I found this enlightening: http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/Take home
message:Do not tell your kids they are smart. (Praise them for hard work.)Do
not praise them constantly. (They'll become praise junkies and befrustrated
when rewards aren't immediate.)
Full text:
How Not to Talk to Your KidsThe Inverse Power of Praise.
    * By Po Bronson

What do we make of a boy like Thomas?
Thomas (his middle name) is a fifth-grader at the highly competitiveP.S. 334,
the Anderson School on West 84th. Slim as they get, Thomasrecently had his long
sandy-blond hair cut short to look like the newJames Bond (he took a photo of
Daniel Craig to the barber). UnlikeBond, he prefers a uniform of cargo pants
and a T-shirt emblazonedwith a photo of one of his heroes: Frank Zappa. Thomas
hangs out withfive friends from the Anderson School. They are "the smart
kids."Thomas's one of them, and he likes belonging.
Since Thomas could walk, he has heard constantly that he's smart. Notjust from
his parents but from any adult who has come in contact withthis precocious
child. When he applied to Anderson for kindergarten,his intelligence was
statistically confirmed. The school is reservedfor the top one percent of all
applicants, and an IQ test is required.Thomas didn't just score in the top one
percent. He scored in the topone percent of the top one percent.
But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness thathe's smart
hasn't always translated into fearless confidence whenattacking his schoolwork.
In fact, Thomas's father noticed just theopposite. "Thomas didn't want to try
things he wouldn't be successfulat," his father says. "Some things came very
quickly to him, but whenthey didn't, he gave up almost immediately, concluding,
'I'm not goodat this.' " With no more than a glance, Thomas was dividing the
worldinto two—things he was naturally good at and things he wasn't.
For instance, in the early grades, Thomas wasn't very good atspelling, so he
simply demurred from spelling out loud. When Thomastook his first look at
fractions, he balked. The biggest hurdle camein third grade. He was supposed to
learn cursive penmanship, but hewouldn't even try for weeks. By then, his
teacher was demandinghomework be completed in cursive. Rather than play
catch-up on hispenmanship, Thomas refused outright. Thomas's father tried to
reasonwith him. "Look, just because you're smart doesn't mean you don't haveto
put out some effort." (Eventually, he mastered cursive, but notwithout a lot of
cajoling from his father.)
Why does this child, who is measurably at the very top of the charts,lack
confidence about his ability to tackle routine school challenges?
Thomas is not alone. For a few decades, it's been noted that a largepercentage
of all gifted students (those who score in the top 10percent on aptitude tests)
severely underestimate their own abilities.Those afflicted with this lack of
perceived competence adopt lowerstandards for success and expect less of
themselves. They underratethe importance of effort, and they overrate how much
help they needfrom a parent.
When parents praise their children's intelligence, they believe theyare
providing the solution to this problem. According to a surveyconducted by
Columbia University, 85 percent of American parents thinkit's important to tell
their kids that they're smart. In and aroundthe New York area, according to my
own (admittedly nonscientific)poll, the number is more like 100 percent.
Everyone does it,habitually. The constant praise is meant to be an angel on
theshoulder, ensuring that children do not sell their talents short.
But a growing body of research—and a new study from the trenches ofthe New
York public-school system—strongly suggests it might be theother way around.
Giving kids the label of "smart" does not preventthem from underperforming. It
might actually be causing it.
For the past ten years, psychologist Carol Dweck and her team atColumbia (she's
now at Stanford) studied the effect of praise onstudents in a dozen New York
schools. Her seminal work—a series ofexperiments on 400
fifth-graders—paints the picture most clearly.
Dweck sent four female research assistants into New York fifth-gradeclassrooms.
The researchers would take a single child out of theclassroom for a nonverbal
IQ test consisting of a series ofpuzzles—puzzles easy enough that all the
children would do fairlywell. Once the child finished the test, the researchers
told eachstudent his score, then gave him a single line of praise.
Randomlydivided into groups, some were praised for their intelligence. Theywere
told, "You must be smart at this." Other students were praisedfor their effort:
"You must have worked really hard."
Why just a single line of praise? "We wanted to see how sensitivechildren
were," Dweck explained. "We had a hunch that one line mightbe enough to see an
effect."
Then the students were given a choice of test for the second round.One choice
was a test that would be more difficult than the first, butthe researchers told
the kids that they'd learn a lot from attemptingthe puzzles. The other choice,
Dweck's team explained, was an easytest, just like the first. Of those praised
for their effort, 90percent chose the harder set of puzzles. Of those praised
for theirintelligence, a majority chose the easy test. The "smart" kids tookthe
cop-out.
