, where Tom Wujac was explaining how the brain creates meaning, a few students were busy studying for an exam that was to be conducted after my class. Its interesting to decipher why they were buried in books and not fixated on the screen. These students were faced with two discrepancies. The first one, relevant to the video was, their present state of not knowing how the brain finds meaning, and knowing it. The second discrepancy was their not having studied for the exam, vis-a-vis being adept at the subject on which the exam was to be run. The students in question concluded that the second discrepancy was more pressing one to attend to. So they ignored the screen to bury their noses in books relevant to the exam that was to follow.

The rest of the class, prepared for the exam, didn't see a need to study. Guess what they did? Watched the video.

Now you know why some people listen to what's being taught and some do everything but that!