Is it good to think hard?

We’re in the doldrums of the school year right now.  Winter break is behind us, and the school year still has a few months to go.  It is the time of years when there is still a lot of good learning to go before classes start to focus on reviewing for end-of-year tests.

Invariably, when a student is faced with new topics, some of them are fairly easy while others are a challenge.  A particular concept in math may click, and a student breezes right through a worksheet.  That same day, a science assignment may require some real effort.  How does the amount of effort required to complete something influence whether kids (or adults for that matter) think they understand the material when they finish?

This question was examined in a paper by David Miele and Dan Molden in the August, 2010 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology:  General.

They begin by rooting their work in a theory by Carol Dweck that I have discussed before in this blog.  Dweck has pointed out that for many psychological characteristics, people may hold one of two mindsets.  They may believe that a particular characteristic is fixed and unchangeable or they may believe that a particular characteristic can be changed with experience and practice.

In this case, Miele and Molden focus on people’s beliefs about intelligence.  Some people believe that intelligence is fairly fixed and cannot be changed.  Others believe that intelligence is a skill that can be acquired with practice.

In these studies, the authors did a variety of manipulations of text passages that made them feel harder to read.  In some cases, the easy text was well written, while the hard text used bad sentence structure to make the same points.  In other cases, the text for each version was identical, but the font used for the text was made easy or hard to read. 

In each study, the authors looked at how well people believed they understood the material.  Of interest, the people who believe that intelligence is a skill tended to think they understood the material reasonably well regardless of whether the text was easy or effortful to read.  In fact, in some of the studies in this paper, people who believe that intelligence is a skill actually felt as though they understood a text better when it required effort to read than when it was easy to read.

The people who believe that intelligence is fixed showed a different pattern.  They judged that they understood the passages better when they were easy to read than when they were hard to read.  That is, for this group, putting in effort to read something was a sign that they did not understand the passage well.

Of interest, the judgments of how well people understood a passage were not explained by actual comprehension (as measured by tests of understanding).   Passages that were hard to read, were often comprehended more poorly than passages that were easy to read for all groups.  So, people’s beliefs about how well they understood a passage were not always accurate.

Why does this matter?

Effort in school determines performance in school.  Eventually, everyone runs into a task in school that is hard.  For years, a child may find assignments in language arts and English classes to be easy, and then suddenly she may find that the assignments are difficult. 

If that child assumes that intelligence is fixed, then when she reaches the difficult assignment, she will assume she did not understand what she read.  Effort is taken as a sign that she has reached her limits.  Eventually, this effort saps motivation, and leads to poor performance in school, and worse yet slowed new learning.

If that child assumes that intelligence is a skill, then when she reaches the difficult assignment, she will assume that she has to work harder to complete this assignment.  In this case, effort signals that it is time to learn something new.  This effort can lead to good performance in school and lots of new learning.

Happily, there is also evidence that people’s attitudes toward psychological factors like intelligence can be changed.  Many studies (including this one) have conditions in which they manipulate people’s beliefs about intelligence by giving them articles to read.  In one experiment in this paper, people acted as though they believed that intelligence was relatively fixed if they had just read a paper suggesting that intelligence is fixed and they acted as though they believed that intelligence was a skill if they just read a paper suggesting that intelligence is a skill.

The success of these manipulations suggests that we can help children to recognize that intelligence is a skill by reinforcing that belief in the classroom.  In that way, we can help students to realize that effort has real value in the classroom.

You only confront prejudice when you believe people can change.

One of the more embarrassing social situations you can be in happens when someone you are in a conversation with someone you do not know well and they make a racist or sexist comment or joke.  In that moment, there is a whole calculus you end up going through.  On the one hand, if you do not say anything, you are implicitly endorsing the comment.  On the other hand, if you step up and say something, you can create an awkward social situation.

Obviously, there are many aspects of a situation that will affect whether you choose to confront prejudice.  For example, if the person making the remark has power over you (like a boss or a customer), then it can be difficult to say something.  It can also be more difficult to say something if you are in a group and feel that you are the only one who objects to the comment.

A paper in the July, 2010 issue of Psychological Science by Aneeta Rattan and Carol Dweck suggests that people are also more likely to confront a prejudiced remark when they believe that people can learn to change their behavior.  Dweck and her colleagues have done quite a bit of work demonstrating that there are different mindsets that people have about psychological qualities like intelligence and personality.  Some people have an entity mindset, in which case they believe that the quality is one that people are born with and that they cannot change.  Some people have an incremental mindset, in which they believe that qualities like intelligence or personality can change and adapt. 

