Genes versus environment

While intelligence clearly matters, then, by itself it is no guarantee of success. There is also overwhelming evidence of the importance  of environmental factors, particularly those related to socio-economic status. Children who grow up in poor areas with limited access to computers and books, and who may also have little routine and little parental attention, not only have worse health, but are also more likely to do badly at school. This makes it far harder for them to flourish in adulthood. By contrast, many successful entrepreneurs, leaders and artistic high achievers grow up in stimulating homes surrounded by a diversity of books and are party to inspiring meal-time conversations. Children whose parents split up or who grow up in emotionally unstable homes also start out at a disadvantage, regardless of their social background. They tend to be more badly behaved and underperform at school. Edward Melhuish of Birkbeck, University  of London, who studies child development, warns that children under 5 who don’t  receive consistent affection and responsive communication from their parents or caregivers have impaired social and emotional development. Crucially, this affects their language skills, which Melhuish says is a major reason why children from disadvantaged families generally do poorly at school. Improved language development helps  boost cognitive development, literacy and educational attainment as well as social  skills,” he says. The effects of the environment, in other words, are profound. An impoverished upbringing can dent a child’s cognitive  ability by as much as nine IQ points (Child Development, vol 65, p 296). By contrast, a privileged background can boost IQ. Adopted children born into poverty but brought up in well-off households have shown big gains in IQ compared with their non-adopted siblings. These findings have clear implications. To help all children reach their potential, it’s not enough to wait until they start school – by then it may already be too late. What’s needed, says Melhuish, are high-quality “early education centres” that combine child care, parenting support, healthcare and learning  in one place, an intervention that has already proved beneficial to children from all backgrounds, and to disadvantaged children most of all. The importance of early intervention is  now widely recognised, and has led to child development initiatives such as Sure Start in the UK and Head Start in the US. President Obama is now seeking cross-party support for his plans to expand access to pre-kindergarten education. “Research shows that one of the best investments we can make in a child’s life is high-quality early education,” Obama said in January. In the UK, however, funding for the Sure Start initiative has been cut by a third in the past two years. There is more to success, though, than innate potential and growing up in an environment that helps you realise that potential. “Cognitive ability and intelligence do not seem to predict individual differences in performance among skilled expert performers,” says psychologist K. Anders Ericsson at Florida State University in Tallahassee. He and others argue that the accomplishments of elite performers in many fields, including music and sports but also chess and others involving memory, owe far more to focused practice than to innate talent. Why do some people practise more than others? Early on, perhaps because of pushy parents. But certain factors appear essential for anyone plotting a path to the top. For instance, you won’t get far without the ability to persevere and stay committed to far-off goals, or “grit”. “Grittier individuals are  more successful than others, particularly in very challenging situations,” says Angela Duckworth at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. What makes people gritty? Part of the answer is motivation. Duckworth has shown that people score higher on IQ tests when  they are given an incentive, such as a small financial reward (PNAS, vol 108, p 7716). This finding has major implications for the study of success. Psychologists, economists and social scientists often point to the association between IQ scores and attainment in life as evidence that success depends largely on intelligence. Yet Duckworth’s work suggests that IQ tests measure more than intelligence – “ Adopted children born into poverty but brought up  by well-off families have shown big gains in IQ"

and that motivation is a potent asset. Grit demands something else as well: the willpower to see something through to the end. It involves hard work, and the resisting  of distracting desires and impulses.  Willpower is largely about having self-control, which makes it relevant to the pursuit of achievement in two important ways. First, self-control – like intelligence – has lifelong benefits. It is a better predictor of exam results among adolescents than IQ scores. Students with more self-control are more likely to turn up to school on time, do their homework and watch less television, Duckworth has found, all of which translated into better grades. A more recent study, which followed 1000 children in New Zealand from birth to 32 years old, found that those who exhibited greater self-control in childhood grew into healthier, more emotionally stable adults. They were also better off financially (PNAS, vol 108, p 2693).