Everything is hard before it is easy – different theories about the nature of intelligence

 Reaching your pontential

This post was inspired by President Obama’s speech to American students. The speech sent students messages that their situation can change and that they can achieve their potential through hard work, nothing new here! 

However, previous generations of students, including my own, rarely listened the idea that their intelligence was malleable or that their potential was not set from the begining. In fact, the idea about intelligence was that it was fixed.

What is the impact on sending kids a message that intelectual ability can be developed? Is it beneficial? If so, what should be done to promote a belief of incremental inteligence?

These are the questions we will try to answer in this post. 

Types of believes regarding intelligence

According to Standfords’ Professor Carol Dweck  research  there are two types of beliefs regarding inteligence:   

Some believe that intelligence is more of an unchangeable, fixed ‘‘entity’’ (an entity theory). Others think of intelligence as a malleable quality that can be developed (an incremental theory).”   

Some of us had episodes in primary school that clearly impacted how we saw our abilities and therefore our academic performances and professional lives. I recall when I was studying in high school drawing was not seen as a subject where hard work could make you better, you had to be talented. Needless to say that in the majority of the cases, professors where responsible for these beliefs.   

Successful learning

The research shows the different atitudes among entity and incremental theorists (papers here, here and here), and suggests that these can explain a better learning success of incremental theorists.  Successful learning is described as a path where new challenges are not avoided, strategies to overcome setbacks are formulated and implemented, and where motivation and performance is sustained. This definition of successful learning sends already the right message to kids (reducing pressure), as opposed to the message sent by a definition of successful learning as the final grade students attain. 

What makes incremental theorists successful learners?

The research suggests that each class of theorists shows the following behaviours:

For those endorsing more of an entity theory, the belief in a fixed, uncontrollable intelligence -a ‘‘thing’’ they have a lot or a little of – orients them toward measuring that ability and giving up or withdrawing effort if the verdict seems negative. In contrast, the belief that ability can be developed through their effort orients those endorsing a more incremental theory toward challenging tasks that promote skill acquisition and toward using effort to overcome difficulty.
 
Those who believe intelligence is a fixed entity (entity theorists) tend to emphasize ‘performance goals,’ leaving them vulnerable to negative feedback and likely to disengage from challenging learning opportunities. In contrast, students who believe intelligence is malleable (incremental theorists) tend to emphasize ‘learning goals’ and rebound better from occasional failures.

Entity theorists tend to be more concerned with besting others in order to prove their intelligence (‘performance goals’), leaving them highly vulnerable to negative feedback.
As a result, these individuals are more likely to shun learning opportunities where they anticipate a high risk of errors, or to disengage from these situations when errors occur.
 
In contrast, incremental theorists are more likely to endorse the goal of increasing ability through effort and are more likely to gravitate toward tasks that offer real challenges (‘learning goals’). 

Performance goals, with their emphasis on outcomes as measures of ability, were shown to produce a vulnerability to helplessness and debilitation after a setback or negative feedback, particularly in cases where current perceptions of ability were low. 
 
That is, when the goal is to validate ability and individuals do not believe they can accomplish this, motivation and performance tend to suffer. Learning goals, with their emphasis on understanding and growth, were shown to facilitate persistence and mastery-oriented behaviors in the face of obstacles, even when perceptions of current ability might be low.  

What could be done in order to change children’s beliefs regarding intelligence? 

Social marketing has been a powerful tool to change behaviour across social, political, safety, health and environmental issues.  The same techniques that comercial marketing uses are being use to promote a healthy lifestyle, garbage separation, inclusion and etc. These sucess stories could be applied to promote an incremental intelligence.

Using Art to change behaviours.In addition, group-specific activities should be implemented. Art can play an important role here. For instance, twenty-two years ago I saw a play at school regarding hygiene and I still recall most the story that was created to send simple messages as wash your hands before you eat. You can see more about how art is being used to change behaviours by watching Mallika Sarabhai TED’s presentation.  

What messages on intelligence should we send children?

It seems US students are getting the right input in terms of messages to see intelligence as something that can be developed. The following messages were extracted from President Obama’s speech:

We need every single one of you to develop your talents, skills and intellect so you can help solve our most difficult problems. 

If you get a bad grade, that doesn’t mean you’re stupid, it just means you need to spend more time studying.

And you won’t necessarily succeed at everything the first time you try.
 
No one’s born being good at things, you become good at things through hard work.
 
You’re not a varsity athlete the first time you play a new sport. You don’t hit every note the first time you sing a song. You’ve got to practice. It’s the same with your schoolwork. You might have to do a math problem a few times before you get it right, or read something a few times before you understand it, or do a few drafts of a paper before it’s good enough to hand in. 

The research above used “analogies such as (e.g., to muscles becoming stronger) and examples (e.g., of relatively ignorant babies becoming smarter as they learned).” to send messages such as:

learning changes the brain by forming new connections (…) students are in charge of this process

everything is hard before it is easy.   

As Eistein put it: “Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death”.

The “light of beauty” and the danger of a single story

The “light of beauty”

On my latest trip to Madrid, Caixa Forum had an exhibition called “Maternities”.

Sixteen photographs by Bru Rovira show moments between mothers and their offspring. These pictures were taken in different parts of the world and show the characters in everyday situations.

