Consequences Of False Beliefs About Intelligence

How a False Belief Hinders Kids’ Academic Achievement

The belief one’s intelligence is fixed and stable is harmful, and widely shared among lower-income youngsters

Tom Jacobs | July 18, 2016

Are we all born with a stable, unchanging level of intelligence? Or can we grow smarter through study and hard work?
New research from South America suggests a student’s answer to that question can hugely impact how well they do in school — particularly if they come from poverty.
“Students’ mindsets may temper, or exacerbate, the effects of economic disadvantage,” a group of researchers led by Susana Claro of Stanford University writes in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Source: https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/manual/dweck-walton-cohen-2014.pdf

<more at https://psmag.com/how-a-false-belief-hinders-kids-academic-achievement-c0c4ca1b1c33; related articles and links: https://ed.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/manual/dweck-walton-cohen-2014.pdf (Academic Tenacity. Mindsets and Skills that Promote Long-Term Learning. Carol S. Dweck, Gregory M. Walton and Geoffrey L. Cohen. 2014) and http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2016/07/13/1608207113 (Growth mindset tempers the effects of poverty on academic achievement. Susana Claro, David Paunesku, and Carol S. Dweck. PNAS: Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the United States of America. Published online before print July 18, 2016, doi: 10.1073/pnas.1608207113. July 18, 2016. [Significance: This study is the first, to our knowledge, to show that a growth mindset (the belief that intelligence is not fixed and can be developed) reliably predicts achievement across a national sample of students, including virtually all of the schools and socioeconomic strata in Chile. It also explores the relationship between income and mindset for the first time, to our knowledge, finding that students from lower-income families were less likely to hold a growth mindset than their wealthier peers but that those who did hold a growth mindset were appreciably buffered against the deleterious effects of poverty on achievement. These results suggest that mindsets may be one mechanism through which economic disadvantage can affect achievement.]); further: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160718111939.htm (Infantile memory study points to critical periods in early-life learning for brain development. July 18, 2016)>