A few years ago, Peter Fischer et al, conducted research into whether intellectual performance could actually be increased by thinking about one's genetic origin.
They noted that a lot of research had been conducted asking people to look the end of their own lives. So, with that in mind, they decided to go the other way and formulated a series of 4 studies asking participants to think about their ancestors.
They posited that thinking about ones ancestors, whether concrete (ancestors that they had met) or abstract (ancestors they hadn't met, for example in the 15th century), would increase the participants expected performance (how well they thought they'd do) and their actual performance on tasks completed as part of the study.
In the first study, participants were separated into three groups: '15th century ancestors', 'great-grandparents', and a control group 'last supermarket visit'. After given 5 minutes to think about their given topic, they were asked a series of questions about their expected performance. Questions such as, 'Do you think you will reach your career goals?'. Fischer et al found that there was no significant difference between the '15th century ancestors' and 'great-grandparents' group, but that these groups reported higher expected performance than the 'last supermarket visit' control group.
The second study gave participants 5 minutes to either draw their family tree or write a few sentences about their last shopping visit. Afterwards all participants were asked to find a series of 25 verbal analogies as a subtask of the Wilde intelligence test (WIT) 2 (often used for research and aptitude testing). Finally similar perception questions were asked, similar to the questions of the first study. The results showed that the participants who drew their family tree (and therefore were thinking of their ancestors) increased actual intelligence performance compared to the shopping trip group as they approached more items and solved more items correctly. However, the perception questions were dropped after this study as there were no significant effects found.
Sensibly, the researchers also moved on from the shopping trip idea and on to concepts that were more likely to challenge the hypothesis.
The third study asked participants to think hard about 15th century ancestors, living ancestors, or good friends, and write down everything that came to mind about them. Afterwards 16 items from WIT for correctly recognising geometric shapes and mirror images were used on all participants for 3 minutes. The results showed that participants that thought about their ancestors - whether they were alive or dead - performed better than participants who thought about good friends.
The final study of this research paper, tested whether it mattered if participants had negative associations with their ancestors. A short 5 minute essay was assigned where participants had to write about attributes of their ancestors or attributes about themselves. 15 WIT conclusive thinking tasks were used on all participants after the essay writing for 4 minutes. The participants tasked with writing about their ancestors performed better on the intelligence task - regardless of whether they wrote about positive or negative aspects of their ancestors.
Even though only small groups were used (no more than 82), the studies are easily replicable, and seem to show that thinking about ancestors can help you perform better at intellectual tasks. Thinking about good friends or even yourself is no match!
I'll be interested to find if any follow up studies have been performed since this series of studies was published (2010) and whether they confirm or dispute the findings of this research. But, either way, I think it's a really positive finding. I wonder if I'll be able to use this idea as my child grows up!
Fischer, P., Sauer, A., Vogrincic, C., & Weisweiler, S. (2011). The ancestor effect: Thinking about our genetic origin enhances intellectual performance European Journal of Social Psychology, 41 (1), 11-16 DOI: 10.1002/ejsp.778
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