

Believing You Can Get Smarter Makes You Smarter - catchingsignals
http://www.apa.org/research/action/smarter.aspx

======
MikeCapone
One of the very first posts I wrote on my personal blog in 2007 was about
Dweck's "Fixed Mindset vs Growth Mindset" (based on a graphic by Nigel
Holmes):

[http://michaelgr.com/2007/04/15/fixed-mindset-vs-growth-
mind...](http://michaelgr.com/2007/04/15/fixed-mindset-vs-growth-mindset-
which-one-are-you/)

Still one of the most popular posts there.

I really wish this concept was taught to young children. I bet it could really
make a difference.

~~~
amichail
Yes, it could lead to disaster.

Encouraging children to aim beyond their means is a very bad idea.

They will have very ambitious goals and will not settle for what they consider
beneath them.

This is a recipe for unemployment in the vast majority of cases.

~~~
MartinCron
How exactly do you know a child's means are, especially in the face of science
that the brain's ability is malleable?

There's a huge difference between saying "You don't seem to be very good at
math, why don't you stop trying and do something easy instead" and "This seems
to be hard for you, keep working hard at it and it will get easier over time.
A brain is like a muscle, it gets stronger when you use it"

~~~
amichail
What is the extent of this malleability? It's probably quite small compared to
innate intelligence.

~~~
ewanmcteagle
In either case since you don't know what it is how much should you assume the
child is not capable of?

~~~
amichail
It's all about risk.

There is no scientific consensus that the brain is malleable in any
significant way.

Aiming within one's apparent means will likely result in employment.

~~~
theblackbox
It's the tepid nature of this statement that I am most against. Despite the
fact it's also just downright wrong - the malleability of the brain is close
to miraculous and studied heavily in many areas of science.

Rats that are kept in cages devoid of adornment have smaller, less dense,
brains than rats that have toys and varied sonsory stimulation. It's simple,
the more things we have with which to think, the better and more complex our
thinking can be.

Think Orwell's Newspeak and Herman Hesse's Glass bead games.

What is awful here is that you seem to be convinced that mediocrity is a
worthwhile tactic for people and for children... and I think this rips the
heart from the very idea of what it means to be alive and better oneself.

~~~
gintas
Mediocrity is a worthwhile tactic if you're not optimizing for money or
status, but, say, happiness. Ambition can cause a lot of pain, particularly in
feelings that you have not lived up to your potential (I've seen plenty of
that happening).

YC readers are understandably strongly biased against such values of take-it-
easy life. I don't subscribe to such values either, but they can not be
straightforwardly discounted as inferior just like that. I would argue that
understanding your limitations is just as important as developing your
abilities.

~~~
theblackbox
The point is not about money or status, or pain and joy, but about the
willingness to confidently _feel into_ [1] these things. Mediocrity robs you
of your passion. The point is not that failure teaches, or that children
should not be built up by an overbearing, over-parental, society, but that all
beings should seek to FEEL. It's a curious state that foreshadows knowing, and
to be content with mediocrity would greatly reduce the variety of sensations
that a moral, considered life can _hope_ to expect in this world. It's
existential suicide. And it grieves me dearly, so I get all righteous and
pontificate.

[1:Einfuhlung, Johann Gottfried Herder, Isaiah Berlin]

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diego
The study doesn't prove that what the title claims. What it proves is that you
can improve your grades, which is not equivalent to becoming smarter. An
alternative explanation is that believing makes you more motivated, which
results in better grades.

Not saying that it's not possible, just that the title is not a conclusion
from the study.

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badave
And now reading this will make you smarter in the future, because you will
believe you can become smarter, hence you will.

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goodside
The implied message, that one should advocate the malleability of IQ not
because it's true but because it's motivational, is a little troubling. If
you're coaching an 8th-grade gym class, everyone will probably perform better
if you pull each of them aside individually and tell them they're showing real
potential and should try out for the team. That is, until they figure out you
were lying.

~~~
tierack
But the fact that "many psychological studies suggest" that intelligence (not
IQ specifically) is changeable makes this a different scenario than outright
lying to students as in your gym class example.

Whether or not the students are actually getting smarter is another question.
But it doesn't look to me like anyone's getting lied to.

(edit: refactoring language)

~~~
gwern
Intelligence may be changeable, but this is a truism: I can 'change' my
intelligence by eating some paint chips or taking a baseball bat to my head.

