Can great effort truly lead to greatness?

I’d like to believe that if people put in 10,000 hours of effort into perfecting their skills, they can achieve their desired level of performance. The message which I took away from the book Outliers: The story of success by Malcom Gladwell motivated me to work hard. From my past experience, I realized that consistent practice helped me improve myself and my work tremendously over time. From a high school freshman who could only drew a distorted portrait, by senior year, I could paint a realistic human portraiture. Was I not gifted because I could not paint? Am I gifted now because I can paint well? Similarly, one might ask if Math is a gift. In the article “Is math a gift? Beliefs that put females at risk”, Carol S. Dwek argues that it is not.

Dwek’s primary thesis in the article is that the difference in mathematical ability distribution is due partly to female’s reaction to setbacks and confusion rather than innate ability. In a study of eighth-grade high school students, those who believed that intellectual ability is a gift, a considerable gap between boys and girls in math grades emerged while the gap did not exist among those who believed intellectual ability could be enhanced. Also in a study of students in a premed Chemistry course at Columbia University. Dwek found that females who thought of intellectual ability as a fixed entity displayed noticeable gender difference in science performance, while those who had the reversed mindset earned higher final grades. These evidence led Dwek to conclude that females who had the fixed mindset when it comes to intellectual ability displayed higher level of vulnerability which caused them to question their capability and are more susceptible to gender stereotypes in the fields of math and science.

I believed the possible driving force behind Dwek’s article is her main interest in motivation that led her to adopt an incremental theorist’s perspective. Dwek’s background is in the fields of social psychology and developmental psychology. A Psychology Professor at Standford, Dwek teaches courses on Personality, Social Development and Motivation. Dwek contributed significantly to social psychology on her research concerning implicit theories of intelligence in her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success in 2006. It can be inferred from her heavy involvement with and research in the field of social psychology that her background possibly led Dwek to believe strongly in human ability to improve their performance through practice and effort and that motivation is an important factor in keeping one’s desire in carry on an activity as mentioned in the article.

As a firm believer in incremental theory, I found myself immediately nodded with Dwek’s viewpoint that we could all acquire the skills we desire through great effort and practice and that the examples that Dwek provided only reaffirmed my belief. Dwek provided a finding in her past research that students who viewed intellectual ability with a fixed mindset led them to doubt their ability and lose motivation when setbacks arose while those with a growth mindset led them to take active and effective remedies in order to overcome difficulty. The same result occurred when the research team conducted a study in female students in calculus course at Columbia University. Those who believed that math skills could be augmented and enhanced experienced little negative stereotypes. Additionally, further studies to test the effect of “growing ability” mindset suggested that skills could be acquired through hard work. The results of these findings make me believe more strongly that skills can be acquired through effort and practice. Indeed, neuroscience suggests that human brain is elastic and new neural pathways can be created and strengthened throughout the course of life. The study “The deliberate practice and performance in music, games, sports, education, and professions: a meta-analysis” (Macnamara, B. N., Hambrick, D. Z., & Oswald, F. L.) has showed that people who put in a lot of efforts and practice perform at a higher level than those who practice less. Here, I am making an assumption that we all start with the same level of foundational skills and that practice helps us advance further from our basic level.

However, I found myself and the author falling short on our assumptions because of our beliefs. We tend to play down the factor of innate ability or intelligence. There is an assumption that the females and males in the Columbia studies mentioned in the article have similar level of intelligence which is controlled by only their SAT scores. But do similar performance in the SAT scores reflect the same level of intelligence? Research evidence suggests that intelligence is predicted by global connectivity of prefrontal cortex predicts which can be seen by brain imaging. Human intelligence is reflected by how complex their architecture of neural system is. Perhaps there is a trait that is desirable in the field of math and science. In the study mentioned earlier (Macnamara, B. N., Hambrick, D. Z., & Oswald, F. L.), engineers have characterized flexible, adaptive control of their prefrontal cortex ability to access multiple sources of task-relevant information. Could it be that the brains of engineers and scientists are wired differently from the brains of other professionals? If so, the difference in math performance is differentiated by individual intelligence, not by the sexes.

Math skills certainly can be improved through practice and great effort as Dwek suggested but not everyone is capable of achieving high-level in mathematics or in any other skills. In the book Outliers: The Study of Success, Malcom Gladwell studied the performance of top performers who are highly intelligent. Is everyone capable of achieving similar greatness if they put in similar hours of efforts? I doubt so. Motivation and effort certainly help people improve, but there are more factors at play that help the selected few reach the top.

References:

Dweck, C. S. (2007). Is Math a Gift? Beliefs That Put Females at Risk. Why Aren’t More Women in Science?: Top Researchers Debate the Evidence., 47-55. doi:10.1037/11546-004

Human Intelligence: Carol S. Dweck. (n.d.). Retrieved September 08, 2015, from http://www.intelltheory.com/dweck.shtml

Cole, M. W., Yarkoni, T., Repovs, G., Anticevic, A., & Braver, T. S. (2012). Global Connectivity of Prefrontal Cortex Predicts Cognitive Control and Intelligence. Journal of Neuroscience, 32(26), 8988-8999. doi:10.1523/jneurosci.0536-12.2012

Macnamara, B. N., Hambrick, D. Z., & Oswald, F. L. (2014). Deliberate Practice and Performance in Music, Games, Sports, Education, and Professions: A Meta-Analysis. Psychological Science, 25(8), 1608-1618. doi:10.1177/0956797614535810