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Smart People Choke Under Pressure
People perceived as the most likely to succeed might also be the most likely to crumble under pressure.
A new study finds that individuals with high working-memory capacity, which normally allows them to excel, crack under pressure and do worse on simple exams than when allowed to work with no constraints. Those with less capacity score low, too, but they tend not to be affected by pressure.
I fall apart like a month-old spongecake if someone so much as asks me for the current time. That must mean I'm really bright, right? Right?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
Smart people are expected not to make mistakes and not to fail. We are all (even some of the smartest people) nothing but human, therefore we do make mistakes and sometimes fail. But, since you are smart people are likely to expect more from you.
"Let's see you get out of this.."
"You are so smart, why can't you..."
What people need to understand is that sometimes even the best of us make the wrong judgement. This things happen.
From TFA:
The study analyzed 93 undergraduate students from Michigan State University to determine their working-memory capacities. The students were divided into two groups, a high working-memory group (HWM) and a low working-memory group (LWM). Each person was given a 24-problem math test in a low-pressure environment. The HWM group did substantially better.
Then the two groups were given the same test, but were told that they were part of a "team effort" and an improved score would earn the team a cash reward. They were also told their performance was being evaluated by math professors.
Under this higher, real world pressure situation, the HWM group's score dropped to that of the LWM group, which was not affected by the increased pressure.
Since working memory is known to predict many higher-level brain functions, the research calls into question the ability of high-pressure tests such as the SAT, GRE, LSAT, and MCAT to accurately gauge who will succeed in future academic endeavors.
Hmm, that must mean that no one scores extremely high on standardized tests, then.
Oh, wait.
They do.
How can that be possible?! Could it be that some people are very bright, have good memories, AND can do well in high pressure situations?
Does that mean that no one who might not do the best on standardized tests wouldn't make a good doctor or lawyer or graduate student? Of course not. But standardized tests are an imperfect solution for weeding out candidates, period. It's just like college: does college "prove" that you're smart? No, but it shows you have the willpower and wherewithal to perform the task, and many other intangibles that go along with it. Does standardized testing prove anything? No, but a lot is implicit in an outstanding test score, and THEN, for most of the things discussed here, such as medical school, law school, and other graduate programs, you go to the next level: personalized interviewing and personalized attention. Standardized tests are, again, just an imperfect way of whittling down the candidate pool in the most sensible way possible.
You can't ignore people who perform extremely well on standardized tests.
I don't know how to feel about this...
I'm most certainly a 'geek', by all measures. I can't help but become totally immersed in whatever I find interesting...in depth and breadth.
However, I've always been noted for my ability to work best under pressure--without the pressure I either get nothing accomplished or I 'wander aimlessly forever'...I'm sure many of you can identify.
However, I'm an 'undercover.' Nobody I meet ever suspects that I have held engineer positions, owned my own business or spent multiple hours a day researching (anything of interest) in painful depth.
To sum it up, I think (without RTFA, admittedly) I think that it's far to dynamic of a subject to boil down to black-n-whites such as this.
But then again, perhaps I'm just not 'one of those'..."those" being the majority of geekdom.
colour me skeptical.
-Dan
I suspect that you are one of those people that I meet far too often who love to complain about the fact the world just doesn't know the "correct" way to see how smart they really are. I suspect that you are one of those people I meet far too often who constantly espouse the firm belief that they have these great genius level ideas, but that nobody recognizes it.
I would like to take this opportunity to call bullsh*t on you.
Thanks!
No, it's just that the higher you are, the farther you fall.
Gifted people are much more likely to suffer from underachivement problems than other people, usually due to perfectionism, social anxiety issues, etc.
Personally, I suffer from severe perfectionism. Many people wish they were perfectionists. They're always perceived as the people who excel and do whatever it takes to complete something to the best of the ability. That image is entirely false. Perfectionism is the leading cause of gifted underachivement in academics (and, I would assume, "real world" achievement).
Try to imagine it like this. You receive a homework assignment from a teacher (if you're an employed adult, replace it with a project from a manager or something -.-). You dread doing it, so you procrastinate. That's no big deal, of course. Most people procrastinate. But then you start working. Rather than concentrate on the big picture - getting a good grade, getting the job done, whatever - you focus on the little things. Is this sentence typed correctly? Is that the right form of this? What if people think this is stupid? You get confused; you have no idea what you are doing anymore. You finally dredge through it, and rather than feel accomplishment, you feel dread. Afterall, it will be graded and judged. What if it isn't good enough? People will think you're stupid? For a perfectionist, that's a terrible feeling. It's one emotional drain after another.
