IS INTELLIGENCE FIXED?

The last time we talked about the second misconception that most people hold about the brain. That is the 10% of the brain’s capacity. Most people believe that geniuses like Einstein are geniuses because they were able to use more than 10% of their brain’s capacity. Therefore they had more access to their brain’s capacity than the average. But this is not true. We all use more than 10% of our brain’s capacity but how we choose to think and how we act is what determines if we will become geniuses or not.

Today we will be talking about the last and most important misconception that most people hold about the human brain.

Before I move on to talk about it, I have a question that I want you to answers in the comment section. Do you believe intelligence is fixed?

I want you to answer that question genuinely and you can state the reason why you think it is fixed or not in the comment section if you like.

Without wasting time, let’s take a dive into the last and most important misconception about the human brain.

Most people believe intelligence to be something that is fixed due to differences in genetics and a whole bunch of reasons. But is this true?

Others also believe intelligence isn’t fixed and the also have many reasons to back up their argument.

So which one is true?

Stick with me and let’s find out.

First of all, what is intelligence?

According to the MacMillan dictionary,

Intelligence= The ability to understand, think about things, and to gain or use knowledge.

Before anything else I would also want to define an intelligent person.

When people call someone intelligent what do they mean by that?

An intelligent person= someone who is good at thinking, understanding and learning.

This shows that intelligence is based on an individual’s ability to:

• think
• Understand
• Learn and use knowledge.

Now we all have the ability to think. We have come upon certain instances where we were even able to come up with ideas. So does this mean we are all intelligent? Yes.

To illustrate further, we have all been explained to about a matter that we easily gain understanding. We have all learnt a new skill before and we have all applied something we have learnt.

This clearly shows why intelligence isn’t fixed but we are all intelligent.

But some may argue that even though we are all intelligent, some are intelligent than others. Yes that is true but those people are more intelligent than others due to:

• How they think differently.
• How much they have learnt
• The level of understanding they have
• How they apply what they learn
• Lastly, their level of education.

So for you to rise and gain that level of intelligence, it will require that you go through education, constantly learning and applying knowledge and coming up with new ideas every day.

Now let’s move on to the reason why intelligence isn’t fixed.

Intelligent is fixed or not to you depending on the mindset you have about it.

Let’s first look into the history of how this misconception came to being:

In the early years, brain researchers and Phycologist believed that intelligence was fixed until a concept was developed by Dr. Dweck which described the nature of intelligence.

After studying the behavior of thousands of children, Dr. Dweck coined the terms fixed mindset and growth mindset to describe the underlying beliefs people have about learning and intelligence. When students believe they can get smarter, they understand that effort makes them stronger. Therefore they put in extra time and effort, and that leads to higher achievement.

The growth and fixed mindset coined by Dr. Dweck helped to not only prove intelligence isn’t fixed but it also showed the mindsets that people had.

For now we won’t be diving into the growth and fixed mindset now because it will only make this longer than it already is.

But what I want you to take away is that intelligence can only be fixed based on the mindset you have about it.

So this is where we will end and we will continue in the next article I post on the fixed and growth mindset. Hope you enjoyed and learnt a lot from this.