In one study, Rattan and Dweck measured people’s beliefs about personality and classified them as believing that personality is relatively fixed (an entity mindset) or that it is relatively changeable (an incremental mindset).  The participants in this study were all members of racial or ethnic minority groups.  Later in the study, people interacted in a chat room with someone else who identified himself as a white male (it was actually the experimenter.  The discussion in the chat room was supposed to focus on diversity in college admissions.  Early on in the conversation, the white male made a comment displaying prejudice.  The experimenters were interested in whether the participant would say anything to confront the prejudice.  They found that participants were four times more likely to say something about the remark if they believed that personality is changeable than if they believed that it is fixed.

In another study in this paper, the experimenters had participants read an article made to look like it came from Psychology Today that either suggested that personality is relatively fixed or that it is relatively changeable.  They read this article as part of a study designed to determine whether the paper would be of interest to high school students.  Then, they participated in a second study that they were told was unrelated to the first.  In this study, they were asked a number of questions about what they would do if they were in a situation in which someone made a remark displaying prejudice.  They rated how likely they would be to confront the individual, to avoid them, and to withdraw from future interactions with them.

The people who read an article saying that personality is changeable rated themselves as more likely to confront the prejudice and less likely to withdraw from future interactions with the individual than people who read an article saying that personality is relatively fixed.

I want to highlight two interesting aspects of these studies.

First, the simple belief about whether psychological characteristics can change has a huge influence on people’s behavior.  After all, if you do not think that people can change the way they behave, what point is there in confronting their bad behaviors, particularly if that confrontation would come at some personal cost to you?  Thus, it is worth recognizing that people frequently change their behaviors when they learn new things.

Second, people’s theories about psychological characteristics like personality and intelligence can change.  In the last study I described, people read a single article, and that had an effect on their behavior (at least for the duration of the experiment).  This result suggests that with some continued support, many people can come to believe that most of their psychological characteristics can be changed.

When are attitudes pliable?

All of us have core beliefs.  Things that we accept as being important to us that we expect will drive our behavior.  Yet, there are times in social situations where it is awkward to express those beliefs, and we may even find ourselves sympathizing with someone else’s opinion, even though at some level we feel like we disagree with them.

For example, I was once in a taxi on a long drive from an airport to a hotel where I was staying.  The driver spent quite a bit of time relaying his political beliefs to me.  Those beliefs were the opposite of my own on a number of dimensions.  I did not feel like engaging with the driver, though, and so I kept silent.  Afterwards, I wondered whether this driver’s tirade could have any influence on my own beliefs.

This issue was addressed in a paper in the July, 2010 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology by Alison Ledgerwood, Yaacov Trope, and Shelly Chaiken.  These authors suggest that attitudes are much more strongly influenced by the specific situation you are in when you think about them specifically than when you think about them generally.

I have written a number of times in this blog about the idea of construal level.  Consider the issue of universal organ donation, for example.  You might have a general attitude that organ donation is a good thing, and something people should do.  At the same time, if you think about it specifically, you are forced to grapple with death, and the mechanics of organ donation.  When you think about something generally, then your attitudes will tend to stay fairly consistent.  When you think about something specifically, though, then you’re your attitudes are more prone to be influenced by aspects of the current situation.  Focusing on your own death might make you less interested in organ donation, while focusing specifically on people who might be saved by getting an organ transplant might make you more interested in it.

To demonstrate the influence of generality and specificity on attitudes, these investigators ran a number of studies in which people prepared to talk with someone else about a difficult topic like organ donation or universal health care.  Prior to the discussion, the participant in the experiment was given information about their partner’s attitude toward the topic.  Half were told that the partner supported the topic, while the other half were told that the partner opposed it.  Some time after finding out their partner’s opinion, participants were asked to express their own opinion on the topic.

Across studies, the researchers used a variety of techniques to manipulate how generally or specifically people thought about the core topic.  In one study, a time manipulation was used.  People were told they would discuss a potential change to an organ donation law that would take effect in a few days or that would take effect next year.  Previous work suggests that things that are near in time are conceptualized more specifically than things that are distant in time. 

In this study, people’s attitude toward organ donation was unaffected by their partner’s attitude when the law was set to take effect in a year.  That is, when thinking about the topic generally, people stuck with their long-term attitude.  When the law was set to take effect in a few days, however, people expressed a much more positive attitude toward organ donation when their partner was in favor it of than when their partner was opposed to it.  Similar results were observed with other ways of manipulating how generally people represented the core issue.

What does this mean for you?  We have all sorts of beliefs about the world.  Some of them are the product of a lot of careful thought and consideration.  We’d probably like those beliefs to have a big impact on the way we live our lives.  So, for these beliefs, it is best if we try to think about them in general terms.

