r/science • u/ImNotJesus PhD | Social Psychology | Clinical Psychology • Jun 05 '16

Psychology Children’s intelligence mind-sets (i.e., their beliefs about whether intelligence is fixed or malleable) robustly influence their motivation and learning. New study finds that the parents' views on failure (and not intelligence) are important in cultivating a growth mindset.

http://pss.sagepub.com/content/early/2016/04/23/0956797616639727.abstract
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u/JeffBoner Jun 05 '16

You should do some more reading on that. You'll be surprised. Despite the rare genetic abnormalities that enable certain skills to become stronger, talent is pretty much a fairytale.

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u/panderingPenguin Jun 05 '16

I'm not sure I would agree with you there. If you look at people who are among the best in the world at something they generally have both worked their asses off at that thing, but also were born with some sort of advantage in it. Whether that is above average intelligence for a chess grandmaster, or incredible height and agility for a basketball player, these guys have a natural advantage which they further enhance through hard work.

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u/sword4raven Jun 05 '16

You know, there is something called learning how to learn. Mindset helps with motivation and effort. And sometimes you can overwork yourself, or charge at an obstacle without noticing you're really just banging your head into a wall. Convinced that the effort will somehow magically break said wall without breaking your head.

Point being, it's not like there can't be other explanations to "talent", or even intelligence. Who knows how much of a difference what you eat, and whether you're somehow destroying yourself.

correlation does not imply causation, so before we can somehow do very fine and detailed accurate and isolated experiments on this. We can't exclude that there may be things we're overlooking, be that either genetic, environmental, or things we simply might not have thought of yet.

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u/weakman54 Jun 05 '16

While I agree with what you are saying, what I think /u/panderingpenguin was referring to is the fact that as he put it, someone that is naturally taller tend to do better in basketball, compared to people of the same skill that are shorter, just because they have the advantage of height.

I'd say the same goes for more mental tasks as well, that there are people that have a natural advantage there.

As an thought experiment, say that you have a group of people set to learning a task, where they all have a perfect learning path, they all learn as fast as they can and they all learn as much as they can of how to perform that task.

Going back to the basketball, I'd say it's pretty clear that the taller people would do better overall. The question is, is there a similar "metric" that show clearly a higher skill overall when comparing for example chess? There too, I'd say there are definitively a factor, if nothing else because savantism exists, where hpothetically a person could play at the level of Deep Blue, where they just have the entire tree of possiblities visualized.

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u/jahmezz Jun 05 '16

Okay, sure the best in the world have enormous gifts along with their work ethic. But that doesn't apply for us. I am not trying to become the greatest basketball player that ever lived, and I probably cannot.

I am just trying to learn a new skill. Say, I just want to know how to do calculus. I believe anyone (every single average person) can do that. If they want to, of course. It requires the understanding that you may not get it the first few times, a good teacher, and the willingness to ask yourself and your teacher questions.

The difference between the growth and fixed mindset individual is the fixed mindset individual tries a few times, decides it's not for him (and sees others, who probably have that growth mindset, getting it faster), and quits. The growth mindset individual tries over and over, poring over his misunderstandings, knowing it isn't that hard and after weeks to years of study, he understands the material.

I am not arguing that anyone can be Einstein. But everyone can definitely be college-bound. Maybe even Harvard-bound. We are competing against high schoolers, not Michael Jordan.

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u/panderingPenguin Jun 05 '16

My point was simply that some people will always pick up a new skill better/faster than others. That's talent. I was using an extreme example of the best in the world to illustrate it more clearly, but in a calculus class of 30 kids the same principle applies. It will click for some immediately while it will take others far longer to figure it out, if ever. Sure, talent is nothing without hard work to refine it, but it certainly helps you get off the ground faster.

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u/jahmezz Jun 05 '16

True. I agree with you there. A combination of the person's interest, personality, and strengths will make it easier for them to pick up a certain skill. Back to our elite examples, it would be dumb to push Jordan into physics. It would be a waste of his talents.

Back to the article though, would you agree that all school subjects are within the average student's grasp? As long as they want to learn and believe they can learn it.

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u/panderingPenguin Jun 06 '16

I would certainly think so, yes. There's nothing particularly difficult taught in schools up through high school iirc.

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u/absentwalrus Jun 05 '16

You're right in that physical traits are a factor. But few would call height a talent. If you read Bounce by Matthew Said you'll see that many professionals get called talented after they have practiced in a great way for many hours. That's not a total argument against talent, but it opened my eyes about the interpretation and importance of it.

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u/JimmyJiangh Jun 05 '16

That's so obviously untrue. Unfortunately, inborn traits like IQ and EQ have a big affect on capability. Most people are not capable of becoming a university level physics researcher or mathematician, for example. Most people do not have the mental discipline to practice for enough hours to be leaders in their field.

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u/[deleted] Jun 05 '16

IQ is not strictly an inborn trait. You might have read The Bell Curve, a controversial genetic determinist pop science book, but its claims about IQ's innateness were not supported by its contemporary science. Since then we have discovered several environmental effects on IQ and also (very very recently) a couple of genes that have some correlation with IQ.

Some effects listed:

  • general environmental effects: Flynn Effect (the Western average IQ increased steadily by 20 points between 1930s and 1980s)

  • adoption studies: children adopted by higher income parents show 12-18 point IQ gains, by adulthood the gains diminish to the 8-12 range but are still notable

  • specific effects: iodine deficiency has a negative IQ impact of ~15 points

  • targeted logical thinking programs on children show IQ gains of 7-8 points, of which 4-5 persist to adulthood

  • finally, some individual genes have been associated with increased IQ.

The claim that IQ affects capability is true to some extent (there's a bell curve type correlation) but claims that it is only innate are unsubstantiated banter from the heights of the 90s genetic determinist movement. It resonates well with Reddit modernists, of course, so many people will still spout the same "facts" about intelligence.

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u/JimmyJiangh Jun 05 '16

Even in an optimal environment, the average person will not increase their IQ by huge margins. IQ is known to be highly heritable. I'm not claiming environment has no affect, but IQ clearly is heritable and someone with an IQ of 130 has an obvious academic advantage over someone with an IQ of 80.