Is a fixed mind-set and a belief in innate talent always a bad thing?

Over the past few years I have become a great proponent of the growth mind-set view that ability isn’t fixed (see Dweck, 2012) but rather can be grown through the correctly applied effort. However not all see things this way.

I find it easy to comprehend how spectators viewing world class performance, only see the most prominent tip of the ice berg and fail to comprehend the vast number of hours and hard work that have gone into shaping that performance. Cambliss (1989) writes in his article on the ‘Mundanity of Excellence’ how the label of talent is oft used to explain what isn’t understood and mask the concrete actions that define excellence. How can a casual tennis fan comprehend the vast amount of effort Andy Murray or Novak Djokovic have put in, to be able to execute some of the millimetre perfect shots performed with the pressure of a grand slam final hanging over them?

I am also unsurprised if someone who has played a sport most of their life, reached a level and then plateaued, finds it easy to believe those that surpass their levels apparently within little time and effort are endowed with greater genetic ‘gifts’ than they were. While they may notice the vastly different quantitative amount of experience a competitor took to achieve the same level as they did. It is all too easy to fail to notice the qualitative differences in how they spent that time. As Ericcsson. outlines in his theory of deliberate practice not all practice is equal. To adapt the old adage ‘practice doesn’t make perfect’ however deliberate practice will (see Ericsson et al., 2008).

What does take me a little by surprise, is when I read about a top sports man or woman who believes that abilities are fixed and natural talent has a big part to play in success.  Shouldn’t the hard road to the top have taught them differently? According to Dweck someone with a fixed mind-set would unlikely be able to make it to the top. This contradiction has got me thinking that a bit of a fixed mind-set may be an advantage?

The two sailors I have read articles from that have got me thinking are Eilidh McIntyre and Robert Scheidt. Eilidh McIntyre is a world class 470 crew who just missed selection for the British squad to the Rio Olympics. Despite working hard to achieve the level she has, and facing setbacks with the positive attitude that she can learn and improve from them, she believes she has a natural talent for sailing which is largely attributable to her success. How could this be? I have two theories; her father is a former Olympian, the belief that she has the same talent as her father would lead her to the belief that she too could make it to the Olympics. This could be motivating and help foster confidence in high pressure races and events, the belief that you were born able to do this could take a lot of pressure off and help performances. On the other side, from her early days of sailing she had a top level sailor to guide her training techniques. Unknowingly she avoided many pitfalls and avoided wasting hours on fruitless practice. Quality practice helped her fast track past all of her peers giving the illusion of an innate talent to all observing including Eilidh.

For Robert Scheidt the situation is different, a multiple Olympic medallist and world champion he doesn’t believe he is a natural! However, he believes many around him are. In an article he claims his wife an ex Olympic Laser radial sailor is a natural talent and has to work a lot less than he does. This theme I have found in a number of other autobiographies and writings of world class sportsmen. There is a belief that they have to work harder than competitors to achieve the same standards. This iceberg effect I expected to see in novices to a sport but in world class professionals it seems odd. Could it be that a bit of a belief that talent does exist and they don’t have it has led the best in the world to work that bit harder than their competitors?

Carol Dweck puts across a compelling argument that a growth mind-set is a key attribute for success while a fixed mind-set and the belief that ability is fixed, is likely to lead to a lack of grit when the going gets tough and a quitter. However rather than being binary as Dweck suggests, does mind-set sit more along a continuum and while an extreme fixed mind-set may be detrimental to performance could an element of a fixed mind-set actually be beneficial to performance.

I am a big fan of the work of Mathew Syed and his book Bounce was a life changing read for me, however he seems to fail to recognise the contradiction he makes in his book. He is a big follower of the work of Dweck and the theory that holding beliefs that abilities are fixed is detrimental to resilience. However, he was the number one ranked table tennis player in Britain, and openly talks about how he believed that natural talent was largely to account for his success. Perhaps the belief that he had been gifted with superhuman reflexes helped at a psychological level when competing?

I would conclude that mind-set is important, but many other factors come into play for the aspiring athlete, and certain mixes lead to elite performances that contradict Dweck’s mind-set theory. Possibly where mind-set plays a bigger role is how the parents and coaches view a young sports person’s performances, I would be interested to see how Elidh McIntyre’s father and coaches responded to poor results? I would expect that they largely displayed a positive attitude to failure which developed a growth mind-set towards failure in Eilidh? Haimovitz and Dweck (2016) allude to this in their most recent work.

After digging up more questions than answers I continue in my search of what separates the best from the rest.

Andy Kerr

Sailing Coach and Student of Psychology.

 

References

Dweck, C. S. (2012). Mindset. London : Robinson, 2012.

ERICSSON, K. A., PRIETULA, M. J., & COKELY, E. T. (2008). The Making of an Expert. ASCA Newsletter,         2008(11), 18-26.  

Haimovitz, K., & Dweck, C. S. (2016). What Predicts Children’s Fixed and Growth Intelligence Mind-    Sets? Not Their Parents’ Views of Intelligence but Their Parents’ Views of Failure.                Psychological Science (Sage Publications Inc.), 27(6), 859-869.

Eilidh McIntyre. One Closed Door and Endless Open. http://www.rya.org.uk/britishsailingteam/TeamBlog/Pages/one-closed-door-and-endless-open.aspx#.V2cOHuT2ZPY

Syed, M. (2011). Bounce: The Myth of Talent and the Power of Practice.