While this isn't directly related to the article, there are some connections. Personally, it has ruined my life. Nothing can make you feel good about yourself. I received a 1580 "equivalent" on my PSAT's last year. Did I feel happy about it? No. I felt so incompetent for missing that math problem, and so amazingly stupid for not getting that reading comprehension question rated as "medium" right.
I'm failing 5 out of 6 of my classes right now, basically assuring that any hopes of a succesful life is ruined. It's a great feeling.
Sorry, it's just that your post angered me a little bit. Didn't mean to rant. -.-
Also, people trained to follow rules choke when they're asked to be inventive. A friend works as an executive in a major fast food business, and he told me how they classify employees according to their way of solving problems (psychometric test). The worst thing you can do to somebody who "follows the rules" is ask him to be inventive. He'll break up in no time.
Or it could be Calvin and Hobbes Syndrome. Anyone remember the comic where Calvin is happy he got a low grade, because it kept people's expectations down.
This is especially true in a technical position. People pile on more and more work because they don't understand what is hard, what isn't, and what your breaking point might be. "Smart People" often have more technical jobs, or take more technical courses in school, etc etc.
"Not as smart" people might take more labour-oriented jobs. And of course, the view of "smart" is skewed anyhow, my mechanic can't fix my computer in the same way I can't fix his car... we're both smart in different ways.
Damn! I had an intelligent and well developed response to that all thought out but when I got to the comment box my mind just went blank.
When I was in high school, I admired the "tough" teachers, who gave hard exams and had "old fashioned standards", three of my math teachers were like that. They were proud that they routinely gave homework problems that even engineer parents couldn't solve (with the limited methods the kids had been taught).
I left high school early, and got an A in Calculus at Harvard, where the course was rather loosely structured: lecture attendance was optional; you took exams when you felt like it; and there was a pool of fresh exams, so you could take a different exam on each topic (up to twice) if you later gained a deeper insight into a concept, emphasized the wrong concepts in your self-study or simply blew a test.
My high school calc teacher was rather offended by my departure (she'd openly said I'd never amount to anything) and when I mentioned my Harvard "A" to the department chairman on a return visit, she challenged me to take HER final [She'd apparently done this with other students who'd left early, and none had passed.) I passed, but I didn't do particularly well. (Much as the engineering parents might've done, I suppose)
However, I stayed in touch with several of my fellow Honors Math students who had aced her course and went to college in Cambridge. I think they'd all agree that I remained better and more creative in basic calculus than them -- even the ones who went to MIT (I'm not dissing MIT; I've long been associated with that school)
Though I have always been a big fan of alternative approaches to education, it was over ten years and two doctorates later before I realized that these "tough, old-school" teachers hadn't been teaching very well at all. Their "tough" problems really tested how well you retained the trickier examples from of their homework problems.
Though they were quite good at instilling the fundamentals of Algebra 2, Calculus, etc., they hadn't really given their students much skill at "free-form" math. Sadly, in the real world, all math problems are free form: creativity and insight are invaluable, but limiting yourself to specific chosen techniques is almost always a meaningless exercise.
It really saddens me, because I still have a profound respect for "old school" teachers. The problem is: just being "tough" and "old school" isn't enough, and I think many such dedicated teachers would change their methods somewhat and become even more outstanding teachers, if only someone could make them fully understand this one weakness in their teaching, but instead they believe that their daily experience reaffirms the validity of their methods.
I was fortunate to have one teacher, in two different high school courses, who had been a former engineer and valued creative solutions. He also became our Math League coach in those years, and suddenly we went from the bottom of our local league to the top of the state [I still grin when I remember walking through the cafeteria "staging area" for the meets, and hearing the former top schools asking "who are these guys] Our success wasn't just due to his teaching -we barely did any prep, compared to the Powerhouses in our league- but was equally due to his encouragement of creative thinkers, including freshmen (like myself and a coupple of others who I fully admit were more talented at math than I was). Before his tenure, only the Seniors with the best grades (and a few exceptional Juniors) were encouraged to join.
That last point is important: the juniors/seniors on the team when I was a freshman were good, and certainly knew more math than we underclassmen did, make no mistake, but we had, nonetheless, been near the bottom of our league, so I can only guess that they hadn't done well with problems for which they hadn't been specifically prepped, and our math league categories leaned heavily toward "free form" problems, as opposed to "solve this equation".