Why did this happen? "When we praise children for their intelligence,"Dweck
wrote in her study summary, "we tell them that this is the nameof the game:
Look smart, don't risk making mistakes." And that's whatthe fifth-graders had
done: They'd chosen to look smart and avoid therisk of being embarrassed.
In a subsequent round, none of the fifth-graders had a choice. Thetest was
difficult, designed for kids two years ahead of their gradelevel. Predictably,
everyone failed. But again, the two groups ofchildren, divided at random at the
study's start, respondeddifferently. Those praised for their effort on the
first test assumedthey simply hadn't focused hard enough on this test. "They
got veryinvolved, willing to try every solution to the puzzles," Dweckrecalled.
"Many of them remarked, unprovoked, 'This is my favoritetest.' " Not so for
those praised for their smarts. They assumed theirfailure was evidence that
they weren't really smart at all. "Justwatching them, you could see the strain.
They were sweating andmiserable."
Having artificially induced a round of failure, Dweck's researchersthen gave
all the fifth-graders a final round of tests that wereengineered to be as easy
as the first round. Those who had beenpraised for their effort significantly
improved on their firstscore—by about 30 percent. Those who'd been told they
were smart didworse than they had at the very beginning—by about 20 percent.
Dweck had suspected that praise could backfire, but even she wassurprised by
the magnitude of the effect. "Emphasizing effort gives achild a variable that
they can control," she explains. "They come tosee themselves as in control of
their success. Emphasizing naturalintelligence takes it out of the child's
control, and it provides nogood recipe for responding to a failure."
In follow-up interviews, Dweck discovered that those who think thatinnate
intelligence is the key to success begin to discount theimportance of effort. I
am smart, the kids' reasoning goes; I don'tneed to put out effort. Expending
effort becomes stigmatized—it'spublic proof that you can't cut it on your
natural gifts.
Repeating her experiments, Dweck found this effect of praise onperformance held
true for students of every socioeconomic class. Ithit both boys and girls—the
very brightest girls especially (theycollapsed the most following failure).
Even preschoolers weren'timmune to the inverse power of praise.
Jill Abraham is a mother of three in Scarsdale, and her view istypical of those
in my straw poll. I told her about Dweck's researchon praise, and she flatly
wasn't interested in brief tests withoutlong-term follow-up. Abraham is one of
the 85 percent who thinkpraising her children's intelligence is important. Her
kids arethriving, so she's proved that praise works in the real world. "Idon't
care what the experts say," Jill says defiantly. "I'm livingit."
Even those who've accepted the new research on praise have troubleputting it
into practice. Sue Needleman is both a mother of two and anelementary-school
teacher with eleven years' experience. Last year,she was a fourth-grade teacher
at Ridge Ranch Elementary in Paramus,New Jersey. She has never heard of Carol
Dweck, but the gist ofDweck's research has trickled down to her school, and
Needleman haslearned to say, "I like how you keep trying." She tries to keep
herpraise specific, rather than general, so that a child knows exactlywhat she
did to earn the praise (and thus can get more). She willoccasionally tell a
child, "You're good at math," but she'll nevertell a child he's bad at math.
But that's at school, as a teacher. At home, old habits die hard. Her8-year-old
daughter and her 5-year-old son are indeed smart, andsometimes she hears
herself saying, "You're great. You did it. You'resmart." When I press her on
this, Needleman says that what comes outof academia often feels artificial.
"When I read the mock dialogues,my first thought is, Oh, please. How corny."
No such qualms exist for teachers at the Life Sciences SecondarySchool in East
Harlem, because they've seen Dweck's theories appliedto their junior-high
students. Last week, Dweck and her protégée, LisaBlackwell, published a
report in the academic journal ChildDevelopment about the effect of a
semester-long intervention conductedto improve students' math scores.
Life Sciences is a health-science magnet school with high aspirationsbut 700
students whose main attributes are being predominantlyminority and low
achieving. Blackwell split her kids into two groupsfor an eight-session
workshop. The control group was taught studyskills, and the others got study
skills and a special module on howintelligence is not innate. These students
took turns reading aloud anessay on how the brain grows new neurons when
challenged. They sawslides of the brain and acted out skits. "Even as I was
teaching theseideas," Blackwell noted, "I would hear the students joking,
callingone another 'dummy' or 'stupid.' " After the module was
concluded,Blackwell tracked her students' grades to see if it had any effect.
It didn't take long. The teachers—who hadn't known which students hadbeen
assigned to which workshop—could pick out the students who hadbeen taught
that intelligence can be developed. They improved theirstudy habits and grades.
