Article/Link: Sorry Strivers: Talent Matters by David Z. Hambrick and Elizabeth J Meinz. Published: 19th November, 2011; Accessed: 24th November, 2011.
Practice makes you better. It certainly doesn’t make you perfect. And even if perfection were possible to achieve in our Earthly incarnations, it wouldn’t just be practice that got you there.
A few years ago, psychologist K. Anders Ericsson lead a study to determine whether practice truly is the key to success; whether it is, in fact, more important than God-given skills. For the past few decades, people have been of the opinion that for truly outstanding achievements, people have to practice, practice, and then practice some more. People believe that the only key to success is hard work. People have also been deluding themselves. Ericsson’s study, in which he and his co-workers compared the ability of violinists at a music academy and came to the conclusion that the students who played more often were the “best”, did not account for the difference between correlation and causation.
Malcolm Gladwell and David Brooks have suggested that IQ only matters up to a certain point, and that beyond that, practice is what separates the good from the brilliant. And while this might bring a warm, fuzzy feeling in our hearts – we can all achieve incredible success if we work for it! – it simply isn’t true.
Recent research shows that children who display high levels of intelligence at a young age will go on to become adults that tend do far better with their lives than the ones that don’t. Intellectual ability determines success. And what of the violinists? Chances are, it was their natural gift for playing the violin that caused them to earn an interest in the subject and practice more often.
“If you took two pianists with the same amount of practice, but different levels of working memory capacity, it’s likely that the one higher in working memory capacity would have performed considerably better on [a] sight-reading task.”
Practice does matter, but not nearly as much as innate talent.
Psychology often has to face the nature vs. nurture debate – does what we are born with determine who we are? Perhaps not, but it does determine what we’re good at. Sometimes, hard as it is, we have to accept that natural brilliance trumps long, hard years of experience.
Or do we? As a child growing up, though I never gave the subject much thought, I always believed that yes, inherent skill and intelligence determine your lot in life. Reading this article, however, made me really think about the question: does talent matter more than practice?
I would have always answered yes before, but the timing of the article could not have been more ironic. I recently had an assignment for a class, and I spent hours practicing and memorizing the darned thing. Hours. I have never dedicated that much time to a simple presentation before – I think my teacher just has an unfortunate habit of somehow challenging me to try and do better than I can – and...I don’t know. It went fairly well in that I didn’t forget any of my lines, but I don’t know if it was as good as I’d have liked it to be. I felt as if some of my practices went better than the final performance in terms of emotional delivery and enunciation, and that really was a blow. But here’s the thing: when I don’t manage to finish my last-minute cramming on a test, and then do badly, I always tend to think, “Ah, if only…” With this, I’d practiced all I could. The only thing that could have gone better was my performance at that very moment – and there were no regrets about the past. There was no “I could have just…”
In a way, I was disappointed when I finished. I immediately wanted the chance to go back up and repeat everything that I had just said, but better – and then I realized that I would never be satisfied. There would always be something better, someone better, and the competition with myself and the world would never be over. I learned a lesson, though. I finally realized that I can refuse to drop out of the running. So what if I’m not always the best? Perhaps the truth is, practice is the answer. I believe in myself, and I believe that I have the ability to excel in the few things I actually care about. If I care enough, and work hard enough, I refuse to accept that the results on a sheet of paper that some psychologists created will tell me how well I can or can’t do.
I don’t believe that science can ever fully explain or understand the world. And the flashing shocks striking as quickly and unexpectedly as lightning, the broken rules dangling over a cliff, are what make life interesting.
Vocabulary:
· Pioneering
o “In a pioneering study, the Florida State University psychologist K. Anders Ericsson and his colleagues asked violin students at a music academy to estimate the amount of time they had devoted to practice since they started playing.”
o To pioneer: To develop or be the first to use or apply a new method, area of knowledge, or activity. 1520s, "foot soldier who prepares the way for the army," from M.Fr. pionnier, from O.Fr. paonier "foot soldier" (11c.), from peon. Figurative sense of "person who goes first or does something first" is from c.1600.
o Well-established as the pioneers of the field of revolutionizing school songs, the Oakies surprised us once again with a phenomenal Fall Musical.
· Faculty
o “By age 20, the students whom the faculty nominated as the “best” players had accumulated an average of over 10,000 hours, compared with just under 8,000 hours for the “good” players and not even 5,000 hours for the least skilled.”
o Faculty: Staff. late 14c., "ability, means, resources," from O.Fr. faculté (14c.) "skill, accomplishment, learning," and directly from L. facultatem (nom.facultas) "power, ability, wealth," from *facli-tat-s, from facilis. Academic sense "branch of knowledge" probably was the earliest in English (attested in Anglo-Latin from late 12c.), on notion of "ability in knowledge." Originally each department was a faculty; the use in reference to the whole teaching staff of a college dates from 1767.
o The Woodstock faculty seems to spend an inordinate amount of time ‘discussing’ students out of school – the results are seldom pleasant.
· Meritocratic
o “Those findings have been enthusiastically championed, perhaps because of their meritocratic appeal: what seems to separate the great from the merely good is hard work, not intellectual ability.”
o Meritocracy: a form of social system in which power goes to those with superior intellects. Coined 1958 by Michael Young and used in title of his book, "The Rise of the Meritocracy"; from merit + ending from aristocracy, etc.
o In spite of its location in India, a country well known for its meritocratic schools, Woodstock has managed to avoid meritocracy via its wide range of extracurricular activities.
