Washington, Oct 2 (IANS) People who think they can’t get any smarter never try to learn from their mistakes.
Conversely, people who think intelligence is an evolving process, say: ‘If I make a mistake, I try to learn and figure it out.’
‘Whether you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right,’ observed Henry Ford, one of the most innovative entrepreneurs, the journal Psychological Science reports.
‘One big difference between people who think intelligence is malleable and those who think intelligence is fixed is how they respond to mistakes,’ said Jason S. Moser of Michigan State University who co-wrote the study with Hans S. Schroder, Carrie Heeter, Tim P. Moran, and Yu-Hao Lee, according to a varsity statement.
Moser and colleagues gave participants a task that is easy to make a mistake on. They were supposed to identify the middle letter of a five-letter series like ‘MMMMM’ or ‘NNMNN’.
Sometimes the middle letter was the same as the other four, and sometimes it was different.
‘It’s pretty simple, doing the same thing over and over, but the mind can’t help it; it just kind of zones out from time to time,’ Moser said.
That’s when people make mistakes – and they notice it immediately, and feel stupid. People who think they can learn from their mistakes did better after making a mistake –in other words, they successfully bounced back after an error.
