Free Yourself from the Shackles of this Myth

Stop Believing the Myth that Intelligence is Fixed – and Watch Your Life Change

For most of human history, we human beings clung to the old belief that the earth was flat.

Science then proved that the earth is round, that it’s a planet, and that it rotates. 

For much of that same human history, we also once believed that the sun revolved around the earth each year. Then science proved the total opposite. The earth revolves around the sun, as we all now know, once a year. 

For centuries, we humans also believed that intelligence is fixed. 

That idea crystallized into gospel when the IQ test was invented in 1904. You could now measure a person’s ‘fixed’ level of intelligence. A person would receive an ‘IQ score,’ and everyone would assume that’s who they were. Your score was you. 

We now know that nothing could be further from the truth.

Science has now shown — with incredible precision — that intelligence is not fixed. It is grown.

The old belief was wrong. Dead wrong. The complete opposite is true. Intelligence is grown.

From Belief to Conviction

Just as the flat-earth myth and fixed-earth myth kept societies everywhere in the shackles of false understanding, the myth that intelligence is fixed still keeps most of our societies today trapped in similar chains that hold people back.

The upshot from the science is that you should not merely try to adopt an attitude or belief that intelligence is grown. You should hold a firm conviction that intelligence is grown — because this is now fully backed by science.

The upshot is that you should not merely aim to cultivate a growth mindset as a set of beliefs about yourself. With the hard science we now know, you have no reason not to have robust growth mindset, one grounded firmly in fact, science, confidence and conviction.

Binet was Right; the Powers that Be were Wrong

Ironically, Alfred Binet, the very inventor of the IQ test, was himself one of the early would-be heroes who sought to remove these chains from our thinking.

Though he did not yet have the benefit of today’s science, he intuitively understood and deeply believed that intelligence was not fixed. He believed it could be grown.

In his book, Modern Ideas About Children, Binet challenged those who asserted “that an individual’s intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity that cannot be increased.” Instead, he marshalled the best proof he had at the time and argued that “with practice, training, and above all, method, we manage to increase our attention, our memory, our judgement and literally to become more intelligent than we were before.”

Unfortunately, Binet lost the debate. His IQ test was taken from him by the powers that be, its purpose was perverted, and it was converted into a measure that supposedly showed one’s fixed level of intelligence.

Nearly a century would pass before science would muster enough evidence to show that Binet’s beliefs were correct. He was right. The powers that be were wrong.

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This is Now Science, Not Opinion

Multiple Fields of Science, Same Conclusion

As neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene, in his book How We Learn, points out, most people are surprised to learn that IQ can be increased. 

But the science is clear. “Training in executive control can even change one’s IQ. This may come as a surprise, because IQ is often viewed as a given … . However, the intelligence quotient is just a behavioral ability, and as such it is far from being unchangeable by education.”

In one of the largest studies conducted, researchers Stuart Ritchie and E. Tucker-Drob have shown that on average each additional year of school increases a student’s IQ by between 1 and 5 points per year.

In another study, the researchers found that even mere exposure to a better learning environment has been shown to radically increase the IQ of children — by as much as 20 points.

Insights into the Brain Itself

A major thrust of clarity now comes directly from the neuroscience — and namely the super microscopes that have peered into the human brain at the tiniest of levels.

Every human brain has approximately 100 billion neurons — or brain cells. When you learn something, new neurons connect together. As neuroscientists like to say, ‘neurons that fire together wire together.’

Building knowledge consists of building new connections between neurons.

Strengthening knowledge or a skill consists of strengthening those connections, and this occurs in every human brain through effort such as repetition, training and practice.

The upshot is that the capacity of every human brain is virtually unlimited.

This process in the brain has now been verified over and over in the research. With repetition and practice, the brain makes the connections between neurons stronger by adding more layers of what’s called myelin. The overall process is myelination, and it occurs in every human brain.

It follows that human intelligence is not fixed, it is grown through effort and practice.

What IQ Tests … Test

Neuroscience has also clarified just what the IQ test really is and does. It measures what’s called your fluid intelligence, which means the ability to concentrate and process information in the moment. That ability takes place in the prefrontal cortex, and like most abilities, it’s is a behavioral ability that can be improved through practice. Hence, IQ is quite literally not fixed. It can be increased through training, education, practice and repetition.

The Shackles You Still Wear if You Believe the Old Myth

A Fixed Mindset is Your Worst Enemy

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck began her pioneering studies about growth mindset versus fixed mindset in the 1990s.

At one end of the spectrum of those with a fixed mindset are the students who come to believe they’re not smart. That alone can be a tragic consequence of the old myth. Girls, for example, who have a fixed mindset and hear that they’re just not as good at math as the boys will buy into that false myth. When they do, they lose the motivation to put in the effort. Being ‘not good at math’ then becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The So-called Smart Ones

Equally troubling is what happens at the other end of the spectrum: the fixed-mindset students who believe that they’re the smart ones — the hot shots, gifted, or a special snowflake.