Suddenly I'm flooded with repressed high school memories. Man, what a waste of life tht would've been, If it hadn't been for the girls [who says geeks can't date like demons?]. Just for the record, though, this isn't high school bitterness. I'm a 40-something, and the past two decades have offered many fresher things to be bitter about!
There are some rude anonymous replies to the parent comment and I'd like to set the record straight. Perfectionism comes with pressure to achieve - it's not automatically a trait that comes with intelligence, it appears when a person judges his or her self worth by what is achieved. The perfectionist feels like "not a real person" and feels a constant need to prove himself or herself.
For many young women, this means a possibly fatal eating disorder. The parent poster is failing classes and generally ensuring an unhappy life. Psychologists can help with this problem. There are psychologists that specialize in eating disorders who would find this sort of thing quite familiar. Also, many universities have counselling centres or psychologists in the area who are familiar with student issues.
Perfectionism is usually a problem for young people, but if you are a grown-up who is currently in a downward spiral because of perfectionism, you may be able to find someone by asking around in the abovementioned places, or by asking your doctor.
The other problem mentioned was performance anxiety. Anxious disorders can be treated with drugs (from a psychiatrist, not your personal physician) but you should also undergo some form of psychoanalysis or counselling to try and get off the drugs. If anxiety is left untreated it can turn into panic and get you hospitalized thinking that you are dying. Not my idea of a good Saturday afternoon.
Geeks unite, stand up for your health!
*#*#*#*#*#******* I love peanut butter sandwiches!
Why engineers want info up front can be broken up roughly into the following problems. Usually it's a combination.
1. Bad management.
It's more common than you think to be blamed for not reading the client's mind. (You should have just known that when they explicitly wrote "save when exitting every field", they actually meant "we don't want the info to disappear, but we don't really want disk access every time we hit TAB." Whatever gave them the idea that info just disappears in a form. It's your fault when they come back complaining about performance.)
Or when it's not outright "you're to blame, you horrible monster", it's being asked to do overtime to "fix" it. Because the boss is too weak to tell a big client that those changes cost extra time to implement.
I can tell you that it doesn't take more than 1-2 such projects, to give one the idea "no, you don't. Not again. Give me a good spec up front this time." Because anything short of a full spec simply comes back to screw you with a chainsaw lately.
2. Bad management again: changing the same thing back and forth, just because the client can't make up his/her mind.
It's been said that the most depressive thing you can do for example to a prisoner is to just make him do not something that's hard work, but something that's obviously _useless_. Such as asking the prisoners to move a big pile of sand from here to there, and then back to the same point. That "I'm doing useless stuff" thought saps someone's self-esteem and ultimately even health faster than if you tortured them or made them break rocks with a pickaxe.
And the same applies to software projects.
I've _actually_ been in one project where for a whole _year_ the client manager couldn't make up his mind whether he wants the reports landscape or portrait. Never mind that the program included a report designer, where he can lay them out in whatever goddamn way he needs. No siree, bob. He's not gonna accept the program until the reports are landscape... then portrait... then landscape again... then portrait again. Repeat ad nauseam. For a year.
Going through something like this will make it _very_ tempting to say "screw this, I want a signed spec up front".
3. Bad design.
Most programs are basically Write-Only. People give no thought to maintenance later, and even the smallest change means rewriting half the stuff.
Now I'm not a fan of extreme programming as such. (And please, if anyone feels like taking it as an opportunty to preach, have mercy and spare both my time and yours.) But I do think that they did get the basic ideas right. (It's just the turning it all to the max that I disaggree with.) Programs should be written to be easily changed.
4. Lack of test-cases.
That's probably the worst anti-pattern. So you most often have not only a spaghetti program that's hard to change, but it's not even possible to be sure you didn't break something else.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Unfortunately, creativity is not something that can be easily taught...
In a recent article, Mandelbrot shows three common techniques that have kept him creative even today when he's nearly 80:
Mandelbrot's techniques can be roughly sumarized as (1) periodically return to basic principles or direct observation; (2) pay closer attention to obscure or peripheral phenomenon; and (3) apply techniques from apparently unrelated disciplines.
I suspect that part of the problem isn't that creativity is hard to teach but that it isn't taught at all. Creativity might be like any other technique. If you know it, you use it.
I wonder if the missing ingredient in creativity is arrogance, a quality much on display in Mandelbrot's article. Creative people think their rightful place is standing on the shoulders of giants. They've been told the view is better up there.