Category Archives: Industrial organizational psychology

How do you spell success? G.R.I.T. (IO Psychology)

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Topic: Selection, IO Psychology
Publication: Social Psychological and Personality Science (2011)
Article: Deliberate Practice Spells Success: Why Grittier Competitors Triumph at the National Spelling Bee.
Authors: A.L. Duckworth, T.A. Kirby, E. Tsukayama, H. Berstein, & K. A. Anders Ericsson
Reviewed By: Scott Charles Sitrin

In 2011, the winning word at the National Spelling Bee was cymotrichous. Now look away, and try to spell that word. If you can, great; you are a championship-grade speller. If you can’t, you should probably practice. Better yet, do some deliberate practice.

Ericsson’s deliberate practice is a form of practice that is characterized by being effortful and not enjoyable. Sounds great, huh? Though doing something that is not fun and hard is not initially appealing, deliberate practice is a powerful tool that has enabled individuals to become experts in a wide variety of fields in the domains of both athletics and arts. Thanks to the work of Duckworth et al., performance in a spelling bee can be added to that list.

Specifically, it was shown that the amount of time the contestants spent memorizing words alone, a form of deliberate practice, predicted performance at the National Spelling Bee. Moreover, the contestants’ level of grit, or their perseverance and focus on long-term goals, affected the amount of deliberate practice they engaged in, and in turn, their performance. It was shown that the grittier contestants engaged in more deliberate practice, and as a result, performed better.

Though few of us aspire to be competitive spellers, the results of this study are tremendously valuable, and can be applied to a multitude of settings. In the world of business, for example, employees must learn new skills and perform under pressure, just as contestants must learn a huge amount of words and compete in a high-stakes tournament. In knowing that grit, through the mechanism of deliberate practice, predicts individuals’ ability to learn and perform, employers deciding which employee to hire could evaluate this characteristic, and use this piece of information in making the hiring decision.

Duckworth, A. L., Kirby, T. A., Tsukayama, E., Berstein, H., & Ericsson, K. A. (2011). Deliberate Practice Spells Success. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 2(2), 174-181.

human resource management,organizational industrial psychology, organizational management

photo source: http://www.redtutorials.com/2011/07/study-foreign-language-at-college/spelling-bee/

Intelligence: What’s your mindset?

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Topic: Development,human resource management
Publication: Child Development (2007)
Article: Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent
transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention
Authors: L. S. Blackwell, K. H. Trzesniewski, & C. S. Dweck
Reviewed By: Scott Charles Sitrin

Let’s take a test. Please indicate your level of agreement with these two statements from Carol Dweck’s Theory of Intelligence Scale. Statement 1: You have a certain amount of intelligence, and you can’t really do much to change it. Statement 2: No matter who you are, you can significantly change your intelligence level. If you mostly agreed with the first statement, you may have a fixed mindset; that is, you generally consider things to be fixed and unchangeable. If you mostly agreed with the second statement, you may have a fluid mindset, you tend to consider things to be fluid and changeable. You may be asking yourself, so what?

In exploring the relationship between mindset and academic performance, Blackwell, Trzeniewski, and Dweck found that those with a fluid mindset had better grades than those with a fixed mindset. The researchers assessed the mindset of 373 students from four successive seventh grade classes. After tracking the math grades of these students for two years, it was found that those with a fluid mindset performed better. Fixed mindsetters, fear not! It was also found that a student’s mindset could be shifted from fixed to incremental.

These results suggest that an individual’s mindset predicts their academic performance. It is suspected that mindset will have similar predictive powers in other domains, such as athletics, performing arts, and business.

Blackwell, L. S., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention. Child Development, 78(1), 246–263.

 

human resource management,organizational industrial psychology, organizational management