Haduken.com

If you want people to be smarter, all you have to do is tell them that they can make themselves smarter.

Yeah, sounds ridiculous, right? But check it out. It’s a given that most people think that intelligence is fixed – some people are just smarter. Maybe it’s genetics, and maybe it’s upbringing, but once you get to a certain age your intelligence is set.

But most scientific studies do not support that. People actually can make themselves smarter if they work at it. So what would happen if you told people this? How would they act on that knowledge?

Some people did that study. They created two groups of college students, and taught one group that intelligence could be changed. The other group was taught no such thing. The results were fascinating:

Those students who learned about IQ’s malleability improved their grades more than did students who did not receive this message, and also saw academics as more important than did students in the control group. Even more exciting was the finding that Black students benefited more from learning about the malleable nature of intelligence than did White students, showing that this intervention may successfully counteract stereotype threat.

Can this sort of thing counteract the effect of stereotypes enough to make a real difference? In a later study, the evidence suggests that it can. This same type of study was done on seventh graders. The control group learned about memory strategies, and the test group learned about the possibility of intelligence development.

As compared to the control group, students who learned about intelligence’s malleability had higher academic motivation, better academic behavior, and better grades in mathematics. Indeed, students who were members of vulnerable groups (e.g., those who previously thought that intelligence cannot change, those who had low prior mathematics achievement, and female students) had higher mathematics grades following the intelligence-is-malleable intervention, while the grades of similar students in the control group declined. In fact, girls who received the intervention matched and even slightly exceeded the boys in math grades, whereas girls in the control group performed well below the boys.

Now, who knows if this is real. More studies are needed. But IF it is true, it absolutely must be part of the curriculums of schools, starting at the lowest levels. I mean, I would contribute money to a campaign to put PSA’s on TV telling people that they can become smarter if they want to be. I view this as a really big deal.