![\"\"](\"http:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/images\/blogpics\/Schoolteacher.jpg\" "\\"school\\"")
Does hearing that you are a member of an elite group \u2013 of chess players, say, or scholars \u2013 enhance your performance on tasks related to your alleged area of expertise? Not necessarily, say researchers who tested how sweeping pronouncements about the skills or likely success of social groups can influence children\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n
The researchers found that broad generalizations about the likely success of a social group \u2013 of boys or girls, for example \u2013 actually undermined both boys\u2019 and girls\u2019 performance on a challenging activity<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The new study appears in the journal Psychological Science<\/em>.<\/p>\n \u201cSome children believe that their ability to perform a task is dictated by the amount of natural talent they possess for that task<\/strong>,\u201d said University of Illinois psychology professor Andrei Cimpian, who led the study. \u201cPrevious studies have demonstrated that this belief can undermine their performance<\/strong>. It is important, therefore, to understand what leads children to adopt this belief.\u201d<\/p>\n The researchers hypothesized that exposure to broad generalizations about the abilities of social groups induces children to believe that success depends on \u201cnatural talent<\/strong>.\u201d If the hypothesis were correct, then hearing messages such as \u201cgirls are very good at this task,\u201d should impair children\u2019s performance by leading them to believe that success depends primarily on innate talent and has little to do with factors under their control, such as effort.<\/p>\n In line with this hypothesis, two experiments with 4- to 7-year-olds demonstrated that the children performed more poorly after they were exposed to information that associated success on a given task with membership in a certain social group, regardless of whether the children themselves belonged to that group.<\/p>\n \u201cThese findings suggest we should be cautious in making pronouncements about the abilities of social groups such as boys and girls,\u201d Cimpian said. \u201cNot only is the truth of such statements questionable, but they also send the wrong message about what it takes to succeed, thereby undermining achievement \u2013 even when they are actually meant as encouragement<\/strong>.\u201d<\/p>\n The research team also included scientists from Sun Yat-sen University, in Guangdong, China; and Carnegie Mellon University.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the University of Illinois press release via HealthCanal: Does hearing that you are a member of an elite group \u2013 of chess players, say, or scholars \u2013 enhance your… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9],"tags":[45,140,73,19,37,126,12,124,17],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2564,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2563\/revisions\/2564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/therapytoronto.ca\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}