In a single semester, Blackwell reversed thestudents' longtime trend of
decreasing math grades.
The only difference between the control group and the test group weretwo
lessons, a total of 50 minutes spent teaching not math but asingle idea: that
the brain is a muscle. Giving it a harder workoutmakes you smarter. That alone
improved their math scores.
"These are very persuasive findings," says Columbia's Dr. GeraldineDowney, a
specialist in children's sensitivity to rejection. "Theyshow how you can take a
specific theory and develop a curriculum thatworks." Downey's comment is
typical of what other scholars in thefield are saying. Dr. Mahzarin Banaji, a
Harvard social psychologistwho is an expert in stereotyping, told me, "Carol
Dweck is a flat-outgenius. I hope the work is taken seriously. It scares people
when theysee these results."
Since the 1969 publication of The Psychology of Self-Esteem, in whichNathaniel
Branden opined that self-esteem was the single mostimportant facet of a person,
the belief that one must do whatever hecan to achieve positive self-esteem has
become a movement with broadsocietal effects. Anything potentially damaging to
kids' self-esteemwas axed. Competitions were frowned upon. Soccer coaches
stoppedcounting goals and handed out trophies to everyone. Teachers threw
outtheir red pencils. Criticism was replaced with ubiquitous, evenundeserved,
praise.
Dweck and Blackwell's work is part of a larger academic challenge toone of the
self-esteem movement's key tenets: that praise,self-esteem, and performance
rise and fall together. From 1970 to2000, there were over 15,000 scholarly
articles written on self-esteemand its relationship to everything—from sex to
career advancement. Butresults were often contradictory or inconclusive. So in
2003 theAssociation for Psychological Science asked Dr. Roy Baumeister, then
aleading proponent of self-esteem, to review this literature. His teamconcluded
that self-esteem was polluted with flawed science. Only 200of those 15,000
studies met their rigorous standards.
After reviewing those 200 studies, Baumeister concluded that havinghigh
self-esteem didn't improve grades or career achievement. Itdidn't even reduce
alcohol usage. And it especially did not lowerviolence of any sort. (Highly
aggressive, violent people happen tothink very highly of themselves, debunking
the theory that people areaggressive to make up for low self-esteem.) At the
time, Baumeisterwas quoted as saying that his findings were "the
biggestdisappointment of my career."
Now he's on Dweck's side of the argument, and his work is going in asimilar
direction: He will soon publish an article showing that forcollege students on
the verge of failing in class, esteem-buildingpraise causes their grades to
sink further. Baumeister has come tobelieve the continued appeal of self-esteem
is largely tied toparents' pride in their children's achievements: It's so
strong that"when they praise their kids, it's not that far from
praisingthemselves."
By and large, the literature on praise shows that it can beeffective—a
positive, motivating force. In one study, University ofNotre Dame researchers
tested praise's efficacy on a losing collegehockey team. The experiment worked:
The team got into the playoffs.But all praise is not equal—and, as Dweck
demonstrated, the effects ofpraise can vary significantly depending on the
praise given. To beeffective, researchers have found, praise needs to be
specific. (Thehockey players were specifically complimented on the number of
timesthey checked an opponent.)
Sincerity of praise is also crucial. Just as we can sniff out the truemeaning
of a backhanded compliment or a disingenuous apology,children, too, scrutinize
praise for hidden agendas. Only youngchildren—under the age of 7—take
praise at face value: Older childrenare just as suspicious of it as adults.
Psychologist Wulf-Uwe Meyer, a pioneer in the field, conducted aseries of
studies where children watched other students receivepraise. According to
Meyer's findings, by the age of 12, childrenbelieve that earning praise from a
teacher is not a sign you didwell—it's actually a sign you lack ability and
the teacher thinks youneed extra encouragement. And teens, Meyer found,
discounted praise tosuch an extent that they believed it's a teacher's
criticism—notpraise at all—that really conveys a positive belief in a
student'saptitude.
In the opinion of cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham, a teacherwho
praises a child may be unwittingly sending the message that thestudent reached
the limit of his innate ability, while a teacher whocriticizes a pupil conveys
the message that he can improve hisperformance even further.
New York University professor of psychiatry Judith Brook explains thatthe issue
for parents is one of credibility. "Praise is important, butnot vacuous
praise," she says. "It has to be based on a realthing—some skill or talent
they have." Once children hear praise theyinterpret as meritless, they discount
not just the insincere praise,but sincere praise as well.
Scholars from Reed College and Stanford reviewed over 150 praisestudies. Their
meta-analysis determined that praised students becomerisk-averse and lack
perceived autonomy. The scholars found consistentcorrelations between a liberal
use of praise and students' "shortertask persistence, more eye-checking with
the teacher, and inflectedspeech such that answers have the intonation of
questions."
