What makes people great chess players? Cognitive scientist answers.

What creates a great chess player - their IQ, how they train, their personalities, their motivation? Here's my read of the existing research literature.

00:00 Introduction
00:41 Will having a high IQ make you good at chess?
03:12 Does playing chess improve your IQ?
4:15 The influence of training
5:41 The influence of personality and motivation
6:51 The cultural context

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References:

The meta-analysis of IQ/cognitive ability with chess skill is here:

Burgoyne, A. P., Sala, G., Gobet, F., Macnamara, B. N., Campitelli, G., & Hambrick, D. Z. (2016). The relationship between cognitive ability and chess skill: A comprehensive meta-analysis. Intelligence, 59, 72-83. https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/102241/1/IN...

The meta-analysis on whether chess playing increases IQ is here:

Sala, G., & Gobet, F. (2017). Does far transfer exist? Negative evidence from chess, music, and working memory training. Current directions in psychological science, 26(6), 515-520. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full...

On the occasional reversal of the relationship between IQ and chess skill, see:

Bilalić, M., McLeod, P., & Gobet, F. (2007). Does chess need intelligence?—A study with young chess players. Intelligence, 35(5), 457-470. https://bura.brunel.ac.uk/bitstream/2...

The meta-analysis on training and chess skill is here:

Charness, N., Tuffiash, M., Krampe, R., Reingold, E., & Vasyukova, E. (2005). The role of deliberate practice in chess expertise. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 19(2), 151-165. https://clinica.ispa.pt/ficheiros/are...

On chess and personality, check out:

Vollstädt-Klein, S., Grimm, O., Kirsch, P., & Bilalić, M. (2010). Personality of elite male and female chess players and its relation to chess skill. Learning and Individual Differences, 20(5), 517-521. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/...

The study linking chess skill, deliberate practice, and motivation is here:

De Bruin, A. B., Rikers, R. M. J. P., & Schmidt, H. G. (2007). The influence of achievement motivation and chess-specific motivation on deliberate practice. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 29(5), 561. https://www.researchgate.net/profile/...

On the "domain-specificity" of expertise, the best resource is probably:

Ericsson, K. A., Hoffman, R. R., Kozbelt, A., & Williams, A. M. (Eds.). (2018). The Cambridge handbook of expertise and expert performance. Cambridge University Press.

But that's the best resource for a lot of the expertise literature! If you can't get your hands on it, here's an interesting article talking about how creativity (something that many people assume is domain-general) is actually quite domain-specific:

Baer, J. (2015). The importance of domain-specific expertise in creativity. Roeper Review, 37(3), 165-178. https://www.academia.edu/download/513...