On the Consequences of Self-Esteem & Innate Smarts

From Po:

This post is about observations that finally have explanations.

1. One of the curious set of facts that Ashley & I have kept track of for the last year is what we've called "The Ambition Gap." In 1976, half of all high school seniors expected to get a college degree – and half did. Their ambition was perfectly in line with reality. Today, 94% of high school seniors expect to enroll in college, but the next fall only 63% will actually do it. That gap – between their planned achievement and reality – has never been higher. This gap is present no matter what specific ambition you measure. 50% think they’re going to get a graduate degree someday; less than 10% will. And 64% believe they will have a career as a “working professional,” when just less than 20% actually will. Clearly, we’ve engineered students to have inflated hopes, but not actually equipped them with the skills to succeed.

For the last year, we sat on this set of facts, wondering why it would be. What could explain such a surge in aspirations, with such departure from reality?

When we delved into the culture of praise and the false promise of self esteem, it was kind of an "aha" moment. This explains the Ambition Gap! Kids are being mislead into believing they're capable of futures they're actually unprepared for.


2. Another curious fact we've been wondering about: Since the 1970s, psychologists have occasionally given college students a test for Machiavellian beliefs. Students take a short survey with the cool name of “Mach IV,” which checks how willing they are to use deception in various circumstances. Today’s college students have such high Machiavellian outlooks that researchers are alarmed. And these high Mach students admit to higher rates of sex, alcohol abuse, theft, on-campus vandalism, plagiarism, and – oh, yes – cheating.

If students have been raised in a culture of praise and cheerleading, why would they be so manipulative when they get to college?

Then, we realized that these students have been praised their entire childhood, and much of that praise has been subtly manipulative. The praise was showered on them not as genuine accolades, but as social engineering, hoping that positive self esteem would pay off in higher performance. Kids are literally being taught the art of subtle manipulation.


3. Curious observation # 3. When I interviewed 1,000 people for What Should I Do With My Life?, it was plainly apparent that so many of our smartest college students from our best schools are actually very risk averse. Coming out of college, they took jobs where the "track to success" was spelled out and clear. Wall Street, law school, corporate America - there was no imagination or creativity in these choices. And nothing daring about it. Ten years later, many of them were unhappy and unfulfilled. But quitting - even though they had lots of money in the bank - was absolutely terrifying to them. The loss of status scared them; the idea of jumping off a track and freestyling their career was frightening. They didn't want to look not smart. They were afraid of taking a job that didn't broadcast to the world how smart they must be to have that job.

It drove me crazy. Our smartest and brightest, wasting their talent. Why were they so darn risk averse?

Well now we have a theory that can help explain it. Just like Carol Dweck's 5th graders who didn't want to risk exposing themselves on harder sets of puzzles, these Ivy grads are often afraid of scenarios with some risk of failure.


4. The art of praise has been the subject of Ashley's posts this week. But the core mindset Dweck was exploring was the idea of innate intelligence. Praising children for their smarts is only one way we reinforce this destructive idea. In fact, our society is chock full of messages about how some people are born with gifts, and the rest of us are out of luck. I've always been aware of it because by junior high, people started telling me I had a gift for math. By the end of high school I competed in the Washington State math championships on the high school math team. Meanwhile, I was told I couldn't write. Teachers recognized that I had a lot of ideas in my head, but they were generally unclear ideas and I expressed them poorly. These teachers weren't ignoring my talent - because they were right. I showed no talent. In college, I avoided any class that required me to write because it destroyed my GPA.

Yet here I am today, author of five books, so disinterested in math I haven't balanced my checkbook since 1992.

The truth is, math had always come so easily to me that the first time it did not - post calculus - I quit. Meanwhile, having always been told I was a poor writer, I was accustomed to grinding it out, accustomed to rejection, accustomed to the hard work it took to write.

I would love to hear from readers about other ways this idea of innate intelligence is spread and reinforced.