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Beliefs about success are prone to cognitive fallacies

Who will achieve high marks in school, flourish in their career or become an Olympian? Current theories of achievement provide answers that are intuitively appealing but scientifically flawed. Consequently, most of what people believe about how to achieve success is likely to be incorrect.

For more than a century, scientists have proposed multiple explanations for who becomes successful — that is, who achieves their goals or attains high levels of performance in a domain. The explanations most embraced by the public are those that align with the cultural milieu of the time1. Today, the widely accepted ethos is that success is largely under one’s own control. Three theories of achievement that are currently popular among scientists, educators and parents — deliberate practice2, grit3 and mindset4 — reflect this view, emphasizing personal initiative and effort as key determinants.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychological Sciences, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH, USA

    Brooke N. Macnamara

  2. Department of Human Development and Quantitative Methodology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Richard W. Prather

  3. School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA

    Alexander P. Burgoyne

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  1. Brooke N. Macnamara
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  2. Richard W. Prather
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  3. Alexander P. Burgoyne
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Brooke N. Macnamara.

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Macnamara, B.N., Prather, R.W. & Burgoyne, A.P. Beliefs about success are prone to cognitive fallacies.
Nat Rev Psychol (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-023-00255-z

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  • Published: 10 November 2023

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44159-023-00255-z

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