Fluid-Intelligence Affirmative Action

September 13th, 2015 / By Deborah J. Merritt

I wrote in a recent post that many affirmative action programs reflect a belief in fixed intelligence. In these programs, faculty assume that affirmative-action admits have less ability than their white peers. That ability, faculty further assume, condemns those admittees to low law school grades. In addition, the presence of less qualified minority students may aggravate the stereotype threat that can impair performance by all minority students–leading to still lower performance overall.

I then, however, explained that a belief in fixed intelligence is mistaken. Intelligence is much more fluid than many individuals understand. Adopting a fluid-intelligence mindset, moreover, can itself enhance achievement. This brings us to the questions: How does a belief in fluid intelligence affect our concept of affirmative action? And how might those beliefs affect the performance of minority students?

Conceptualizing Affirmative Action

When viewed with a fluid-intelligence perspective, affirmative action programs take on a very different character than the one I described earlier. This perspective, first, assumes that college grades and LSAT scores do not fully reflect the existing intelligence of minority students. Stereotype threat, economic disadvantage, cultural signals, and other forces can reduce a minority student’s performance when compared to that of a white student with similar abilities. Thus, the true ability level of an admitted minority student may be higher than that of white students with similar scores.

Second, the fluid-intelligence perspective assumes that the minority student’s capabilities will grow throughout law school. Education expands intellectual ability, and law school offers a particularly rigorous form of education. The minority student, like white students, will be more capable at graduation than at admission.

Finally, and most important, the fluid-intelligence perspective suggests that the minority student has more potential for growth than the white student with similar credentials. Why? Because almost all minority students have been hampered by a lifetime of implicit bias and stereotype threat. They are also more likely than white students to have suffered from low-income backgrounds, few role models, and inadequate schools. All of these factors can reduce the ability that an individual displays in college or on the LSAT, but they don’t erase the potential for achievement gains.

A good affirmative action program assumes that, if we place minority students in an intellectually challenging but supportive environment, and if we eliminate the stereotype threat and implicit bias in that environment, the minority student will make greater intellectual gains than a white student who enters that environment with the same initial achievement level.

The same, of course, can be true for some white students. Some of them suffer from inferior schools, few role models, and stereotype threats of their own. These students will also benefit disproportionately from a challenging, supportive academic environment. The gaps for minority students, however, tend to be much, much larger. The potential for gain, likewise, is much greater.

The Theory In Action

This three-part discussion, I hope, shows that affirmative action programs need not create stereotype threat or harm minority students. On the contrary, properly conceptualized programs recognize the ability of minority students to make greater gains than similarly credentialed classmates.

What, then, holds them back? Why did Alexia Marks and Scott Moss find that minority law students receive lower grades than white classmates with similar entering credentials? The answer almost certainly lies in our failure to create the type of academic environment described above.

I invite law professors and administrators to reflect on their own attitudes. How many of us believe that intelligence is fixed? That belief can negatively affect student learning.

If we believe in fluid intelligence, do we recognize that minority students may be able to make special gains during law school? Do we eagerly embrace that possibility, working to create the conditions that will bring those gains to life? Are we giving students wise feedback that affirms their ability to meet high standards? The outcomes described by Marks and Moss suggest that we’re not doing nearly as much as we could.

To what extent, finally, does our traditional culture hamper the intellectual development of all students–and of minority students in particular? A lack of individualized feedback, strict grading curves, and overt tracking (e.g., election to the primary law review) probably reinforce notions of fixed intelligence.

Are there ways to change these academic traditions? Or to create new approaches that override their impact? Can we cultivate a belief in fluid intelligence–among both students and faculty–that will give more students an opportunity to grow their intelligence? That is one of the challenges facing law schools.

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Is Intelligence Fixed?

September 8th, 2015 / By Deborah J. Merritt

This post is part of a series discussing the challenges that minority students face in law school. You can read previous posts here, here, and here. As I noted in my most recent post, our beliefs about intelligence can affect both student performance and the impact of affirmative action programs. I also suggested that many law students and professors believe that intelligence is fixed. Indeed, the law school culture seems to promote that belief. But is intelligence really fixed?

We know that the expression of intelligence is not fixed. Individuals exhibit different degrees of intelligence under different circumstances. The phenomenon of stereotype threat illustrates that fact: individuals exhibit lower levels of intelligence when tested under circumstances suggesting that members of their identity group are expected to perform poorly.

But does intelligence itself vary? Or does it remain fixed, defining an outer limit of each individual’s potential? One answer is that it doesn’t matter much. If context can affect the expression of intelligence, as happens with stereotype threat, we can focus first on developing academic contexts that enhance the expression of intelligence among all students. Perhaps we can secure sufficient gains in the expression of intelligence–for both minority and white students–that we need not worry whether their underlying intelligence is fixed.

There is, however, significant evidence that intelligence is not fixed. There is equally important evidence that our beliefs about intelligence affect academic performance.

Fluid Intelligence

The psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman dismisses the notion of fixed intelligence as a myth. “The bottom line,” he writes, “is that intelligence was never, and will never, be fixed at birth.” Intelligence grows over the lifetime and even over generations. There is little doubt that intelligence is fluid.

Fluid does not mean completely unrestrained. As Kaufman notes in the article linked above, intelligence as measured by IQ tests remains relatively stable over an individual’s lifetime. This means that individuals at the bottom, middle, and top of the IQ scale tend to retain those relative positions–even as the intelligence of all individuals increases with age and experience. Still, there is considerable fluctuation in those relative positions, especially if individuals are exposed to enriching experiences (or removed from constrictive environments).

This has important implications for legal education. If intelligence is not fixed, then some of our traditional practices look educationally suspect. Our lack of feedback, for example, deprives students of opportunities to enhance their legal intelligence. Our assumption that skills like client counseling reflect innate personality traits similarly prevents us from expanding students’ intelligence by coaching them in these abilities.

But there’s more: Our very belief in fixed intelligence can restrain student achievement.

Fixed and Growth Mindsets

Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck has led a decades-long exploration of the relationship between achievement and beliefs about intelligence. Her work, summarized in the popular book Mindset, shows that people who believe in fluid intelligence (a “growth mindset”) achieve more than those who believe that intelligence is fixed (the “fixed mindset”).

Encouraging students to adopt a growth mindset, therefore, can spur achievement. Dweck and her colleagues have illustrated this effect in numerous studies. Their most recent effort demonstrates the feasibility of low-cost, large-scale interventions to achieve significant gains in student achievement.

This line of scholarship has even more profound implications for legal education. Our grading scales and culture seem to nourish the belief that legal aptitude is fixed. First-year performance constrains employment prospects for many students, signaling that the ability they demonstrated that year is an accurate measure of their long-term potential. Similarly, many students express frustration that they receive middling grades whether they study a little or a lot. Without more individualized feedback, they conclude that their abilities are fixed and that hard work is pointless.

Research by Dweck and other psychologists suggests that, if we could reform our culture to change these mindsets, all of our students would achieve more. That in itself would be a laudable goal.

Back to Affirmative Action

I started these posts, however, by exploring the particular plight of minority students. In my last post, I extended that journey to consider the impact of affirmative action programs. As I noted there, programs rooted in a fixed-intelligence belief may depress the grades of minority students (although those programs may still confer other benefits by opening doors to more elite schools).

In my next and final post of this series, I will describe a different type of affirmative action program–one committed to a belief in fluid intelligence. As we’ll see, that type of program could enhance performance by minority students. A culture endorsing fluid intelligence, furthermore, could improve achievement among all law students.

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