Have you ever wanted to show your players or staff solid evidence that attitude is more important than intelligence? Well now you can, thanks to a study done by Stanford recently, highlighted in a Forbes article.
The study, led by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, shows that a person's attitude is a better predictor of success than their IQ.
In her research, Dweck found that people's "core attitudes fall into one of two categories: a fixed mindset, or a growth mindset".
In a fixed mindset, people believe that you are who you are, and you can't change. When obstacles and challenges arise, people with a fixed mindset tend to feel hopeless and overwhelmed, Those with a growth mindset believe that they can improve through work and effort. That outlook, despite a lower IQ, allows them to outperform those with a fixed mindset because they tend to embrace challenges as an opportunity to learn something new.
Dweck points out that success in life is mostly based on how people deal with failure. People with a growth mindset approach failure uniquely and Dweck points that out by noting:
“Failure is information—we label it failure, but it’s more like, ‘This didn’t work, and I’m a problem solver, so I’ll try something else."