Google has conducted a two-year study within the company to find out what the secret to success is and the answer they found out was very simple: being nice. Being nice encompasses the feeling of security and acceptance within a group. However, success is not just about niceness because if this is the case, all the nice people in the world should have been successful by now.
Another team of researchers has conducted a study among university students to find out what makes other successful than others. They have found out that it's not really about the goals people set for themselves because a great number of people didn't have the motivation to follow through their goals. Instead, it is all about their implicit beliefs.
Implicit beliefs, according to the researchers, are those beliefs that people have but are unaware of, but greatly impact their decisions. For example, studies have shown that people who say they are egalitarian actually posses strong prejudices. These beliefs are also what impacts a person's view of success.
Using this as their basis, the researchers measured the participants' implicit beliefs about certain areas in their lives to predict whether they have what it takes to succeed. To do this, they used a computer-based questionnaire called the Implicit Association Test, which takes seven minutes to finish. The test asks the students to rate a certain word associated to schoolwork as synonymous to important or unimportant.
Aside from the negative and positive associations, speed also is an important element in answering the question. How fast or slow the student answered the question makes a difference in the result, even a millisecond mattered.
The test was also used among people who go to the gym to find out those people who are likely to exercise regularly and intensely, and the results are the same. Those who implicitly believe that schoolwork or exercise is important are those who are more likely to succeed.
