You are the thoughts you eat
I am not a great mountain biker, but it’s not because I lack physical ability.
It’s because I decide my limits in advance.
“I can’t clear that rock,” I think, glumly. “I’m not fit enough to make it all the way to the top of this climb without stopping,” I convince myself. “I hope I don’t fall,” I fret, pessimistically.
I feed on these thoughts, absorb them and their nutrients, make them a part of who I am. Yet they are no better for me than potato chips or ice cream.
Brian Hayes just sent through a Scientific American article: How Stereotyping Yourself Contributes to Your Success (or Failure). It describes the phenomenon of behaving in exactly the way that our preconditioned beliefs dictate, regardless of objective ability:
For instance, a woman who knows that women as a group are believed to do worse than men in math will, indeed, tend to perform less well on math tests as a result.
The same is true for any member of a group who is aware that his or her group is considered to be inferior to others in a given domain of performance?whether it is one that appears to tap intellectual and academic ability or one that is designed to establish athletic and sporting prowess. Just as women?s performance on spatial and mathematical tasks is created by, and appears to ?prove,? the stereotype of their spatial and mathematical inferiority, so, too, the sporting performance of a team of long-failing underdogs will tend to live up (or, in fact, down) to its low expectations.
Richard Bach puts it succinctly in Illusions, one of my all-time favorite books: argue for your limitations, he says, and, sure enough, they’re yours.
In my experience, the greatest illusion of all is that we are static creatures. How do you describe yourself, your friends, your lover? “Joe is generous, kind, and thoughtful.” “Mary always sees the funny side.” “Tom never lies.” Really? Always? Never? Wouldn’t it perhaps be more accurate to say, “Joe is usually generous with his mother, unless he’s in a bad mood, but he can be pretty stingy with his business partner”?
We are constantly changing, but the more we repeat an absolute statement about ourselves the more likely it is to harden into fact. What do you think happens to a woman who continually tells herself she’s not strong? Does she magically become strong, or does she behave in ways that reinforce her initial belief?
More from SciAm:
…elderly people have been found to perform worse on memory tests if they take them after being made aware of stereotypes that associate aging with deteriorating cognitive ability.
In the domain of athletic performance, studies of golf putting have shown that expert golfers tend to leave their putts farther from a target than they would otherwise do if they are exposed to a stereotype that members of their sex are worse at putting than members of the opposite sex.
I can’t remember how many people told me the All Blacks always choke before?surprise?they choked at the World Cup last year.
Think about this next time you make a blanket statement about yourself. I’m not trying to be holier-than-thou here?I have thoughts like these all the time. Just this week, for example, I’ve come up with another idea for a cartoon, but the online app I used to make the last one isn’t equipped for it. I’m trying to source someone to draw it for me because, “I can’t draw. I just can’t. I’m a terrible artist. I may be the worst drawer ever in the history of the world.”
…a 2005 study by social psychologists Mara Cadinu, Anne Maass and colleagues at the University of Padua in Italy showed that when women perform mathematical tasks after being exposed to the stereotype that they are worse at math than men, they report entertaining more intrusive negative thoughts about their own mathematical ability. That is, they find themselves thinking things such as ?These exercises are too difficult for me? and ?I am not good at math.?
So I’m not saying you should snap your fingers and never have another negative thought. I’m just urging a little awareness here.
What’s your experience with this behavior? And do you know how to draw?