On the other hand, we also have beliefs that are not as well considered.  These biases and prejudices can also influence our behavior, but we have less reason to trust them.  In this case, thinking about these beliefs specifically provides more opportunities to allow other events in the world to allow us to influence those beliefs.  Over time, perhaps you can turn these unanalyzed beliefs into ones that you have confidence holding.

Sometimes self-control is belief-control

One of the hardest things for people to do is to resolve the tradeoff between short-term and long-term goals. For example, if you are trying to stick to a diet, it can be difficult to avoid a tempting piece of cake or a fresh gooey cookie straight from the oven.

A paper by Ying Zhang, Szu-Chi Huang and Susan Broniarczyk from the University of Texas in the June 2010 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research examines one way that people help themselves to overcome temptations.

A real temptation is one that has some aspect to it that conflicts directly with a long-term goal you want to satisfy.  If you are dieting, for example, the tempting food may be delicious, but it has a lot of calories in it.  If you are trying to maintain good grades, then a tempting party may be one that is going to be a lot of fun, but it is going to take time away from your studies. 

The authors find that when people are trying to pursue an important long-term goal, they change the way they think about temptations in ways that make the temptations seem more damaging to the long-term goal.

In one study, women were asked to evaluate a fresh chocolate-chip cookie.  Some women had the goal to diet, while others did not.  In addition, some women were told that they could choose to take the cookie with them after the study, while others were just told that they were evaluating the cookie.  The women who did not care about dieting said that the cookie had a moderate number of calories.  Their estimates were about the same as those of women who cared about dieting, but did not think they would be able to take a cookie with them.  Those who cared about dieting and were told they could take a cookie gave much higher estimates of the number of calories.  That is, these women saw the cookie as a much stronger temptation than the other people in the study. In a second study, the authors found that overestimating the calories in a tempting food led dieters to eat less of that food later, so this strategy was successful.

A third study demonstrated a similar finding with the goal of studying.  People who had an active goal of getting good grades estimated the length of a tempting party to be much longer than those who did not have this goal.

Chances are, this strategy is not a conscious one.  That is, people who are trying to diet are not telling themselves that cookies are tempting.  Instead, these findings are another example of the way our perception of the world is changed by our goals.  In previous blog entries, I have talked about how we see things that we want as physically closer to us than things that we do not want.  This research suggests that we also view temptations as more disruptive of our goals than they really are. 

The reason that this strategy is effective is that long-term goals are usually very abstract.  A single cookie or soft drink does not cause our diet to fail.  Instead, it is the accumulation of calories that disrupts a diet.  Overestimating the danger of each snack is one way to make the temptation feel real in the present, which eventually protects the long-term goal.

Why girls drop math I: Beliefs about Math

Here in Texas, it may be 105 degrees, but marching band practice started, and there have been orientations at my kids’ schools, so it must be time for them to go back.  That got me thinking about a big problem in math and science education.  In elementary school, boys and girls are about even in their performance in math and science.  By middle school, girls start to lag behind, and few women go on to pursue math in college.  What is going on?

There are lots of answers to this question, but I’ll explore a few over the next week.  Think of this as the back-to-school portion of the blog.

One factor that leads girls to drop math is that boys and girls seem to differ in their beliefs about math.  Psychologist Carol Dweck (author of the fantastic book Mindset) argues that people can have two different sets of beliefs (or mindsets) toward academic topics.  

Entity theorists treat academic topics as if they were talents.  You either have them or you don’t.  So, you could be good at math or bad at math.  If you’re good at math, then you’ll learn it.  If you’re bad at math, then at some point, you’ll reach a type of math that goes beyond your abilities.

Incremental theorists treat math as a skill to be acquired.  Stick with math, and eventually you’ll get even the really hard stuff.

Dweck and her colleagues find that people who treat math (or any other academic subject) as a skill will stick with it longer and try harder when it gets difficult than when they treat it as a talent. 

The way this affects boys and girls is that Dweck has collected evidence that boys and girls get different feedback about math from early on in their schooling.  Eventually, everyone hits a topic in math that they struggle with.  When talking to girls, teachers are likely to emphasize that math is hard.  Talking about math as being difficult makes it sound like something that either you can do or you can’t.

Boys tend to get feedback that treats math as a skill to be acquired.  When they hit a hard topic, they are told to try harder and they’ll eventually get it. 

Because girls are more likely than boys to get feedback that treats math as a talent, they are more likely to end up with an entity theory of math.  The truly hard stuff in math comes in middle school, when kids are first exposed to algebra and geometry and later trigonometry and calculus.  Eventually, one of these topics is going to derail everyone, at least for a while.  Because of their beliefs about math, then, girls are more likely than boys to conclude that they have reached the limits of their talent and give up.

That isn’t the whole story, of course, and I’ll pick up on this in my next post.