The following picture, to me, looks like a regular picture of a serene mother with her child. However, the background of  this family is very different from the outside factors that can lead to such serenity. The background of this family from Angola (they live in a Refugee camp in Kuito) was described on a commentary note by the photographer. It can be seen bellow.

Photo Exhibition: "Maternities"

Here is what Bru Rovira had to say about this moment:

She was sitting on the ground, looking for  protection of the early morning sun in the shadow projected into the reddish sand.

She and her baby. Playing. Devouring kisses.

Completely absent from the horizon of people hungry for something that can be put into their mouths.

Seeing this picture, one might think, “by very bad things are going, you can always  find inside you a light of beauty to which you can hold down to”.

The other photographs from the exhibition and  Bru Rovira’s narration can be found here (PDF file in Spanish).

The danger of a single story

The mother’s expression is so remarkable considering her story. Speaking of stories, the inspiring thing of this image is that is does not repeat the images of famine, poverty and war of Africa. The photo gives another vision of Africa (the vision that we are to used to is only present at the narrative), a vision of regular people, families that have dreams and show love to each other.

TED’s presentation of  the novelist Chimamanda Adichie says it best. She warns that if we hear only a single story about another person or country, we risk a critical misunderstanding. She goes also by saying that when she was a child, she read British and American children books. In that time, when she created her own stories,  all her characters where white with blue eyes and played in the snow. She did not even consider that people with her skin color had room in her stories. Only after she came across African literature she made a shift in her writing.

She gives other examples of how other single stories of Africa and how damaging it can be to the perception we have of people (stereotypes).

The cause of single stories can be related with the following:

• a tendency to categorize and generalize. It is easier for us to focus on the single story of someone we meet, a new place we visit or other culture we discover, and make it the definite story about the other person, place or cultures. The reason why this happens is a consequence of our tendency to categorize (that is how we learn at school) and generalize. Therefore, interpreting the one story as JUST one story from the set of stories that someone has to offer, can be a first step to overcome this tendency.
• access to a wide range of stories can be limited. For instance, I recall the French film “entre les murs” about French classrooms and the number of different nationalities in that French classroom is far greater than the nationalities presented in my classroom in the second largest Portuguese city (Note: According to the conclusions of the study «Language Diversity in Portuguese Schools» 11% of the 75000 students (1st to 9th grade) of Lisbon schools  are from 74 other nationalities. Reference here – in Portuguese). The variety of nationalities, religions and races in our relationships can offer more alternatives to the information we get from the news, films or books, thus triggering an internal dialogue. This is specially difficult to have if you don’t live in a major city.
• a tendency to look for information that confirms what we already know. The internet can help on contributing to limit the impact of the previous point. However, when we are actively searching the internet, we search for information to build on the knowledge that we already have. Our internet habits probably include reading  posts from  blogs from specific topics we always liked and looking at key sections on the same news-oriented websites. Just one question, when was the last time you found a blog that was from a topic that you were already interested and it presented views contrary to yours? Sometimes we don’t leave much room for variety of stories by always accessing the same sources of information.
• a tendency to value the information we know more than the information we don’t know. In addition to the information pattern that we follow day after day,  we don’t leave much room for randomness, or to discover new information in areas that interest us.

A balanced story

We can make small changes in our behaviour to defeat the single story:

• search for alternative stories in blogs, literature, in travelling and exhibitions. Exposing ourselves to activities, people and information that usually we don’t have access, either by buying a different magazine, or by going to a show or exhibition that usually we wouldn’t go, or follow bloggers that have an opinion contrary to ours.

• question why we think what we think and give importance to what we don’t know. Asking questions that don’t look for evidence to reinforce what we think we know, use sites such as digg and delicious.

We need more stories about Africa like the one in captured in the photo.

MY RTW trip

TEDster Stefan Sagmeister has made a presentation at TED speaking how the sabatical year he takes every 7 years benefits his work.  He also presents some other people  that have benefited from their sabatical year and companies who benefit from giving time to thei employees to do whatever they like.

This post starts a new category “MY RTW trip” and shows my commitment  to this trip, expecting it has the same positive impact has the one this TEDster seems to have experienced in terms of creativy.

The best Online Video Libraries

Here is a list of video libraries with talks in topics such as Arts and Humanities, Business and Economics,  Computer Science and Engineering, Health and Medicine,  Sciences, Social Sciences, Entertainement and etc, from the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers.

1. TED

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader [About TED].

The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

This site makes the best talks and performances from TED available to the public, for free. More than 200 talks from our archive are now available, with more added each week.

2. Research Channel

ResearchChannel was founded by a consortium of leading research and academic institutions to share the valuable work of their researchers with the public.

Remarkable speakers, researchers and scholars present revolutionary thoughts and discoveries on ResearchChannel.

Viewers access programs online via a live webstream and an extensive video-on-demand library. The library houses more than 3,500 full-length programs that are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week[About RC].

3. Google Talks

Video Library with videos from the talks held at Google (for Google employees) featuring everyone from newsmakers to bestselling authors. The talk include the following self-explanatory areas of interest:

Authors@Google, Candidates@Google,  women@Google, leading@google, techtalks@google

In a next post I will compile some of my favourite videos from these web sites. Enjoy!!