Think you can?
Once more, backed by science.
When he wasn't pushing square dancing, Henry Ford used to say:
“Whether you think that you can, or that you can’t, you are usually right.”
It’s a pithy quote (Ford was a quote machine), but a research project that was funded several years ago by the National Science Foundation points to a wealth of evidence that backs him up.
The research focused on college students, specifically studying factors that made them more likely to get good grades, stay in school, and graduate.
There were three findings that together make up what I’m going to go ahead and call the Henry Ford Rule: Learning to believe in yourself and your abilities makes you more likely to succeed in and of itself.
Here’s the research project, the takeaways, and how you can use them to improve your life–even if you’ve long since left the classroom.
The project involved 12 psychologists and other PhDs from universities and think tanks who reviewed reports on a total of 61 other experimental studies on college students and success.
Across the board, the report found, there were three main factors that foretold greater achievement across disciplines and regardless of factors like the students’ test scores or socioeconomic status. The factors included:
1. Developing a sense of belonging.
This first factor has to do with the degree to which students believed they “belong in college, fit in well, and are socially integrated,” according to a summary that quoted one of the study’s co-authors, Fred Oswald, a professor of psychology at Rice University.
Of the 61 studies involved, more than 50 found that simply feeling like they belonged in school had a positive impact on students’ grades.
2. Enabling a “growth mindset.”
Regular readers will know that we’re all about the growth mindset here at Understandably. Embracing the belief that intelligence is not a fixed attribute–that it can be strengthened through use, like a muscle–had a firm impact on students’ success.
Of the 61 studies, 75 percent found that embracing a growth mindset improved students’ GPAs.
3. Having articulable personal goals and values.
Finally, 83 percent of the studies (by my math, that makes either 50 or 51 of them, and I believe in my ability to get that right) found that students who embraced “personal goals and values that they perceived to be directly linked to the achievement of a future, desired end” were more likely to succeed.
Again, this was measured mostly by comparing the students’ GPAs.
These three factors do sound like common sense when laid out like this, but that doesn’t make them any less valid. And, just because they make sense to us doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re good at developing them.
So how can you make that happen? The key is to truly come to believe these three factors–and it turns out one way to do that may be writing them down.
According to Oswald, the studies included practical exercises that students could use to improve their sense of belonging, their embrace of a growth mindset, and their adherence to core values.
One “remarkable finding,” according to the study, was the degree to which “brief writing exercises [improved] these intra- and interpersonal competencies.”
For example, students who were required to “write about the relevance of course topics to their own life or to the life of a family member or close friend” saw positive development.
Another remedy involved what sounds like a bit of benevolent manipulation–making students feel more at home on campus by having them write stories and reflections that “fram[ed] social adversity as common and transient.”
Simply put, having them write in a way that emphasizes that everyone feels out of place sometimes, and that most of us manage to get over it, will improve the situation. And this suggests that making a conscious effort to examine these beliefs, perhaps by journaling or other written exercises, might help internalize them.
As the writer Flannery O’Connor once said, “I write because I don’t know what I think until I read what I say.”
No idea how she felt about square dancing.
7 other things worth knowing today
The Trump administration is sharpening its attacks on the National Science Foundation, cutting $4.7 billion, or more than half the agency's $9 billion budget. The proposal landed the same day the NSF said 344 previously approved grants had been terminated as they "were not aligned with agency priorities." (NPR)
Two key trends suggest the 2025 hurricane season may have a busy start. (The Washington Post)
Overnight parking for long-haul truckers at interstate rest stops is critically short and was a key contributor to a 2023 Greyhound bus crash in Illinois that killed three people and injured 12, federal regulators said Tuesday. The National Transportation Safety Board said driver fatigue and poor company oversight of its drivers also played key roles when the Greyhound bus exited Interstate 70 onto a rest area ramp east of St. Louis and struck three semitrailers parked on the shoulder. (AP)
Home sellers are setting 'aspirational' prices. Buyers have other ideas. For-sale inventory is rising nationwide, but sales aren't keeping up and price reductions are common. (Yahoo Finance)
Fewer Americans are moving each year, with 12.6 percent relocating in 2022, down from 12.8 percent in 2021 and significantly lower than the 16.8 percent who moved in 2006, according to data by the U.S. Census Bureau. However, almost a fifth of those relocating are making their moves count by heading to a different state. And this year, it appears everyone is heading to the southeast. The No. 1 destination is a tie between Myrtle Beach, South Carolina and Wilmington, North Carolina. (Yahoo News)
Illinois’ prominent Chicago Sun-Times newspaper has confirmed that a summer reading list, which included several recommendations for books that don’t exist, was created using artificial intelligence by a freelancer who worked with one of their content partners. (The Guardian)
George Wendt, 76, who earned six consecutive Primetime Emmy Award nominations for his role as the bearish, beer-quaffing everyman Norm Peterson on the enduring sitcom “Cheers,” died on Tuesday at his home in Studio City, Calif. He was 76. Here’s a video compilation of some of Wendt-as-Norm’s opening one-liners on Cheers. (New York Times)
Thanks for reading. Photo by Arnaud Mariat on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.
Great one today Bill. I'm going to use the Flannery O'Connor quote.
Sure, that's all wrapped up in positive thinking, but that only gets you over the goal line if you're almost there anyway.
I've known people who had the positive thinking, but not the ability, and they failed; sometimes, that was worse because they firmly believed they would succeed.