“Talent is a dreadfully cheap commodity, cheaper than table salt,” Stephen King wrote in his 1981 nonfiction book, Danse Macabre. “What separates the talented individual from the successful one is a lot of hard work and study; a constant process of honing.”
Many people believe expertise is innate—you either have it or you don’t. But the word “expert” implies both talent and hard work. To be an expert in any field means acquiring ample knowledge and experience; incorporating that proficiency with one’s inherent abilities; and, as King notes, a relentless commitment to continuous improvement.
A new study suggests students learn better when they attribute an expert’s success to hard work rather than innate ability.
Across five studies, Chia-Jung Tsay, Bruce and Janice Ellig Professor in Management and associate professor of management and human resources at the Wisconsin School of Business, and co-author Nuria Tolsá-Caballero, assistant professor of management and human resources at the EDHEC School of Business in Lille, France, examined how students perceived experts. Specifically, they analyzed whether students attributed experts’ proficiency to talent (“naturals”) or hard work (“strivers”) and what effect that attribution had, if any, on learning outcomes.
The studies included observational, experimental, and field data, including one study using student evaluations from the website Rate My Professors, as well as a large-scale field study with high school students in Guatemala, thanks to a partnership with the country’s Ministry of Education.
“The mechanism we identified is that when students see someone who achieved expertise through hard work, dedication, and perseverance, they develop greater self-efficacy.”
—Chia-Jung Tsay
The data from the new study suggested that when experts were perceived as strivers by students rather than naturals, learning outcomes improved—students were more motivated and performed better.
“The mechanism we identified is that when students see someone who achieved expertise through hard work, dedication, and perseverance, they develop greater self-efficacy,” Tsay says. “They also come to place greater value on effort rather than talent.”
The study builds on Tsay’s earlier work on natural talent bias. “One of the most relevant implications of our findings is that silence is not neutral. When experts say nothing about what made their achievements possible, learners often fill in the gap by assuming natural talent. Making the effort behind expertise visible can counter that assumption—and the consequences go beyond what learners believe is possible for them: they can actually learn more and perform better,” says Tolsá-Caballero.
Tsay and Tolsá-Caballero were encouraged that the study results held implications for low-cost interventions and ways of creating value.
In the Guatemala study, for example, “we added a short video of an expert describing how they got to where they are,” Tsay says.
In the other version of the video, the expert said nothing about their career trajectory. Nearly 30,000 high school students opened an intervention email presenting the video in the two-month lag between when they had taken their national exams and when grades were due; the students who viewed the videos with the expert describing their experience showed marked gains.
“It suggests these findings extend beyond hypothetical scenarios; we saw improvements in a real educational setting,” says Tsay. “I’m optimistic that we can keep building on this.”
Another low-cost way of creating value involves coaching and mentorship to potentially shift a learner’s mindset.
“As coaches or mentors, we often have a tendency to downplay the difficulties we faced, and say, ‘Oh, that didn’t take much effort,’” Tsay says. “That can be a potential disservice to those that leaders are trying to help. Being more open about the difficulties we’ve had to overcome can buffer against assumptions that success simply came from natural talent.”
As a researcher, Tsay says how we are impacted both individually and collectively by assumptions about talent and hard work continues to intrigue her.
“At the core, I think it speaks to the idea of the American dream,” she says. “I think many of us are captivated by the Horatio Alger narrative. There’s something really special in the notion that as long as we put in the work, this is a place where we can achieve something great.”