if you’re not familiar with it, growth mindset is the belief that people who believe ability doesn’t matter and only effort determines success are more resilient, skillful, hard-working, perseverant in the face of failure, and better-in-a-bunch-of-other-ways than people who emphasize the importance of ability. Therefore, we can make everyone better off by telling them ability doesn’t matter and only hard work does…
A rare point of agreement between hard biodeterminists and hard socialists is that telling kids that they’re failing because they just don’t have the right work ethic is a crappy thing to do. It’s usually false and it will make them feel terrible. Behavioral genetics studies show pretty clearly that at least 50% of success at academics and sports is genetic; various sociologists have put a lot of work into proving that your position in a biased society covers a pretty big portion of the remainder. If somebody who was born with the dice stacked against them works very hard, then they might find themselves at A2 above. To deny this in favor of a “everything is about how hard you work” is to offend the sensibilities of sensible people on the left and right alike.
Read the whole thing. I found it difficult to excerpt.
The view that I hold, which is not based on any studies and is just my opinion, is that effort matters a lot, but that the propensity to undertake effort is more genetic than environmental.
In a school setting, my sense is that you get good effort and results if you happen to have a cohort of students who compete to impress one another in terms of classroom accomplishments and who encourage one another to do their best. (Imagine having a Michael Jordan in the class, pushing everyone on his “team” to be better.) If there is a way for a teacher to influence that, to create such an atmosphere where otherwise it would not exist, I would like to know the secret. My guess is that setting up teams and having competitive games is a way to trick students for a day or two, but I don’t think it creates the overall mentality that I have in mind.
I agree with Eric Falkenstein on effort. We tend to try harder at the things we are naturally good. In fact, we tend to be more interested in the things we are naturally good at! The feedback loop illustrated in the story of Scott and his brother learning piano is an example.That’s why so many nerds are honestly not interested in sports and so many jocks are bored by academics. Its as if we have been selected to find our alpha, our comparative advantage, and not just pursue it at the expense of others but to be intellectually and emotional captivated by it.
In some countries all grades are public. Test scores are posted outside of classrooms. As a hyper-competitive person, I’d love that, but I don’t think the zeitgeist around self-esteem would suffer that system here.
When I was at high school (in Brazil), all grades were public, but I don’t recall it having a great effect on the average student (it probably stimulated the best ones to keep jockeying for the top places, though).
I’m curious: why do you put Scott Alexander in ‘ ‘s? Yes, it’s a pseudonym. But lots of people use pseudonyms on the internet. The convention is generally to just refer to them by whatever name they’re going by without drawing attention to it.
I’m big fan of Dr. Dweck’s growth mindset. Effort does matter but she teaches that we can rewire our brains using her methods and get tremendous results. It takes away excuses and offers everyone the opportunity for better learning and performance.
Genetic factors explain 40% of the variance in academic motivation, according to a recent study.
My sense is the best results are from having students teach each other. The best learn from having to explain, and the worse learn from more personalized instruction. Competition works both ways, motivating the motivated and demotivating the motiveless, so cooperation works better.
I wouldn’t *disagree* with the statement that “propensity to undertake effort is more genetic than environmental” (especially within a population for which the range of environments is rather narrow), but I think it is potentially misleading in its breadth. I suspect that there are *different kinds* of effort, our propensities to engage in which are differentially influenced by our genes. We might distinguish heavy lifting, sprinting, distance running, fine-motor craftwork, calculating, story-telling, memorizing, persuading others, etc., etc. And it may be more useful to note each person has a profile of different degrees of willingness to put forth effort of these different kinds than it is to lump them all together in a general “willingness to put forth effort.”
I find this a bizarre point of view:
“A rare point of agreement between hard biodeterminists and hard socialists”
I think Scott might be hanging out with medical students too much. It might be true in medical school that everyone is already trying hard, and that trying harder will make little difference.
In the general population, you run into people everywhere who do things like don’t even bother to show up for a job interview. Or get drunk the night before a big event at work. These people aren’t trying hard, and it would make all the difference if they did. We live in a time where you have to cooperate with people to succeed.
The quote I was trying to insert was:
“A rare point of agreement between hard biodeterminists and hard socialists is that telling kids that they’re failing because they just don’t have the right work ethic is a crappy thing to do. It’s usually false and it will make them feel terrible.”
My own guess is that propensity to undertake effort is partially genetic and partially environmental at the level of parental influence (but not classroom/teacher influence). For example, I would expect that adoptive parents could influence effort propensity.
I would agree that effort matters a lot, especially at the level of achieving “competence” in something, say becoming a high school athlete or graduating from a 4-yr college. Genetics kicks in at higher levels, where one competes against others that also exert great effort, say becoming a Div. I college athlete or a professional researcher. That’s just based on my own observation of the “natural” abilities that are required at different levels of achievement.
“(Imagine having a Michael Jordan in the class, pushing everyone on his “team” to be better.)”
Indeed, there was a naturally occurring identical twin experiment involving Jordan’s influence on a young player: Harvey and Horace Grant were 6′-9″ identical twins in the NBA. Harvey flamed out quickly, while Horace, who spent several years playing third banana to Jordan and Pippen on the Bulls went on to a highly productive career.
Playing in the NBA for 11 seasons (as a starter for most of those years, no less) is not ‘flaming out quickly’.