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Dr. Mendoza-Denton's article "Is Your Intelligence Genetically Based?" published in Psychology Today, might have one of the most confusing titles I've stumbled upon. The article actually considers the performance effects of one's own belief of your mental abilities. Dr. Mendoza-Denton cites his paper, published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, which studied the effect of gender and racial stereotypes on IQ test performance. In the study, he had a group of Asian-background participants divided into sub-groups. One group was told that people of asian-background were scientifically proven to better at math. Another group was told that the stereotype was false.

His findings were that the Asian-background students who had been told that their math skills were innate outperformed all of the other groups. While the idea of positive reinforcement, whether conscious or not, has always been a primary tool in teaching; it begs the question, why don't we use these stereotypes to our benefit? There are plenty of stereotypes within our society, would it be ethically wrong if scientists disseminated "lies" regarding stereotypes that in the long run would better society?

I would argue that such trickery is ethically dubious, however if there is no malicious intent (quite the opposite in fact) would people still be up in arms? I'd like to think that our culture has matured to such a point where the benefits of the bigger picture outweighed the "lies", but that's not for me or any other individual to decide.

However, the results are in, positive reinforcement can help you perform better. Now go pass that Psychology class, you can do it!