It’s been a long time since children’s stories were read to me, in a previous millenium, before I turned into an old fossil. But those stories, which have a moral and are meant to teach you something, tend stick in your mind.
A popular and enduring children’s story is “The Little Engine That Could” (background here; get it here), dating from the early 1900s and popularized by Disney in the 1950s. A small locomotive is tasked with pulling a train up a grade; it’s heavy work for such a little engine, but it keeps telling itself, “I think I can, I think I can,” and gets the job done.
Enter a study by the University of Wisconsin’s psychology lab. “For more than a decade there has been a running scientific controversy over the question of whether computerized cognitive training … can … enhance intellectual (cognitive) functioning,” a Temple University psychology professor said. This experiment tried to answer that question.
Based on their results, the answer appears to be yes. The experimenters observed significantly better performance when subjects were conditioned to think they can do a task. (See story here.)
My own personal experience is anecdotal and subjective, but I’ve observed world-class athletes from close up, and I believe that belief in oneself and a positive attitude make a difference to outcomes. In my own experience, there’ve been plenty of times when I wasn’t sure I could do something, but told myself I could, and did it.
