They found the words “brilliant” and “genius” were used more frequently to describe professors in fields that also had lower rates of female and African American PhDs (Storage, D., et al., PLOS ONE, Vol. In a related study, Cimpian and colleagues used an online tool to search instructor reviews on. And that puts them at a disadvantage,” Cimpian said. “Well into the 21st century, society still doesn’t associate raw intellectual gifts with women and members of underrepresented groups. African Americans, too, were underrepresented in disciplines that believed raw talent was necessary for success (Leslie, S. But in fields such as philosophy, physics, math, and music composition-where the lore of inborn brilliance runs deep-the percentages of women obtaining PhDs were lower. In psychology, he found a lower emphasis on brilliance and a relatively high proportion of female PhDs. To explore such implications, Cimpian and his colleagues surveyed academics across 30 disciplines about the extent to which they believed success in their fields was related to innate talent as opposed to factors such as hard work, motivation, and dedication. Brilliance is one common thread running through each of those themes-and beliefs about natural talent have implications for children and adults alike. His research centers around three themes: how children explain what they observe around them, what motivates them in school, and how people develop concepts of social groups, including stereotypes. Cimpian graduated in 2008 and took an assistant professor position at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he stayed until relocating to NYU in 2016. “It made me realize what a powerful way this was to ask the world questions about how the mind works-and have it give you answers back in the form of numbers.”Ĭimpian went on to earn his PhD in the lab of Ellen Markman, PhD, who studies conceptual and language development at Stanford University. “We had the opportunity do mini-experiments in which we shaped and recorded the behavior of various animals, including rats and fish,” he recalled. But an introductory psychology class with a lab component his freshman year sparked an interest in research. Initially, he planned to study political science. Believing in brillianceĬimpian grew up in Romania and came to the United States to study at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. “I’m interested in understanding how people make sense of themselves and their abilities, and how these beliefs influence how people behave and what they aspire to,” he said. In his Cognitive Development Lab at New York University (NYU), Cimpian aims to understand how beliefs about intelligence and achievement develop-in both children and adults-and how they shape people’s choices as they make their way in the world. “That belief can snowball over time into actual differences in expertise.” “As a girl, if you think physics is for really smart people-and you don’t think girls fall into that category as often-you might look to other subjects for classes or after-school activities,” Cimpian said. That shift in early childhood can materialize into substantial differences as girls and boys grow. “Girls no longer associated being ‘really, really smart’ with their group, whereas boys continued to do so” ( Science, Vol. “But at age 6 and 7, we saw a dramatic shift,” Cimpian said. The 5-year-olds showed a lot of in-group pride: Boys were more likely to pick men as the smart ones, while girls picked women. They told the children a story about someone who was “really, really smart.” Then they asked the children to pick the story’s subject from a series of pictures of men and women. In a study with his former doctoral student Lin Bian, PhD, now at the University of Chicago, Cimpian explored how 5- to 7-year-olds viewed brilliance. The seeds of that belief are planted early. Do you have what it takes to be great? “There’s this belief that some people have ‘it’ and some people don’t-a raw ability, a spark of brilliance that you need to succeed,” said Andrei Cimpian, PhD, a professor of psychology at New York University.
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