You Need to Be Super Smart to Do Well in Math! Elementary School Children Show Math-Specific Brilliance Beliefs

• In Event: Investigating Academic Mind-Sets in New Contexts and With Novel Conceptual Approaches

Abstract

Students who hold the belief that success in math requires a high level of (innate) intellectual ability (i.e., hold math-specific “brilliance beliefs”) have been shown to engage in maladaptive behaviors that contribute to lowered math achievement (Jones et al., 2012). Given the academic consequences of holding these beliefs, it is important to understand their content and development. Recent research suggests that math-specific brilliance beliefs emerge as early as elementary school, but that young children only apply these beliefs to adults (e.g., “math jobs”) and not to students their own age (e.g., “math in my grade”; Gunderson et al., 2017). However, prior work has confounded two dimensions when measuring these beliefs: the age of the targets (adults vs. children) and the perceived difficulty of the math content (math jobs [difficult] vs. math in their grade [easier, at least by comparison]). To disentangle these dimensions, in the present research we held constant the age of the targets—always asking about children—but varied the perceived difficulty of the math (“math in my grade” [easier] vs. “math competition” [harder]). It is possible that children believe that math at their level requires brilliance as well, contrary to Gunderson et al.’s (2017) claim—just not the math they typically do in school.
We recruited 160 1st-4th grade students from New York City and Chicago and measured their math-specific brilliance beliefs for peers in school (easier) and competition (harder) contexts (see Table 1 for scale items). A comprehension check verified that students associate competitions with harder mathematics. As a comparison, students were also asked about the relation between brilliance and success for the domain of reading and writing, both in school and in competition contexts. Finally, we assessed math-specific attitudes and behaviors (e.g., self-efficacy) as potential correlates of children’s math-specific brilliance beliefs.
Using a mixed-effects linear regression model, we found a main effect of domain across grade levels (math vs reading; t = 3.16, p = .013), suggesting that children are more likely to endorse brilliance beliefs about mathematics than about reading/writing. We also found a main effect of context across grade levels (competition vs school; t = 4.19, p < .001), suggesting that children hold stronger brilliance beliefs about success in a competition compared to success in school. Surprisingly, however, we did not find a significant interaction between domain and context, χ2 (1) = .91, p = .340 (Figure 1), suggesting that children apply math-specific brilliance beliefs more broadly than suggested by Gunderson et al. (2017). Math-specific brilliance beliefs were also found to positively relate to students’ math self-efficacy (t = 2.57, p = .011) and negatively to their challenge-seeking behavior (z = -2.45, p = .014), suggesting mixed associations between these beliefs and achievement motivation variables for students in elementary grades.
Ultimately, our findings suggest that young children believe that math at their level is only for “very smart kids,” challenging previous findings and underscoring the need for further research to understand the effects of these beliefs on academic outcomes.

Authors

• Jalisha Jenifer, Barnard College

• Jilana Jaxon, New York University

• Susan C. Levine

• Andrei Cimpian, New York University