Among the top students, the bad students, the obedient ones and the disobedient ones in a class, who will be the richest in 40 years?

Disobedient children become rich, but good students generally have a joke: \”Be careful, psychology students will miss you forever!\” This is a kind of research in psychology-tracking research. Especially follow-up studies on children often last for decades, and the conclusions drawn are often unexpected. Recently, the results of a 40-year study were published in Developmental Psychology, a well-known American magazine on child psychological development. Forty years ago (1968), this study began to track the growth of a group of 12-year-old children and found that from the perspective of \”money or not\”, there is a type of children who are the most successful: not academic masters or obedient students, but The most rebellious and disobedient child. This reminds me of a long Weibo post that has been widely circulated, telling the story of \”I\” and \”Zhang Ergou\”: \”I\” have been the legendary \”other people\’s child\” since I was a child, always ranked first in studies, and finally passed the entrance examination University. \”Zhang Ergou\” got into fights and caused trouble, failed classes and repeated grades. He was an out-and-out troublemaker. \”Zhang Ergou\” graduated from junior high school and started working as a contractor, and eventually became bigger and stronger and established his own company. Many years later, \”I\” ran into obstacles and lived in poverty, but \”Zhang Ergou\” became prosperous and became \”a generation of rich people\”. How did the \”Zhang Ergou\” people achieve a counterattack in life? Is it because genius doesn’t require hard work? Or is it that the rich second generation themselves have a high starting point? In the study, after eliminating factors such as IQ and family socioeconomic level, scientists still found that rule-breaking personality traits are still the best predictor of income 40 years later. In other words, personality traits and behaviors early in life can predict economic performance in middle age. Another famous long-term follow-up study, the 10-year Illinois Valedictorian Study, found that those who served as valedictorians at their high school graduation were less likely to become millionaires than their peers. . Simply put, it is difficult for a good student to become a millionaire. Although these good students will do well in college and get decent jobs after graduation, they will not be the highest paid in their class. Why do the most disobedient children end up making the most money? Innate personality is related. In 2012, an article published in the world\’s top psychology journal \”Journal of Personality and Social Psychology\” reported the following research results: Agreeableness is the highest (the Big Five personality in psychology that describes a person\’s personality) (One factor), that is, those who are more likely to get along with others have lower incomes as adults than those who are more difficult to get along with. The reason is that scientists believe that disobedient people are less afraid of asking for job promotions and salary increases; rebellious people prefer competition, are not afraid of offending others, and value personal gains and losses more than interpersonal relationships. Gladwell, a well-known writer for \”The New Yorker\” magazine, once suggested that part of the reason for the success of entrepreneurs such as Jobs and Ingvar Kamprad (the founder of IKEA) is that their personalities are low in agreeableness. Let them act willingly to take risks and dare to refuse conditions that are not favorable to them. In \”The Biography of Steve Jobs\”, his wife Laurene said of him: \”Like many people with extraordinary talents, he was not equally good in all aspects. He was notSocial graces, not putting himself in other people\’s shoes (but he is highly concerned about how to use humanity to benefit mankind, how to make mankind progress, and create the right tools for mankind to pursue progress). \”Intrinsic motivation\” \”I want to do it\” is more critical. In addition, scientists have also found that particularly stubborn children have strong internal motivation. They have a compass in their hearts, which makes them easier to become leaders and less susceptible to pressure from others. The influence of self-determination theory (self-determination theory) founded by well-known psychologists Edward Deci and Ryan Richard, is the most profound explanation of intrinsic motivation among many psychological theories. Edward Deci (right) and Ryan Richard (left) Self-determination theory believes that everyone has three basic psychological needs: a sense of belonging, a sense of autonomy, and a sense of competence. If satisfied, intrinsic motivation is improved. Sense of belonging, It is to make children feel safe, loved, respected and accepted. This is a very strong word that will affect children, including adults’ self-confidence and learning progress. Domestic violence, family discord, lack of parental companionship, parental favoritism All of this may destroy the child\’s sense of belonging at home. In the movie \”The Life of the Disliked Songzi\”, there is a scene where Songzi\’s father brings a gift home. The then 7-year-old Songzi reached out to receive it with great expectations, but the father only kept the leather bag. He threw it to her and went upstairs with the gift. Songzi just watched his father\’s back going upstairs, watching him give the gift to his sister who was sick in bed, and gradually lost his sense of belonging through little things. \” \”The Life of the Disliked Songzi\” A sense of autonomy is to make children feel that their actions can be decided by themselves. A story told by psychologist Liu Jianhong: A group of naughty children were playing in front of an old man\’s house, making a lot of noise. The old man was determined to make a A little trick to let the naughty children leave on their own initiative. He first gave each child 10 cents: \”Thank you for making my house lively. I like it very much.\” Thank you for this little money. \”The children were very happy and came to play again the next day. This time, the old man gave each person 5 cents. The children thought that although the money was half less, 5 cents was still acceptable. On the third day, The old man only gave everyone 2 cents, but the child thought the money was too little: \”It\’s only 2 cents a day, do you know how hard we worked!\” \”In anger, he never played in front of his house again. What was the cleverness of the old man\’s plan? At first, the children were playing for themselves, which was an act full of autonomy. After accepting the old man\’s reward of 10 cents each, It becomes playing for the sake of getting paid (an external motivation). The sense of autonomy is reduced, and it is easy to feel tired when playing. The rewards given by the elderly are also continuing to decrease. The children feel that they have given too much and received too little in return. No wonder He left in anger. The sense of competence is to make the child feel that he can hold on, \”I\’m great!\” \”For example, if a child encounters difficulties when doing homework and finds that he can\’t do it, or does it very slowly, or the feedback he gets after finishing is only \”Where did you do something wrong?\”, it will weaken his ability. A sense of competence. My cousin has very strict requirements for her daughter’s study. She must complete her homework every day and her handwriting must be neat.Looks great. She asked her children that if they couldn\’t write a word well, they would erase it and rewrite it, or tear out the entire page and rewrite it. Therefore, it takes a very long time for children to complete their homework. Sometimes they crumple their homework books into a ball in anger and stop writing at all (of course, they still have to finish writing in the end). Therefore, every time they do homework, it is a blow to the child\’s sense of competence. When the three basic psychological needs of belonging, autonomy and competence are satisfied, it will promote the transformation of children from extrinsic motivation to intrinsic motivation. In layman\’s terms, when a child feels that he is loved, respected, not alone, has the autonomy to make decisions, and is full of self-confidence, he will burst out with strong \”I want to do it\” and \”I want to do it\” With intrinsic motivation, you will take the initiative and work hard to pursue your goals without external pressure and supervision. So why are disobedient children more likely to succeed? It’s not because they have unpleasant, unpleasant personalities that make them successful. But they are more able to stick to themselves, refuse to be manipulated by others, and do not follow the crowd; they are more \”insistent on going their own way\” and reject other people\’s \”loyal advice\”, such as \”unrealistic\”, \”impossible\”, \”you can\’t do it\”; they are more \”calculated\” , in order to achieve the goal; …and such behavior often looks less flattering. If you understand this, you can better understand the famous saying of former Intel CEO Andy Grove – \”Only the paranoid survive.\” Therefore, we will not make mistakes when raising children. It’s not that “bad kids” are more likely to succeed, but that children who are intrinsically motivated, more proactive, and more persistent are more likely to succeed.