Learning Styles Are a Myth. Here’s What Actually Helps You Learn
Almost everyone believes they’re a visual, auditory or hands-on learner. Teaching to your style doesn’t work. What does, and why the myth won’t die.
Ask a room of students whether they’re a visual, auditory or hands-on learner, and almost everyone has an answer. Some say it with pride: I’m a visual learner, I need to see it. Others use it as an explanation: I’m not an auditory learner, so lectures just wash over me. Teachers have answers too. Surveys find that nine in ten believe in matching lessons to a student’s style.
It’s one of the most widespread ideas in education, and one of the best-tested ideas that doesn’t hold up. The odd thing is that it never quite feels wrong. You do prefer some ways of taking in information to others. Stay with that thought, because the whole myth lives in the gap between “I prefer” and “I learn more”.
Try it
What would prove learning styles?
Sort people into visual and verbal learners, then teach half of each with pictures and half with words. Compare what the theory predicts with what studies find.
What the theory predicts: visual learners do best with pictures, verbal learners with words. The lines cross. That crossing is what experiments look for.
What the idea actually claims
The learning styles idea is really two claims stuck together.
Claim one: people differ in how they prefer to take in information. Some like pictures and diagrams, some like listening, some like doing. The best-known model, VARK, adds reading and writing as a fourth.
Claim two: people learn better when teaching matches their preferred style.
The first is true, as far as it goes. Ask people how they like to study and they’ll tell you. The second is the one that matters for schools, textbooks and the thriving industry of style questionnaires, and the second one is what fails.
How you would test it
It’s worth seeing how simple the test is, because it makes the evidence easy to follow.
Take a group of students and sort them by style using a questionnaire. Split each group in half. Teach one half in a way that matches their style and the other half in a way that doesn’t, using the same content. Then give everyone the same test.
If learning styles are real, the result has a very particular shape. Visual learners should do better with pictures than with words, and verbal learners should do better with words than with pictures. Plot it on a graph and the two lines cross over. Psychologists call it the meshing hypothesis, and without that crossing there is nothing to the idea.
In 2008, Harold Pashler and three other leading learning researchers reviewed the research for exactly this evidence. They found a large literature on learning styles but very few studies that were designed to show a crossover. The few that were, did not find the crossover, and some found results that flatly contradicted it. Their conclusion was blunt: there was no adequate evidence to justify using learning-style assessments in schools.
The research has kept coming since. In a 2015 study, Rogowsky and colleagues tested adults on whether they were visual or auditory learners, then gave them reading or listening versions of the same lesson. Preference had no effect on how much they understood.
Why it feels true
If the evidence is poor, why is the belief nearly universal? There are several reasons, and you can feel most of them from the inside.
- Preferences are real. You may truly enjoy diagrams more than lectures. But enjoying a format isn’t the same as learning more from it. People often prefer the study methods that feel easiest, and those are frequently the least effective.
- It looks like it works. A good lesson mixes formats: an explanation, a picture, a hands-on task. Everyone does well with it, and each student can point to the part that suited them and credit their “style”.
- It’s flattering and simple. Being told you have a style feels personal, and it explains away a bad experience: a subject felt hard because it wasn’t taught your way. That is more comfortable than “I didn’t practise enough”.
- People confuse it with other ideas. Multiple intelligences, abilities that really do differ, and the fact that some subjects suit some formats all get blended into the same vague sense that people learn differently.
- There’s a market for it. Questionnaires, training courses and books sell very well. The belief supports an industry that has no incentive to look closely.
Try it
How many teachers believe it?
In a survey of UK teachers with an interest in brain science, what percentage agreed that “individuals learn better when they receive information in their preferred learning style”?
Drag the dot to your guess, then lock it in. Nothing is revealed until you do.
What is true in the neighbourhood
The myth survives partly because it sits next to several true things.
The subject decides the best format, for everyone. Geography is best learned with a map. Anatomy, with diagrams. Pronunciation, by hearing and speaking. A chemistry reaction, by seeing it and then doing the sums. Nobody learns the layout of a city from a paragraph of description, whatever type they are. That’s matching the method to the material, not to the person.
Words and pictures together beat either alone. Allan Paivio’s dual coding theory, and decades of work since, show that a clear explanation paired with a well-chosen diagram helps most people more than either alone. It isn’t about your style. It’s about how memory stores things in more than one way.
People differ in what they already know. Someone who’s played an instrument for years will learn music theory in a different way from someone who hasn’t. That’s a difference in background knowledge, which matters enormously and is far more useful to teach to.
