Star Search
In the early 1980s, a psychologist named Dov Eden published the first in a series of extraordinary
results. He could tell which soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would become top
performers before they ever started training.
Eden is a physically slight but psychologically intense man who grew up in the United States.
After finishing his doctorate, he immigrated to Israel and began conducting research with the IDF. In
one study, he examined comprehensive assessments of nearly a thousand soldiers who were about to
arrive for training with their platoons. He had their aptitude test scores, evaluations during basic
training, and appraisals from previous commanders. Using this information alone, which was
gathered before the beginning of training for their current roles, Eden was able to identify a group of
high-potential trainees who would emerge as stars.
Over the next eleven weeks, the trainees took tests measuring their expertise in combat tactics,
maps, and standard operating procedures. They also demonstrated their skill in operating a weapon,
which was evaluated by experts. Sure enough, the candidates Eden spotted as high-potentials at the
outset did significantly better than their peers over the next three months: they scored 9 percent higher
on the expertise tests and 10 percent higher on the weapons evaluation. What information did Eden
use to identify the high-potentials? If you were a platoon leader in the IDF, what characteristics would
you value above all others in your soldiers?
It’s helpful to know that Eden drew his inspiration from a classic study led by the Harvard
psychologist Robert Rosenthal, who teamed up with Lenore Jacobson, the principal of an elementary
school in San Francisco. In eighteen different classrooms, students from kindergarten through fifth
grade took a Harvard cognitive ability test. The test objectively measured students’ verbal and
reasoning skills, which are known to be critical to learning and problem solving. Rosenthal and
Jacobson shared the test results with the teachers: approximately 20 percent of the students had shown
the potential for intellectual blooming, or spurting. Although they might not look different today, their
test results suggested that these bloomers would show “unusual intellectual gains” over the course of
the school year.
The Harvard test was discerning: when the students took the cognitive ability test a year later, the
bloomers improved more than the rest of the students. The bloomers gained an average of twelve IQ
points, compared with average gains of only eight points for their classmates. The bloomers
outgained their peers by roughly fifteen IQ points in first grade and ten IQ points in second grade.
Two years later, the bloomers were still outgaining their classmates. The intelligence test was
successful in identifying high-potential students: the bloomers got smarter—and at a faster rate—than
their classmates.
Based on these results, intelligence seems like a strong contender as the key differentiating factor
for the high-potential students. But it wasn’t—at least not in the beginning. Why not?
The students labeled as bloomers didn’t actually score higher on the Harvard intelligence test.
Rosenthal chose them at random.
The study was designed to find out what happened to students when teachers believed they had
high potential. Rosenthal randomly selected 20 percent of the students in each classroom to be
labeled as bloomers, and the other 80 percent were a control group. The bloomers weren’t any