Hence, if you want to appear to be smart , you should not appear to be working very hard. Any educator working with adolescents knows how this belief can drive some students away from schoolwork. Other people believe that intelligence is something that develops and grows. These people view ability as a repertoire of skills that is continuously expandable through one's efforts. Intelligence is incremental.
People can get smart .
When people think this way, they tend to invest energy to learn something new or to increase their understanding and mastery. But it is not just brute effort that distinguishes these learners from people who think of intelligence as an entity. Incremental thinkers are particularly likely to apply self-regulatory, metacognitive skills when they encounter task difficulties, to focus on analyzing the task and generating alternative strategies. They get on an upward spiral in which their intelligence is actually increasing. Meanwhile, their peers who think of intelligence as fixed try to avoid difficult tasks for fear of displaying their lack of intelligence.