In one study, even though these fixed-mindset students believed they were smart, they gave up on problems when the task got more challenging. The special snowflakes melted under the heat of a little more pressure. That’s one of the big dangers of a fixed mindset. Their view that intelligence is fixed filled them with fear that a mere setback might mean they really weren’t that smart after all.

Worse, and what really came as the biggest surprise, when the students were asked to write down the scores they’d received for a report to another school, 40% of the fixed-mindset students lied about their results.

They exaggerated their scores. They flat out lied.

To the surprise of everyone, otherwise ordinary children had been turned into liars simply because they’d been taught that intelligence is fixed.

What’s even more alarming is that the habits developed as a student often last for a lifetime. Dweck’s further studies showed how students who lie about their performance can easily go on to become professionals who similarly are dishonest or cut corners. And it’s all because they developed a mindset grounded in the old myth that their intelligence is fixed.

In other words, the shackles of a fixed mindset can last a lifetime if you don’t break free.

Do You Have a Horrible Boss?

In Mindset, Carol Dweck shows how some of the worst CEOs of the 20th century were both tyrants and incompetent because they had a fixed mindset.

For example, Jeff Skilling, the CEO who led the energy company Enron straight into the ground, “used his brainpower … not to learn but to intimidate.”

When people pressed him to explain something, “he treated them as though they were stupid.” He was also the chief architect of the company’s frauds. He believed his ideas were so superior, he had Enron booking profits “as soon as he or his people had the idea that it might lead to profits.”

Dweck calls this a “radical extension of the fixed mindset.” Another way to describe it is the sheer arrogance of a fixed mindset.

How about your own boss?

As Dweck explains, business leaders with a fixed mindset like Skilling want to reign “from atop a pedestal,” not lead. They want to be “seen as perfect,” not learn what needs to be done.

Ken Lay, Enron’s founder, similarly had a nose-in-the air attitude and looked down on everyone. ‘Chainsaw Al’ Dunlap led turnarounds in the 1990s by ripping companies apart and firing thousands. Lee Iacocca at Chrysler in the 1980s surrounded himself with worshippers, exiled critics, and the company soon floundered.

Even if you don’t yourself report directly to a CEO, you likely still pay a price somewhere if your own boss has a fixed mindset. They’ll tend to create a workplace culture where know-it-alls reign and where a fixed-mindset environment drags down the entire organization.

Free Yourself: The Wonderful Consequences When You Embrace the Facts and Science that Intelligence is Grown

You Don’t Just Build a Growth Mindset, You Build One with Conviction

For nearly three decades now, the research has confirmed over and over the exponential power of having a growth mindset.

In one of Carol Dweck’s early studies from the 1990s, students in a college chemistry class were divided into two groups — those who believed their intelligence was fixed, and those who had come to form a growth mindset.

The students with a growth mindset not only achieved the top grades in the class. They did so even though they weren’t the ones trying to get top grades. Led by their belief that their abilities could be grown, they were proactive. They engaged with the material. They then frequently tested themselves, and they spaced their efforts and practice over the full semester. Ultimately, they achieved what the science has identified as the four core processes in any learning, or what neuroscientist Stanislas Dehaene has called the 4 Pillars of Learning. (These are: focused attention; actively engaging with material; testing yourself to get feedback; and spacing your efforts over time to consolidate learning into long-term memory). 

Interestingly, these were students who, much like Alfred Binet, had intuitively come to believe that their intelligence was not fixed.

Image what students can become today if they now develop a deep knowing, based on science, that their intelligence is not fixed.

The Magic of Business Leaders with a Growth Mindset

Freeing yourself of the shackles of a fixed mindset also has proven to work its magic in the workplace.

Leaders like Lou Gerstner, who saved IBM from collapse in the 1990s had a powerful growth mindset. So too did Anne Mulcahy, who surprised everyone in the early 2000s by saving Xerox from the brink of bankruptcy.

Satya Nadella engineered a complete transformation of the culture at Microsoft from 2014 through 2019. Central in the turnaround plan was a formal adoption of a growth mindset throughout the company.

Unfortunately, the business world does not yet have enough of these growth-mindset leaders.

Imagine what might happen if everyone in business now developed a deep knowing that their intelligence — and the intelligence and abilities of those they lead — are not fixed, but are grown.

Just Imagine …

Imagine if the same thing happened everywhere in education. Without question, one of the best things you can do for a student today is help them cultivate not just a growth mindset based on beliefs, but one built on a deep knowing that their intelligence is not fixed, that it is grown.

As a first step, start with your own thinking. Free yourself now from the shackles of the myth that intelligence is fixed.

There’s no telling where this might take you.

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You can read more about the Myth that intelligence is fixed in this short Ebook: The 10 Biggest Myths about Learning Now Debunked by the Science of Learning.

You can download the Introduction and Chapter 1 for free here. The Myth that intelligence is fixed is Myth #1.

Free Self-Test:

To test yourself right now on whether you still believe some or any of the 10 biggest myths — and whether they could be holding you back — check out this short Self-Test here.