Performance Anxiety

Underperforming can come from what we think is expected of us. Here's some research and a new book by a U of C professor - this is fascinating stuff:

In Choke, Beilock describes research demonstrating that high-achieving people underperform when they are worried about confirming a stereotype about the racial group or gender to which they belong. These worries deplete the working memory necessary for success. The perceptions take hold early in schooling and can be either reinforced or abolished by powerful role models.

In one study, researchers gave standardized tests to black and white students, both before and after President Obama was elected. Black test takers performed worse than white test takers before the election. Immediately after Obama’s election, however, blacks’ performance improved so much that their scores were nearly equal with whites. When black students can overcome the worries brought on by stereotypes, because they see someone like President Obama who directly counters myths about racial variation in intelligence, their performance improves.

Beilock and her colleagues also have shown that when first-grade girls believe that boys are better than girls at math, they perform more poorly on math tests. One big source of this belief? The girls’ female teachers. It turns out that elementary school teachers are often highly anxious about their own math abilities, and this anxiety is modeled from teacher to student. When the teachers serve as positive role models in math, their male and female students perform equally well. [news.uchicago.edu]

Manners/Social Skills

There's a piece in the NY Times discussing how teaching children social skills or manners is critical, in fact the central point of child rearing, perhaps.

But that first big counterintuitive lesson — that there are other people out there whose feelings must be considered — affects a child’s most basic moral development. For a child, as for an adult, manners represent a strategy for getting along in life, but also a successful intellectual engagement with the business of being human.

While I believe this is true and if I ever have a child I will teach him/her manners, I wonder if it really does make life better for the child. It certainly makes life better for people around the child, but the world is so full on rude, self-centered people that I wonder if you're better off also being self-centered. If you are, then you will ignore the rude people and give as good as you get.

Will rude, self-centered people actually get farther in life or business?