In this week's issue of The Brilliant Report: Why we should choose role models who are humanly flawed. Plus, favorite articles from past issues of The Brilliant Report, and a Brilliant Quote about the malleability of IQ from education professor Michael Martinez, author of the forthcoming book Future Bright. Choosing the right role model In last week's



If a role model relationship is to help you think and act more intelligently, you'll have to choose the right person to emulate—and as is so often the case, science has some surprising and counter-intuitive insights to contribute here. The right role model may not be the brightest light in your field, but rather someone more humanly flawed.



In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, for example, Jerker Denrell of the University of Oxford and Chengwei Liu of the University of Warwick counsel us to model ourselves on solid, second-tier performers, not the flashy types who come in first. The researchers reported on the results of a game played in many rounds. Over time, the most skilled players came to inhabit a second tier of reliable competence. Those who succeeded spectacularly—who took their places in the first tier—were often not the most skilled, but rather were those who got some lucky breaks early on or took big risks that happened to pay off.



Emulating these top performers would probably lead to disappointment, since imitators would be unlikely to replicate their good fortune. Because luck and risk play a dominant role in extraordinary outcomes, Denrell and Liu write, “extreme success or failure are, at best, only weak signals of skill,” and top performers “should not be imitated or praised.” Better, they advise, to learn from individuals “with high, but not exceptional, performance”—those whose success can be attributed to solid skill and not to a rare lightning strike.



Modeling ourselves on the most accomplished individuals can have another drawback: it can actually make us less motivated. In an article published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, psychologists Diana E. Betz and Denise Sekaquaptewa note that women in STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—are often labeled "unfeminine," an image that may discourage female students from pursuing these fields.



But when the researchers exposed middle-school girls to women who were feminine and successful in STEM fields, the experience actually diminished the girls' interest in math, depressed their plans to study math, and reduced their expectations of future success. The women's "combination of femininity and success seemed particularly unattainable to STEM-disidentified girls," the authors conclude, adding that "gender-neutral STEM role models," as well as feminine women who were successful in non-STEM fields, did not have this effect.



Does this mean that we have to give up our most illustrious role models? There is a way to gain inspiration from truly exceptional individuals: attend to their failures as well as their successes. This was demonstrated in a study by Huang-Yao Hong of National Chengchi University in Taiwan and Xiaodong Lin-Siegler of Columbia University.



The researchers gave a group of physics students information about the theories of Galileo Galilei, Issac Newton and Albert Einstein. A second group received readings praising the achievements of these scientists. And a third group was given a text that described the thinkers’ struggles. The students who learned about scientists’ struggles developed less-stereotyped images of scientists, became more interested in science, remembered the material better, and did better at complex open-ended problem-solving tasks related to the lesson—while the students who read the achievement-based text actually developed more stereotypical images of scientists.



I'll leave you with this excerpt from the experimental materials, about the development of Newton’s theory of gravitation: “While the famous fable suggests that Newton was inspired by seeing an apple drop from a tree, it was actually his hard work and inquisitive nature that led to his formulation of a gravitational theory. As he said, ‘I keep the subject constantly before me, till the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into the full and clear light.’”



favorite articles from the brilliant report My Most Popular Articles About Learning

Seven Ways To Sharpen Your Memory

How To Make Anything Interesting

Six Ways To Get Motivated

Is Technology Really Rewiring Our Brains?

Why We Don't Learn Anything From Lectures

Three Secrets To Sticking To It



If you have comments or questions, I'd love to hear from you by email: annie@anniemurphypaul.com. And if you'd like to read even more about learning, you can visit my



All my best,





Annie This Week's Brilliant Quote "You've been thinking about intelligence the wrong way. Almost everyone assumes that intelligence is a genetically programmed trait like eye color—set from birth and unalterable. Yet the extensive body of research on human intelligence demonstrates that this assumption is false. Our best data show that IQ, the most common measure of intelligence, fluctuates within a person's lifetime as well as from generation to generation. This is our conceptual starting point: IQ scores are changeable. With the right environment, intelligence levels can be increased intentionally. This possibility holds implications for you and for the world around you."—Michael E. Martinez, Future Bright: A Transforming Vision of Human Intelligence



In last week's issue of The Brilliant Report, we talked about how "there are particular kinds of relationships that are especially good at evoking our intelligence." The kind of relationship we'll talk about this week is the role model relationship: the situation in which we look up to, and learn from, someone else's example.If a role model relationship is to help you think and act more intelligently, you'll have to choose the right person to emulate—and as is so often the case, science has some surprising and counter-intuitive insights to contribute here. The right role model may not be the brightest light in your field, but rather someone more humanly flawed.In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, for example, Jerker Denrell of the University of Oxford and Chengwei Liu of the University of Warwick counsel us to model ourselves on solid, second-tier performers, not the flashy types who come in first. The researchers reported on the results of a game played in many rounds. Over time, the most skilled players came to inhabit a second tier of reliable competence. Those who succeeded spectacularly—who took their places in the first tier—were often not the most skilled, but rather were those who got some lucky breaks early on or took big risks that happened to pay off.Emulating these top performers would probably lead to disappointment, since imitators would be unlikely to replicate their good fortune. Because luck and risk play a dominant role in extraordinary outcomes, Denrell and Liu write, “extreme success or failure are, at best, only weak signals of skill,” and top performers “should not be imitated or praised.” Better, they advise, to learn from individuals “with high, but not exceptional, performance”—those whose success can be attributed to solid skill and not to a rare lightning strike.Modeling ourselves on the most accomplished individuals can have another drawback: it can actually make us less motivated. In an article published in the journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, psychologists Diana E. Betz and Denise Sekaquaptewa note that women in STEM fields—science, technology, engineering, and mathematics—are often labeled "unfeminine," an image that may discourage female students from pursuing these fields.But when the researchers exposed middle-school girls to women who were feminine and successful in STEM fields, the experience actually diminished the girls' interest in math, depressed their plans to study math, and reduced their expectations of future success. The women's "combination of femininity and success seemed particularly unattainable to STEM-disidentified girls," the authors conclude, adding that "gender-neutral STEM role models," as well as feminine women who were successful in non-STEM fields, did not have this effect.Does this mean that we have to give up our most illustrious role models? There is a way to gain inspiration from truly exceptional individuals: attend to their failures as well as their successes. This was demonstrated in a study by Huang-Yao Hong of National Chengchi University in Taiwan and Xiaodong Lin-Siegler of Columbia University.The researchers gave a group of physics students information about the theories of Galileo Galilei, Issac Newton and Albert Einstein. A second group received readings praising the achievements of these scientists. And a third group was given a text that described the thinkers’ struggles. The students who learned about scientists’ struggles developed less-stereotyped images of scientists, became more interested in science, remembered the material better, and did better at complex open-ended problem-solving tasks related to the lesson—while the students who read the achievement-based text actually developed more stereotypical images of scientists.I'll leave you with this excerpt from the experimental materials, about the development of Newton’s theory of gravitation: “While the famous fable suggests that Newton was inspired by seeing an apple drop from a tree, it was actually his hard work and inquisitive nature that led to his formulation of a gravitational theory. As he said, ‘I keep the subject constantly before me, till the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into the full and clear light.’”If you have comments or questions, I'd love to hear from you by email: annie@anniemurphypaul.com. And if you'd like to read even more about learning, you can visit my website , follow me on Twitter , and join the conversation on Facebook . Be brilliant!

