the work they were doing.” As Anchor emphasises, “The mental construction of our
daily activities, more than the activity itself, defines our reality.”
Anchor describes another experiment in
which researchers administered IQ tests to
students. “The researchers then told the
teachers in each of the classrooms which
students – say, Sam, Sally, and Sarah – the
data had identified as academic superstars,
the ones with the greatest potential for
growth. They asked the teachers not to
mention the results of the study to the
students, and not to spend any more or
less time with them. (And, in fact, the
teachers were warned they would be observed to make sure they did not.) At the
end of the year, the students were tested
again, and indeed, Sam, Sally, and Sarah
posted off-the-chart intellectual ability.
This would be a predictable story, except
for an ‘O Henry-type twist’ at the end.
When Sam, Sally, and Sarah had been tested at the beginning of the experiment,
they were found to be absolutely, wonderfully ordinary. The researchers had randomly picked their names and then lied to
the teachers about their ability. But after
the experiment, they had in fact turned
into academic superstars. So, what caused
these ordinary students to become extraordinary? Although the teachers had
said nothing directly to these children and
had spent equal amounts of time with everyone, two crucial things had happened.
The belief the teachers had in the students’
potential had been unwittingly and nonverbally communicated. More importantly,
these non-verbal messages were then digested by the students and transformed
into reality” – a profound lesson for every
parent and teacher.
In another study, a group of Asian
women were given maths tests of equal
difficulty at two different times. Before
the first test, “they were primed to think
about the fact that they were women, stereotypically worse at maths than men”.
Before the second test, “they were told to
focus on their identity as Asians, generally thought to be maths whizzes compared
to other ethnic groups”. The result: the
women performed far better in the second situation than they did in the first.
Their IQs didn’t change between tests.
The only difference was that in the second
14 JEWISH LIFE n ISSUE 85
It didn’t take a cash reward or the promise
of a promotion or an extra week of vacation to
boost their moods enough to make them twice
as effective and more than twice as creative…
even the smallest shots of positivity can give
someone a serious competitive edge.
test, “they believed more in their ability,
and this was enough to make a substantive difference in performance”.
Achor presents a fascinating real life example of this phenomenon. Racial stereotypes have been determined to be a factor
in the achievement gap that exists between
black and white students in the USA. For
example, when students are required to
complete a form on which they disclose
their race prior to taking a standardised
test, black students perform worse than
white student on such tests. Researchers
wondered if, when Barak Obama was elected president of the United States, this
would have an impact on this achievement
gap, so they gave a 20-question standardised test to more than 400 Americans just
before and just after the 2008 presidential
election. On the first test, black students
scored worse overall than white students –
but, on the second test, their performance
improved so significantly that they managed to entirely erase the gap! Achor comments that the election of Obama “erased
the self-doubt that had hindered black performance. While this was only one study
and its effects were probably temporary, it
illustrates how strongly our beliefs can affect our abilities.”
Make no mistake; it’s not just words that
can put us in a more productive mood; it’s
environment as well. As profiled on numerous sitcoms, probably most famously by
the character Kramer on Seinfeld, medical
schools train doctors to make diagnoses by
having them examine people pretending to
be patients or review the cases of hypothetical ‘paper’ patients. The point of such exercises is to