Too Hard for Science? Seeing If 10,000 Hours Make You an Expert

By Charles Q. Choi

The scientist: Christopher Chabris, assistant professor of psychology at Union College, research affiliate of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, and co-author of "The Invisible Gorilla: How Our Intuitions Deceive Us," out in paperback on June 7.

The idea: The concept that 10,000 hours of practice can make one an expert in a field — an idea developed by psychologist Anders Ericsson and popularized by Malcolm Gladwell in his book "Outliers" — has become prevalent enough to prompt one-time commercial photographer Dan McLaughlin to quit his job and try and become a professional golfer. But which is more important for becoming an expert — practice or talent?

"The prevailing theory in cognitive psychology, going back to  Adriaan de Groot, who studied chess grandmasters, and later to Anders Ericsson, who studied other domains such as music and sports, is that expertise is all a matter of how much one practices, and that there's no such thing as a particular talent that will make it easier for someone to become an expert," Chabris says. "If that's true, that's a positive thing — there's nothing holding me back from, say, becoming a professional basketball player.

Full story...