Page 184 - The Social Animal

166 The Social Animal

people’s defining traits—like intelligence or goodness.These implicit
theories exert a considerable influence upon a child’s judgments and
behavior. Let’s take intelligence. Dweck has found that some people
think that intelligence is fixed—that people can learn new things but
they can’t really get any smarter than they were when they were born.
Others hold a different view: that intelligence is more malleable, that
it can grow with hard work. In several studies, Dweck has shown
how powerful this difference can be in the academic arena. 82
The basic finding is that people who see intelligence as fixed are
apprehensive about failure. Accordingly, they try to steer clear of real
challenges that might reveal their limitations. In a way, this makes
sense; if you can’t improve your intelligence, you want to play it safe
and foster the image that you are smart.Thus, relative to people who
are equally smart but who see intelligence as malleable, people with
the fixed view are more likely to choose easier tasks and give up when
a task becomes too challenging.They frequently choke on hard tests,
and will even lie to a stranger about their performance, reporting a
higher score than they got. People who think intelligence is malleable
behave differently. They tend to seek challenges and try to improve
their abilities. Instead of giving up when they fail, they try harder or
try a different strategy—they are more resilient.
The good news, as we will see in the next chapter, is that there
are powerful ways to change this kind of behavior. For example, re-
cent research shows that if you change people’s attitudes about intel-
ligence—getting them to believe in its malleability—they earn better
grades, enjoy academics more, accept challenges more eagerly, and
perform better on standardized tests. 83

Three Possible Biases in Social
Explanation

Every day of our lives, we seek to explain a variety of events and hap-
penings: Why are the North Koreans behaving so erratically? Why did
that attractive person across the room ignore me? How come I did so
poorly and you did so well on the recent essay assignment? Why did
Mom not cook my favorite meal while I was home for Christmas? Our
explanations are often rational and accurate. But they are also vulner-
able to bias and inaccuracy. In studying how we interpret our social
world, social psychologists have identified three general biases that