In a previous blog, I posted a quote from Richard Nisbett, distinguished¹ psychology² professor at Michigan and Malcolm Gladwell’s guru on human intelligence, who indicated that intelligence is under our control. So how do you get our intelligence under control?

Although there are a lot of answers to that question, including basics like nutrition and exercise, the best response is tied to the research of Carol Dweck, the world renown³ expert on human motivation. I have written previously⁴ about her work here, here and here. Dweck’s early research focused on why some school children persist in the face of failure while others quit as soon as the going gets rough. Over the years her research has shown that it is crucial for parents to teach children that their intelligence is under their control. Indeed, she found that when children are praised for their intelligence, they resist accepting a challenge and doing things from which they can learn a lot.

Here is Richard Nisbett’s summary of that fascinating research:

In a clever experiment . . .developmental psychologists Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck told children that they had done very well on problems from the Raven⁵ Progressive Matrices test and praised them either for being bright or for working hard. They then offered the children the opportunity to work on another set of problems—either easy ones (“so I’ll do well”) or hard problems that would challenge them (“so I’ll learn a lot from them, even if I won’t look so smart”). Sixty-six percent of the children who were praised for their intelligence chose to work on easy problems that would show that they were smart; over 90percent of children praised for hard work chose problems that they would learn a lot from. If the children did well because they worked hard, they wanted problems that would test their limits and teach them how to do even better.

But in order to further test their conclusions, the researchers added some important “difficulties.”

Before the children actually got a chance to work on a problem set of their choice, Mueller and Dweck required them to work on a second set of problems that were much more difficult than the first set. The children were then asked to explain why they had performed poorly on the second set of problems. The children praised for intelligence based on performance on the first set of problems were more likely to think that their failure on the second set of problems reflected lack of ability; children praised for hard work initially⁶ were more likely to think that their failure on the second set of problems was due to lack of effort. Children praised for ability were less likely to want to continue to work on the problems and reported enjoying working on the second set of tasks less than did those praised for hard work. As icing on the cake, Mueller and Dweck then had the children work on a third set of problems. Children who had initially been praised for intelligence solved fewer problems than those initially praised for hard work.

The conclusions are obvious: If you want to build your kid’s intelligence (and your own), emphasize and praise for effort and hard work, not for intelligence or IQ. Not only does that process reject the conventional and highly limiting views of innate⁷ intelligence, but more significantly, it puts performance under the control of the person. You may not think you’ve got the ability, but you sure as hell can put more effort into something you want to learn. And, that’s especially true when you’ve got an effective teacher and coach.

Later studies by Carol Dweck and Anders Ericsson on “deliberate practice” research successes in numerous fields based on the results of this seminal⁸ research. That includes research on sports such as golf, ice-skating, and tennis, as well as games like chess, and academic subjects like math, business, the arts and an ever-enlarging set of disciplines.

如何开发孩子的智慧（以及你自己的）

在之前一篇博客中，我引用了 Richard Nisbett的话。这个不是在密歇根马尔科姆格拉德维尔的宗教老师。他说，智力在我们的掌握之中。那么如何能将智力掌控自如呢？

虽然这个问题有许许多多答案，包括基础的营养和锻炼，最好的回答来自人类动机专家Carol Dweck 的调查。我在之前许多文章中提及过她的工作。Dweck最早的调查集中于为什么一些学生支持直到面对失败，而另一些像事情变糟一样迅速放弃。经过几年的调研，她的调查发现家长告诉孩子们他们的智力是在掌控之中的这一点至关重要。

事实上，她发现当孩子被夸奖聪明，他们会敢于接受挑战并且从中学到很多。

这是 Richard Nisbett 的调查总结：

在一个聪明的试验中……实验心理学家Claudia Mueller和Carol Dweck告诉孩子们他们在雷芬氏渐进图形测验中做得非常棒并且分别赞扬他们聪明或勤奋，然后他们给孩子们做另一套的机会，简单的（所以我可以做好）或难的（即使我做不出以致看起来不那么聪明，但我可以学到很多）结果之前被夸奖聪明的孩子中有百分之六十六选择了简单的题，因为那样可以表现他们的聪明。百分之九十以上被夸奖勤奋的孩子选择了困难的题，以便能够学到更多的知识。如果孩子因为勤奋而做的很好，他们就希望难题来弥补自己的不足并且告诉他们该如何做得更好。

为了巩固他们的结论，调查者们增加了一些重要的“难点”

在孩子们得到机会选择问题之前Muller和Dweck要求他们做一组比第一组更难的题目。然后询问他们为什么做得很烂。第一次被表扬聪明的孩子更容易认为自己能力不足而被表扬勤奋的孩子则认为第二次的失败在于不够努力。“聪明”的孩子很少想要继续钻研这些难题，而勤奋的孩子认真的计算第二组难题。专家们趁热打铁给了孩子们第三组题，结果被夸奖聪明的孩子做对的题远少于被夸奖勤奋的。

结论显而易见：如果你想要开发你孩子的智慧（和你的），强调并且赞扬他努力和勤奋而不是聪明或IQ,不仅仅是因为那样会严重限制天赋的智慧，更重要的是，这样能够使孩子的成长在控制之中。你也许会想你还没得到这能力，但你的确可以更专注地投入到你想得到的东西上去。并且，当你有一个有影响力的老师或教练时尤为这样。

根据这个调查Carol Dweck 和 Anders Ericsson后续的“刻意练习”调查在许多领域取得了成功。包括体育界的像高尔夫、滑冰、网球和游戏如国际象棋以及学校课程如数学、商业、艺术。