This is just a brief anecdote of a single life experience. Are there any systematic effects that we know of that work counter to Correspondence Bias?
Given that you haven’t asked him yet, you don’t even have an anecdote. You have exactly half a data point!
Prediction: When you ask him it will turn out that he does have a brilliant study method, or has previous experience, or some other non-innate explanation.
Oh, I forgot to mention this. The idea occurred to ask him occurred to me during class today, but I wasn’t able to corner him after class. The question about correspondence bias didn’t occur to me until some time afterwards. If I were to post something tomorrow, after I’d already asked him, comments would be affected by hindsight bias. I’m rather curious as to what people here consider likely.
Additionally, no matter what his answer turns out to be, it’s still interesting no note that other people are attributing differences between themselves and him not to some innate tendency, but to a situational effect. I have my own guess as to why my classmates made that conclusion, but I want to know what other people come up with, or what research there has been on the topic.
I’m rather curious as to what people here consider likely.
Most likely: experience with Russian itself or a related language (e.g. Ukrainian).
(If it’s the former, there must be some reason why he’s in your intro class. Aside from deliberate sandbagging, it could be something like having been exposed to Russian as a child, but then not using it for a while. As for the latter, that happened when I took Russian in high school for 4 years—we had a Ukrainian speaker who had a very easy time but still had to learn the differences.)
Not very likely: innate language acquisition talent. Those guys exist (e.g. UN translators who speak N different languages fluently and can pick up new ones rapidly), they just aren’t common.
Additionally, no matter what his answer turns out to be, it’s still interesting no note that other people are attributing differences between themselves and him not to some innate tendency, but to a situational effect.
“Studying lots” isn’t a purely situational effect, it requires a hard working personality. It’s more situational than “Innate brilliance” but less so than “Previous exposure”.
Given that you haven’t asked him yet, you don’t even have an anecdote. You have exactly half a data point!
Prediction: When you ask him it will turn out that he does have a brilliant study method, or has previous experience, or some other non-innate explanation.
Oh, I forgot to mention this. The idea occurred to ask him occurred to me during class today, but I wasn’t able to corner him after class. The question about correspondence bias didn’t occur to me until some time afterwards. If I were to post something tomorrow, after I’d already asked him, comments would be affected by hindsight bias. I’m rather curious as to what people here consider likely.
Additionally, no matter what his answer turns out to be, it’s still interesting no note that other people are attributing differences between themselves and him not to some innate tendency, but to a situational effect. I have my own guess as to why my classmates made that conclusion, but I want to know what other people come up with, or what research there has been on the topic.
Most likely: experience with Russian itself or a related language (e.g. Ukrainian).
(If it’s the former, there must be some reason why he’s in your intro class. Aside from deliberate sandbagging, it could be something like having been exposed to Russian as a child, but then not using it for a while. As for the latter, that happened when I took Russian in high school for 4 years—we had a Ukrainian speaker who had a very easy time but still had to learn the differences.)
Not very likely: innate language acquisition talent. Those guys exist (e.g. UN translators who speak N different languages fluently and can pick up new ones rapidly), they just aren’t common.
Extremely unlikely: magical studying tricks.
“Studying lots” isn’t a purely situational effect, it requires a hard working personality. It’s more situational than “Innate brilliance” but less so than “Previous exposure”.