The Trouble with Bright Girls [link]

Dreaded_Anomaly

The Trouble with Bright Girls (article @ the Huffington Post)

Excerpt:

My graduate advisor, psychologist Carol Dweck (author of "Mindset") conducted a series of studies in the 1980s, looking at how Bright Girls and boys in the fifth grade handled new, difficult and confusing material.

She found that Bright Girls, when given something to learn that was particularly foreign or complex, were quick to give up; the higher the girls' IQ, the more likely they were to throw in the towel. In fact, the straight-A girls showed the most helpless responses. Bright boys, on the other hand, saw the difficult material as a challenge, and found it energizing. They were more likely to redouble their efforts rather than give up.

The topic of this article seems to relate to several common Less Wrong issues: the nature of human intelligence, and the gender imbalance among LW readers.

I'm not sure how much credence I give to the proposed explanation of the difference in mindsets. It may well have to do with socialization and feedback, but the specific description of feedback that is presented seems a bit too much of a "just-so story" to me. The difference itself is fascinating, though, and I hope more is done to further our understanding of it.

The Trouble with Bright Girls (article @ the Huffington Post)

Excerpt:

My graduate advisor, psychologist Carol Dweck (author of "Mindset") conducted a series of studies in the 1980s, looking at how Bright Girls and boys in the fifth grade handled new, difficult and confusing material.

She found that Bright Girls, when given something to learn that was particularly foreign or complex, were quick to give up; the higher the girls' IQ, the more likely they were to throw in the towel. In fact, the straight-A girls showed the most helpless responses. Bright boys, on the other hand, saw the difficult material as a challenge, and found it energizing. They were more likely to redouble their efforts rather than give up.

The topic of this article seems to relate to several common Less Wrong issues: the nature of human intelligence, and the gender imbalance among LW readers.

I am currently a college student in a gifted program, and was in them all through elementary, middle, and high school. My experience has been that it wasn't rewarding easy challenges, quite the contrary. The teachers I've had have been thrilled at having students that actually can handle a complex problem. They've mostly liked the challenge we provided. Although, for a few of my years, I've had teachers that genuinely were not as intelligent as the average student in the classroom. They had more factual knowledge, but not the actual thinking skills. Those years were rough.

My only major complaint about those classes was that the problems, in many cases, weren't challenging enough. The teachers would pick complex topics for us to untangle, but the problem solving process typically took around 30 seconds. We very seldom did anything that required thinking for minutes. Nothing "impossible". And we totally could have done those.

I would include that can be done in 30 seconds in the category of 'easy challenges', even if it would be quite hard for most people. Easiness is relative.

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The Trouble with Bright Girls [link]

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The Trouble with Bright Girls [link]

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