Dr. Ken Bain, referring to his book "What The Best College Students Do," reports in The Wall Street Journal (July 14, 2012) that over the past 25 years, social scientists have produced some key insights into how successful people overcome their unsuccessful moments—and that they have found that attitudes toward learning play a large role from a young age.
Many people think of intelligence as static: you are born with lots of brains, very few, or somewhere in between, and that quantum of intelligence largely determines how well you do in school and in life.
Albert Einstein once said, "We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles but no personality. It cannot lead; it can only serve."
Psychologists have assigned labels to two types of students. Students of the first sort are called "helpless" because they develop the idea that they just can't do something. If they continue to believe that they are generally smart, they still often become helpless because they are afraid to try anything new for fear that failure will undermine their self-image as "one of the bright ones." The other type, who keep telling themselves that they could solve difficult problems with more effort, are said to have a mind-set of "mastery" or "growth."
Are these "mastery" types just smarter than their "helpless" peers? The "helpless" type roughly have the same natural abilities and sometimes demonstrate greater native powers.
A growth mind-set can be learned according to a 2007 study by psychologists from Columbia and Stanford. Those students in a group that read aloud an article titled "You Can Grow Your Intelligence" emerged with much stronger notions about improving intelligence with effort. The article explained research on how nerve cells in the brain make stronger connections after we learn something new.
As the researchers noted, someone's theory about intelligence may not make much difference when times are easy. But when failures accumulate, those who believe that they can improve their basic abilities are far more likely to weather the storm.
Ken Bain: What the Best College Students Do
John G. Agno: Can't Get Enough Leadership: Self Coaching Secrets
