Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Naive theories of intelligence
The topic that I would like to discuss in this last blog post has to do with Naïve theories of Intelligence. This was pretty interesting for me. I did not know any of this before this class. I really do not agree with the Entity intelligence theory. I am sure that some of this theory is true, but it just does not make that much sense to me. I also feel like this theory could really cripple children’s imitative and drive for school. I feel like if children were labeled with this intelligence then they would underperform children that are classified as Incremental intelligence. I feel that entity intelligence would give certain children an excuse for why they underperform. I also feel that this would only hurt a child if they knew. I just really cannot comprehend this theory because I just cannot understand it. I feel that if you work hard for something that you can achieve it. And under the entity theory intelligence is fixed and does not change. You either have it, or don’t. So why would there be so many people in college if there were people out there that would not benefit from learning? If certain people cannot change how smart they are then why are more people just accepting that they cannot become a genius? I do however; have one piece of evidence in favor of the entity theory. This would be IQ tests. According to researchers your IQ score will stay the same across time. They say that, for the most part, you cannot change your score. It may move up a couple points, (or even move down) but it pretty much stays the same throughout your lifetime. This supports the entity theory. You are born with a certain amount of intelligence and you cannot change that no matter how much you learn, or how much you study. However, I feel that the incremental theory is more correct. It makes much more sense that intelligence is malleable, context dependent, and acquired through experience and hard work. This is how I feel I am. I feel that through hard work I have become more intelligent. Of course it could just be that I was smart to begin with and that just continues. I just feel like the incremental theory fits better. It also makes sense then that within the incremental theory, there is more self-esteem. It seems that people feel better about themselves if they know they can improve something as opposed to “being stuck with what you got.” Again, the answer probably is a mixture of both theories. (Like the nature/nurture debate). There are probably elements of both within intelligence.
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Alicia,
Thanks for bringing up the “implicit theories of intelligence” topic, because this is one of the topics that strikes me the most in developmental research. It is one of the best examples of the interaction between social and cognitive development. As far as I understand from Carol Dweck’s works, even though they are inevitably affected by how intelligence is approached in the society, these two “implicit” theories of intelligence are used to describe whether “an individual” sees intelligence as fixed or malleable, and attributes her/his success or failure to innate abilities or effort (rather than being dichotomous theories by researchers with different ideas about what intelligence is).
According to this model, there are two frameworks of theories about intelligence: entity theory and incremental theory (Dweck, 1988). People who endorse more of an “entity theory” see intelligence as a fixed quality that cannot be changed. They attribute success or failure to innate abilities of intelligence. People who endorse an “incremental theory” see intelligence as a malleable quality that can be improved. They attribute success or failure to effort. These implicit theories of intelligence affect how people respond to challenges, including academic hardships. Students endorsing an entity theory are more likely to have a “helpless orientation,” giving up when faced with a challenging task or avoiding challenges. In contrast, students endorsing an incremental theory tend to have a “mastery orientation,” orienting toward challenging tasks and persisting in the face of failure (Dweck, 1990).
As you have mentioned in your post, how an individual approaches his/her own intelligence affects her/his academic achievement. Among students with similar prior achievements, those with an incremental theory of intelligence earn significantly higher grades in the first year of junior high school (Dweck, 1990). Recent research has also shown that incremental theory predicted an improvement in the grades over the 2 years of junior high school, while entity theory predicted no change in the grades (Blackwell & Dweck, 2007). As demonstrated by similar longitudinal studies, implicit theories of intelligence appear to play an important role in academic achievement.
Fortunately, even the entity theory itself seems to be malleable to change. It has been shown that an intervention teaching an incremental theory of intelligence improved classroom motivation (Blackwell & Dweck, 2007). In this intervention study, 99 seventh-grade students were given eight 25 minute periods, one per week, during a spring term. During the sessions, they were explained that “learning changes the brain by forming new connections” and they are in charge of this development, and provided with interesting readings, analogies, activities, and discussions. Even students who endorsed a strong entity theory of intelligence benefited from the program and improved their math grades.
It is true that in societies in which the hereditary qualities of intelligence is overemphasized and lexicons include many words and structures for generic attributions, it is not easy to develop an incremental theory of intelligence. It is also true that it is hard to change self-attributes, which are linked to early development, even infant attachment in many cases. However, research shows us that it is possible to change even the most fixed ideas, such as entity theory of intelligence.
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