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A drop in performance on a fluid intelligence test due to instructed-rule mindset

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Abstract

A ‘mindset’ is a configuration of processing resources that are made available for the task at hand as well as their suitable tuning for carrying it out. Of special interest, remote-relation abstract mindsets are introduced by activities sharing only general control processes with the task. To test the effect of a remote-relation mindset on performance on a Fluid Intelligence test (Raven’s Advanced Progressive Matrices, RAPM), we induced a mindset associated with little usage of executive processing by requiring participants to execute a well-defined classification rule 12 times, a manipulation known from previous work to drastically impair rule-generation performance and associated cognitive processes. In Experiment 1, this manipulation led to a drop in RAPM performance equivalent to 10.1 IQ points. No drop was observed in a General Knowledge task. In Experiment 2, a similar drop in RAPM performance was observed (equivalent to 7.9 and 9.2 IQ points) regardless if participants were pre-informed about the upcoming RAPM test. These results indicate strong (most likely, transient) adverse effects of a remote-relation mindset on test performance. They imply that although the trait of Fluid Intelligence has probably not changed, mindsets can severely distort estimates of this trait.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, Interdisciplinary Center (IDC), Herzliya, 46150, Israel

    Hadas ErEl

  2. School of Behavioral Science, Netanya Academic College, Netanya, Israel

    Hadas ErEl

  3. Department of Psychology and Zlotowski Center for Neuroscience, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel

    Nachshon Meiran

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  1. Hadas ErEl
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Correspondence to Hadas ErEl.

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Ethics approval

The experiments presented in this study were approved by the Ethics Committees of the IDC and by the Ethics Committees of Netanya Academic College. Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

We wish to thank two anonymous reviewers for valuable comments and Dganit Avioz, Viki Abramov and Bat-El Elbaz for their help in data collection.

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ErEl, H., Meiran, N. A drop in performance on a fluid intelligence test due to instructed-rule mindset. Psychological Research 81, 901–909 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00426-016-0796-8

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