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This is the conclusion that psychologists have come to, putting innate abilities and acquired skills in second place. The first step was faith in yourself, in your strengths and capabilities.
The study posed the question to find out whether it is true that a high level of intelligence and self-control are unchanged or can they develop in the process of working on oneself? It turned out that those who believe that these qualities can be acquired, as a rule, cope with tasks better, and not only during their studies.
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- What is your main talent at work?
Recent research has added to this the fact that students who are confident in their free will (that is, those who agree with the statements “I am free in my choice” and “I am responsible for my actions, even if the consequences are very difficult” ), learn better1. Scientists are convinced that such a position is influenced not only by their idea of their abilities, but also by their ideas about the capabilities of a person as a whole.
At the start of the study, Gilad Feldman and colleagues asked 116 students to rate, on a scale of 100, whether they felt free to make their own choices and decisions. They then asked them to check the text for errors. It turned out that students who were more confident in their inner freedom did better on the task.
Then, at the beginning of the semester, they asked 600 students the following question: do they consider such human qualities as innate self-control and inner freedom, or can they be acquired in the process of working on oneself. In the end, it turned out that students who believed that a person acquires new qualities ended the semester better.
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- “We think wrong about work”
These studies show that people who believe in the freedom of their choice and in their personal responsibility for this choice are better able to learn from their mistakes than others. If a person believes that he builds his own life, then he is more focused on overcoming obstacles and obstacles than someone who believes that everything is predetermined and is doomed to failure in any case.
Such studies show that a person determines his own destiny and that he is always free in his choice. As for the improvement in academic performance, this is the least that can confirm the results of this study.
See more at Research Digest publications.
1 G. Feldman et al. «The freedom to excel: Belief in free will predicts better academic performance», Personality and Individual Differences, 2016, vol. 90.