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. The seeds of that belief are planted early.
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. 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. 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. “But at age 6 and 7, we saw a dramatic shift,” Cimpian said. “Girls no longer associated being ‘really, really smart’ with their group, whereas boys continued to do so” (Scienceopens in new window, Vol. 355, No. 6323, 2017).
That shift in early childhood can materialize into substantial differences as girls and boys grow. “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 belief can snowball over time into actual differences in expertise.”
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. “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.
Believing in brilliance
Cimpian grew up in Romania and came to the United States to study at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Initially, he planned to study political science. But an introductory psychology class with a lab component his freshman year sparked an interest in research. “We had the opportunity do mini-experiments in which we shaped and recorded the behavior of various animals, including rats and fish,” he recalled. “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.”
Cimpian went on to earn his PhD in the lab of Ellen Markman, PhD, who studies conceptual and language development at Stanford University. 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.
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. Brilliance is one common thread running through each of those themes—and beliefs about natural talent have implications for children and adults alike.
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. In psychology, he found a lower emphasis on brilliance and a relatively high proportion of female PhDs. 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. African Americans, too, were underrepresented in disciplines that believed raw talent was necessary for success (Leslie, S. -J., et al., Scienceopens in new window, Vol. 347, No. 6219, 2015). “Well into the 21st century, society still doesn’t associate raw intellectual gifts with women and members of underrepresented groups. And that puts them at a disadvantage,” Cimpian said.
In a related study, Cimpian and colleagues used an online tool to search instructor reviews on RateMyProfessors.com. 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 ONEopens in new window, Vol. 11, No. 3, 2016). “We used these words as a proxy for how often undergraduates feel it’s appropriate to evaluate instructors on the basis of genius or brilliance,” Cimpian explained. “Even with this simple and indirect metric, we see the same negative relationship between emphasis on brilliance and diversity.”
Yet there’s no evidence that brilliance is, in fact, the magic ingredient for success in those fields where the belief runs strong. “We’re operating in the realm of beliefs, not what is really and truly required for success in these fields,” Cimpian said. “But beliefs are very important. If they’re held by highly regarded members of a field, they can take on a life of their own.” An academic culture that endorses the cult of brilliance sends a powerful message to the next generation, he added. “As an entering student, who are you to question that idea? As an aspiring member of this field, that is your reality.”
One effect of such messages is that members of stereotyped groups may feel like impostors in their field. So-called impostor phenomenon—the belief that you’re less competent than others perceive you to be—is common among successful individuals. (Read more on impostor phenomenon in the June 2021 Monitor.) “There’s an idea that women experience impostor feelings more frequently or more strongly than men. But we actually find the context really matters,” said Melis Muradoglu, a PhD student in the lab.
Muradoglu, Cimpian, and colleagues explored impostor feelings in a sample of over 4,000 academics in more than 80 fields across the sciences, humanities, and medicine. They found the more that success in a field was equated with brilliance, the more women and early career academics felt like frauds. That was especially true among women from racial and ethnic groups that are traditionally underrepresented in academia (Journal of Educational Psychology, advance online publication, 2021opens in new window). “Women face stereotypes about their intellectual abilities. And when they feel their field values brilliance, they experience stronger impostor feelings,” Muradoglu said.
“Impostor feelings are often described as an individual vulnerability—that there’s something about a person that makes them susceptible to these feelings,” Cimpian added. “But in fact, there’s something about the atmosphere in these fields that makes women and people of color more likely to experience these feelings.”
The development of gender stereotypes
While some of Cimpian’s research explores stereotypes in adults, many of the lab’s projects focus on figuring out how children develop patterns of thought. In an ongoing project to understand how gender stereotypes develop, postdoctoral researcher Jillian Lauer, PhD, is exploring messages about effort. “In adulthood, we attribute men’s academic accomplishment to natural talent. But when thinking about the same types of achievement in women, we tend to focus more on effort,” she said. “We’re interested in when those beliefs develop and how they might influence girls’ interest and motivation, particularly in math.”
In one study, children ages 6 to 11 listen to stories about someone who has been exceptionally successful in math. Some children hear about a person who had a talent for math as a child, while others hear about a person who was dedicated and studied hard. Then the children look at a series of photos and choose the person they think the story is about. The study is just wrapping up, but preliminary findings suggest that elementary-age boys and girls are already more likely to attribute women’s math success to hard work rather than natural talent.
The idea that portraying women’s successes as due to effort might have a downside is intriguing—especially as the wildly popular science of growth mindsets urges parents and educators to praise children’s efforts over outcomes. “Effort can be really positive, but gender stereotypes about effort may be negative. The idea that you’ll have to try harder than other kids in your class is inherently demotivating,” Lauer said. “We’re still in the early stages of understanding how stereotypes about effort are conveyed to children. But we hope our findings will lead to messages about effort being framed in more adaptive ways.”
It’s a good reminder that there is still much to learn about how best to motivate kids—and that even well-meaning messages may have unintended consequences. That’s a line of research that postdoctoral researcher April Bailey, PhD, has pursued since joining the lab in 2020. Much of her work focuses on androcentrism bias—a unique form of gender bias in which both women and men default to thinking of a generic person as male. “This type of bias seems subtle, as opposed to overtly negative beliefs about women, but it has the potential for serious downstream consequences,” she said. For example, car safety mechanisms have long been tested using crash test dummies modeled on the male body. It wasn’t until 2011 that U.S. regulators also started using dummies based on female forms. “Women are more likely to be injured and die in car crashes, and experts think that may be in part because of this tendency,” she said.
Bailey is exploring how androcentrism bias might affect children, and particularly girls. STEM camps and coding clubs for girls, for example, were designed to get girls interested in science and technology. But there’s the chance that describing them in such a way reinforces the idea that those subjects aren’t normally designed for girls, Bailey said. “We’re trying to understand how kids respond to subtle messages that their gender isn’t the norm in a particular context.”
Lab structure
While many of the lab’s current projects focus on gender bias, the specifics change over the years as new students and postdocs bring their own interests and ideas. “We have a series of themes, but each lab member has a fair amount of latitude,” Cimpian said. His lab is presently home to three PhD students and four postdocs, as well as more than two dozen undergraduate students. “I’ve always liked a big lab with a lot of people working on different yet related topics,” he said.
The lab’s projects are funded by a variety of sources, including grants from the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, and private funders such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Connecting the research is a commitment to understand how people develop ideas about success and achievement, and how those beliefs influence people’s future educational and career paths—whether it’s a young girl whose teachers have discouraged her from studying math or a department chair making judgments about which prospective faculty members have what it takes to shine.
For his part, Cimpian said he is motivated by two goals: to do rigorous research that answers questions of social importance and to train the next generation of scientists. “I have fabulous people working with me who are very competent at doing research and are also good human beings who manifest that quality in the questions they ask about the world,” he said. “We want to answer questions that make a difference in the lives of others.”