What isn't suggested by 'many psychological studies' is that IQ can be
reliably, long-term, and over general populations by any particular technique.
And that's what everyone _wants_ to exist and will read into a statement like
that. So, based on the abstract, this study boils down to a good motivation
technique.

(I say reliably because with 0.05 significance there will be many false
results; long-term because short-term studies will show anything you want them
to; and over general populations because there are small deprived groups in
which one can easily boost IQ long-term - eg. children in the Balkans with
iodine deficiencies.)

EDIT: Also note that the researchers point to increased grades - _not_
increased IQ scores. If they have enough participation, time, and cooperation
from these students to do all this teaching & motivating, then it is
inexplicable - if they think they're actually boosting IQ - to have not given
the students a quick hour-long IQ test; but this omission is quite
understandable if they don't think their intervention is actually increasing
anyone's IQ but their motivation.

~~~
tokenadult
After edit: I would be very glad to see citations to research sources that
back up any of the statements made in your comment. I would want to look
especially at methodological issues

<http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html>

if a study claims that something can't be done (rather than claiming that
something hasn't been done).

After further edit: There is recent research showing that learning can
actually change brain neural connections,

<http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/09344/1019898-115.stm>

so I think this year the burden of proof is on the people who claim lack of
malleability, since malleability of human brain function is a replicated
research result.

~~~
gwern
> After further edit: There is recent research showing that learning can
> actually change brain neural connections

Yes, _of course_ learning changes neural connections. How else would it work?
Changing some chemicals won't get a brain very far.

But this is as far away from changing IQ as demonstrating the Casimir effect
gets you to a tractor beam sucking in the _Millennium Falcon_. The famous
study of the [London taxi](<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/677048.stm>) drivers
shows they have changed connections, alright, even enlarged hippocampi - but
nothing about increased brain mass or volume, because it's a zero-sum gain.

Now, as far as my specific assertions go. The 0.05 point is basic statistics
which I feel no need to justify. The short-term point flows out of the former
(there's simply more noise when you do all your sampling over a few days or
minutes, say), and short-term studies are particularly vulnerable to issues
like testing effects; the Balkans thing I alluded to in enough detail that you
could easily have googled it if you were genuinely curious:
[http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=balkans%20IQ%20io...](http://www.google.com/search?num=100&q=balkans%20IQ%20iodine%20deficiency%20study)
And iodine deficiency isn't something that's purely long-term either - you can
see effects after 24 weeks in this study:
<http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/83/1/108> (note the high significance).

The burden of proof is not on those who claim lack of malleability - not that
there are any such people here - but on those who claim IQ boosts without good
long-term IQ testing.

------
jamesbressi
I'm trying to search the internets to see if I can find the details of the 3
hour presentation and discussion on the malleability of intelligence given to
the 7th graders using a science based article that describes how intelligence
develops.

Has anyone else searched and discovered?

From this part under Practical Applications: "Blackwell, Dweck, and
Trzesniewski (2002) recently replicated and applied this research with
seventh-grade students in New York City. During the first eight weeks of the
spring term, these students learned about the malleability of intelligence by
reading and discussing a science-based article that described how intelligence
develops."

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onoj
Observation: I used to be a good hockey player, I have not practiced for 7
years so now I am bad. I also used to be a mathematics student at a high
research university 18 years ago. Now I can no longer calculate (whole number)
quartics in my head. I have also found that if I practice on IQ test related
questions I achieve a higher IQ score in other IQ tests. Appreciate the
article but would suggest "exercising" your intelligence can make you more
intelligent in that field.

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thinkbohemian
They've also done similar research with athletes. When given athletes missed
field goal kicks, they perceived the goal as being smaller. "Missed kicks make
brain see smaller goal post" performed by researchers at Purdue i believe.

