What Frogs in Hot Water Can Teach Us About Thinking
Again Informative Speech
Good morning, everyone.
Imagine that you are moving steadily toward a goal you have worked hard to reach. You have
invested time, energy, money, and maybe even part of your identity in getting there. Then, little by
little, you begin to notice that something is not working. The situation is changing, but instead of
changing with it, you keep going. Why is it so difficult for us to stop, reconsider, and choose a
different direction?
That is the question organizational psychologist Adam Grant explores in his TED Talk, “What
frogs in hot water can teach us about thinking again.” Presented in 2021, the talk examines why
people can become trapped by their goals, habits, identities, and previous decisions, and why the
ability to rethink can be so important. Grant uses personal experiences, psychological ideas, and
a memorable frog story to encourage us to become more willing to question our assumptions.
The first clue comes from the famous image of a frog in gradually heating water.
You may have heard the story that if a frog is placed in boiling water, it will immediately jump out,
but if it is placed in cool water that is slowly heated, it will remain there until it is too late. The story
is often used as a lesson about gradual change.
But there is a problem: the story is not scientifically accurate. A frog exposed to dangerously hot
water can respond by trying to escape. Grant uses this mistake itself to make a larger point. We
can become so comfortable with a familiar explanation that we stop questioning whether it is
actually true.
In other words, sometimes the problem is not the frog. The problem is our willingness to accept a
story without thinking again.
This idea becomes especially important when we make decisions.
Suppose you have already invested a great deal in a particular plan. Perhaps you have spent
years studying for a career, months working on a project, or significant money developing a
business idea. Then evidence appears that your original plan may not be working.
At that moment, changing direction can feel like admitting failure.
Instead, people sometimes invest even more. Psychologists call this tendency escalation of
commitment. We continue with a decision partly because we have already invested so much in it.
We want to prove that our earlier choice was correct.
