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Sunday, July 1, 2012

Psychology: Are Beauty and IQ related?





A study in England conducted by researchers at the London School of Economics found that attractive men and women generally have higher IQs. "Physical attractiveness is significantly positively associated with general intelligence," said LSE lead researcher Satoshi Kanazawa, in the latest issue of the journal Intelligence (download the full study here). The study indicated attractive men have IQs that are 13.6 points above the average, while beautiful women are 11.4 points higher than average. 


However, Ph.D., Todd Miller does not agree with those conclusions, and has written a rebuttal to the study that you can find here.


We tend to believe more Todd Miller's arguments. In any case, in chess, success comes mostly from hard work and determination.


What's your take on the story and the rebuttal?







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Tuesday, October 25, 2011

Mastering Chess: Deliberate Practice Is Necessary but Not Sufficient, Psychologists Find

Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2011

Hi everyone,

You might have already read it - this press release has already gone viral on the Internet. But then, just in case you haven't seen it yet!

Mastering Chess: Deliberate Practice Is Necessary but Not Sufficient, Psychologists Find

ScienceDaily (Oct. 24, 2011) — Psychological scientist Guillermo Campitelli is a good chess player, but not a great one. "I'm not as good as I wanted," he says. He had an international rating but not any of the titles that chess players get, like Grandmaster and International Master. "A lot of people that practiced much less than me achieved much higher levels." Some of the players he coached became some of the best players in Argentina. "I always wondered: What's going on? Why did this happen?"

Trivia question: Where is this photo from? And, the players?

Now a researcher at Edith Cowan University in Joondalup, Australia, Campitelli studies practicing. He's written an article with Fernand Gobet of Brunel University in the United Kingdom on their and other people's research on chess for Current Directions in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.

In one survey of chess players in Argentina, Campitelli and Gobet found that, indeed, practice is important. All of the players that became masters had practice at least 3,000 hours. "That was not surprising," he says. There is a theory in psychology that the more you practice, the better you'll do in areas like sports, music, and chess. "But the thing is, of the people that achieved the master level, there are people that achieved it in 3,000 hours. Other people did, like, 30,000 hours and achieved the same level. And there are even people that practiced more than 30,000 hours and didn't achieve this." Campitelli and Gobet concluded that practice is necessary to get to the master level -- but it's not enough. There has to be something else that sets apart the people who get really good at chess. 
You can read further here.
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