Motivation counts. If a student engages more with a format they enjoy, they may study for longer. That’s a genuine effect, but it works through effort, not through the format fitting their brain.
Try it
Which would help you more?
You’re about to learn the layout of the London Underground map and, separately, how to pronounce 20 Italian words. You describe yourself as a “verbal learner”. How should you study each?
Pick one. You’ll see why straight after.
What does help, whoever you are
The methods that win in research work for nearly everyone, and they have one thing in common: they feel harder than the alternatives.
Test yourself
Pulling information out of memory strengthens it far more than reading it again. Close the book and write down what you remember, answer practice questions, or explain the idea aloud. This is called retrieval practice, and it is one of the most reliable findings in the science of learning.
Space it out
Study a topic in several shorter sessions over days instead of one long session. A little forgetting between sessions makes each return more effective. See why cramming fails.
Mix it up
When practising problems, mix different types together instead of doing a block of one type and then the next. It feels messier, and it trains you to recognise which method a problem needs, which is half the exam.
Explain it in your own words
If you can explain an idea to someone else without notes, you understand it. If you can’t, you’ve found exactly what to study next.
Pair words with pictures
Draw the diagram, sketch the graph, make the table. This is the grain of truth in learning styles, and everyone benefits.
What it costs to believe it
It might seem harmless to hold a mild belief about your learning style. But it does carry costs.
It narrows what people try. A student who’s decided they’re “not a reader” may avoid the exact practice they need. A teacher who spends hours producing three versions of every lesson, one per style, spends time that would have been better used on feedback.
It also puts the cause of difficulty in the wrong place. If you struggle with a subject, the useful question is “what haven’t I practised?” not “what’s my type?”. Believing in a fixed style can quietly become an excuse that stops the better question from being asked.
Finally, it teaches people to trust a diagnosis that isn’t one. A questionnaire that gives you a label feels scientific. It isn’t, and the same trust is then offered to the next confident-sounding claim.
So what should you do tomorrow?
You don’t have to stop enjoying the way you like to study. Just stop expecting your preference to do the work. Ask what the subject needs: a picture, a sound, a practice problem. Then use the methods that are known to work, even though they feel less pleasant. Quiz yourself, leave gaps between sessions, and mix the problems up.
If you want to see how much of your own study habit is based on feel rather than evidence, the study myths test is a good place to start, and the psychology myths test catches other popular beliefs about the mind.
Questions people ask
- Do learning styles exist?
- People have preferences for how they like to study, but the claim that teaching to those preferences improves learning hasn’t held up. Reviews of the research, including a major one by Pashler and colleagues in 2008, found no good evidence that matching teaching to a learning style helps.
- What is VARK, and is it scientifically valid?
- VARK is a questionnaire, created by Neil Fleming, that sorts people into visual, aural, reading-writing and kinaesthetic types. It measures what people say they prefer. There’s no strong evidence that teaching to those categories improves results, so it’s better seen as a preference quiz than a learning diagnosis.
- Are multiple intelligences the same as learning styles?
- No. Howard Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences is about different kinds of ability, such as musical or spatial. Learning styles are about how you prefer to receive information. Both are popular in schools, and neither has strong support as a basis for teaching.
- Is there any truth in learning styles?
- A grain. Preferences are real, motivation matters, and combining words with pictures helps most people. Different subjects also suit different formats. But that’s about the material and good teaching, not about sorting people into types.
- What should I do instead of studying to my learning style?
- Test yourself from memory, spread study over several days, mix different types of problem together, and use a diagram or example alongside an explanation. These methods have strong evidence and work whatever you think your style is.
Sources and further reading
- Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D. and Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9(3), 105–119.
- Dekker, S., Lee, N. C., Howard-Jones, P. and Jolles, J. (2012). Neuromyths in education: Prevalence and predictors of misconceptions among teachers. Frontiers in Psychology, 3, 429.
- Rogowsky, B. A., Calhoun, B. M. and Tallal, P. (2015). Matching learning style to instructional method: Effects on comprehension. Journal of Educational Psychology, 107(1), 64–78.
- Newton, P. M. and Miah, M. (2017). Evidence-based higher education: Is the learning styles ‘myth’ important? Frontiers in Psychology, 8, 444.
- Dunlosky, J., Rawson, K. A., Marsh, E. J., Nathan, M. J. and Willingham, D. T. (2013). Improving students’ learning with effective learning techniques. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 14(1), 4–58.
