Kindermusik with Ann Czeponis : Brainfood for Back to School

I've been studying a lot lately about intrinsic motivation and the role that praise plays in fostering a child's volition to do well. I encourage you to join me in rethinking our ingrained habits of praise because a growing body of research is showing that complimenting innate talents such as intellect or athletic ability can have some negative consequences.

HUH?
You may be in utter disbelief at this point. We have all certainly seen "that parent". The one who never cuts their child a break, never throws him or her a crumb. I'm not suggesting that we turn into "that parent" but here is why we should consider not being the "you are so smart" parent...

WORK SMART OR WORK HARD

Carol Dweck from Stanford University has studied the effects of praise on motivating kids. Her researchers worked with 400 fifth graders. They administered each of them a relatively easy series of IQ puzzles and then randomly praised either their intelligence: “You must be smart at this” or their effort: “You must have worked really hard.” That's it - the only variable was which 6 words would be said, “You must be smart at this,” or “You must have worked really hard.” Then, the researchers asked the kids whether they wanted to take on a more challenging puzzle that would help them learn in the process, or do another easy one.

90% of the "you must have worked really hard" group chose the harder test.
The majority of the "you must be smart at this" group chose the easier one.

NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCE: children become risk averse, avoiding challenges so that they can continue to look smart and avoid embarrassment.

IN THE FACE OF ADVERSITY
Next, the researchers administered a 7th grade test to the 5th grade students. As expected, all of them failed. In the face of failure the demeanor of the groups couldn't have been more different. In 2007, Po Bronson of New York Magazine reported that,

Those praised for their effort on the first test assumed they simply hadn’t focused hard enough on this test. “They got very involved, willing to try every solution to the puzzles,” Dweck recalled. “Many of them remarked, unprovoked, ‘This is my favorite test.’ ” Not so for those praised for their smarts. They assumed their failure was evidence that they weren’t really smart at all. “Just watching them, you could see the strain. They were sweating and miserable.”
Having artificially induced a round of failure, Dweck’s researchers then gave all the fifth-graders a final round of tests that were engineered to be as easy as the first round. Those who had been praised for their effort significantly improved on their first score—by about 30 percent. Those who’d been told they were smart did worse than they had at the very beginning—by about 20 percent.

NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCE: when children are praised for smarts their performance is impaired after setbacks, as kids lose faith in what they believed were innate abilities.

"HARD WORK WITHOUT TALENT IS A SHAME, BUT TALENT WITHOUT HARD WORK IS A TRAGEDY" ~ Robert Half
Dweck and her team conducted other research which concluded that frequently praised children are shown to be more competitive and focused on undermining others. 40% of those praised for their intelligence lied to their peers in overstating their scores.

NEGATIVE CONSEQUENCE: abundant praise fosters negative competitiveness and, not infrequently, cheating.

NOW WHAT?
Dweck explains, “Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control, they come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Teach your children that the brain is like a muscle. The harder it works, the stronger it gets and the smarter you become
When you praise, be specific and focus on the process and effort, rather than implying innate smarts or talent. Praise them for focusing, listening, demonstrating tenacity.

Examples from Stanford Magazine

"That homework so long and involved. I really admire the way you concentrated and finished it."
"That picture has so many beautiful colors; tell me about them."
"You put so much thought into that essay. I makes me think about Shakespeare in a new way."

Take the fright out of failure. Avoiding the topic of failure makes it seem terrible, thus discouraging challenges. After a failure encourage a Thomas Edison-esque approach, "I haven't failed, I've just found 10,000 ways it won't work."