Dweck's research on overpraised kids strongly suggests that imagemaintenance
becomes their primary concern—they are more competitiveand more interested in
tearing others down. A raft of very alarmingstudies illustrate this.
In one, students are given two puzzle tests. Between the first and thesecond,
they are offered a choice between learning a new puzzlestrategy for the second
test or finding out how they did compared withother students on the first test:
They have only enough time to do oneor the other. Students praised for
intelligence choose to find outtheir class rank, rather than use the time to
prepare.
In another, students get a do-it-yourself report card and are toldthese forms
will be mailed to students at another school—they'll nevermeet these students
and don't know their names. Of the kids praisedfor their intelligence, 40
percent lie, inflating their scores. Of thekids praised for effort, few lie.
When students transition into junior high, some who'd done well inelementary
school inevitably struggle in the larger and more demandingenvironment. Those
who equated their earlier success with their innateability surmise they've been
dumb all along. Their grades neverrecover because the likely key to their
recovery—increasingeffort—they view as just further proof of their failure.
In interviewsmany confess they would "seriously consider cheating."
Students turn to cheating because they haven't developed a strategyfor handling
failure. The problem is compounded when a parent ignoresa child's failures and
insists he'll do better next time. Michiganscholar Jennifer Crocker studies
this exact scenario and explains thatthe child may come to believe failure is
something so terrible, thefamily can't acknowledge its existence. A child
deprived of theopportunity to discuss mistakes can't learn from them.
My son, Luke, is in kindergarten. He seems supersensitive to thepotential
judgment of his peers. Luke justifies it by saying, "I'mshy," but he's not
really shy. He has no fear of strange cities ortalking to strangers, and at his
school, he has sung in front of largeaudiences. Rather, I'd say he's proud and
self-conscious. His schoolhas simple uniforms (navy T-shirt, navy pants), and
he loves that hischoice of clothes can't be ridiculed, "because then they'd be
teasingthemselves too."
After reading Carol Dweck's research, I began to alter how I praisedhim, but
not completely. I suppose my hesitation was that the mind-setDweck wants
students to have—a firm belief that the way to bounce backfrom failure is to
work harder—sounds awfully clichéd: Try, try again.
But it turns out that the ability to repeatedly respond to failure byexerting
more effort—instead of simply giving up—is a trait wellstudied in
psychology. People with this trait, persistence, reboundwell and can sustain
their motivation through long periods of delayedgratification. Delving into
this research, I learned that persistenceturns out to be more than a conscious
act of will; it's also anunconscious response, governed by a circuit in the
brain. Dr. RobertCloninger at Washington University in St. Louis located the
circuit ina part of the brain called the orbital and medial prefrontal
cortex.It monitors the reward center of the brain, and like a switch,
itintervenes when there's a lack of immediate reward. When it switcheson, it's
telling the rest of the brain, "Don't stop trying. There'sdopa [the brain's
chemical reward for success] on the horizon." Whileputting people through MRI
scans, Cloninger could see this switchlighting up regularly in some. In others,
barely at all.
What makes some people wired to have an active circuit?
Cloninger has trained rats and mice in mazes to have persistence bycarefully
not rewarding them when they get to the finish. "The key isintermittent
reinforcement," says Cloninger. The brain has to learnthat frustrating spells
can be worked through. "A person who grows upgetting too frequent rewards will
not have persistence, becausethey'll quit when the rewards disappear."
That sold me. I'd thought "praise junkie" was just an expression—butsuddenly,
it seemed as if I could be setting up my son's brain for anactual chemical need
for constant reward.
What would it mean, to give up praising our children so often? Well,if I am one
example, there are stages of withdrawal, each of themsubtle. In the first
stage, I fell off the wagon around other parentswhen they were busy praising
their kids. I didn't want Luke to feelleft out. I felt like a former alcoholic
who continues to drinksocially. I became a Social Praiser.
Then I tried to use the specific-type praise that Dweck recommends. Ipraised
Luke, but I attempted to praise his "process." This was easiersaid than done.
What are the processes that go on in a 5-year-old'smind? In my impression, 80
percent of his brain processes lengthyscenarios for his action figures.
But every night he has math homework and is supposed to read a phonicsbook
aloud. Each takes about five minutes if he concentrates, but he'seasily
distracted. So I praised him for concentrating without askingto take a break.
If he listened to instructions carefully, I praisedhim for that. After soccer
games, I praised him for looking to pass,rather than just saying, "You played
great." And if he worked hard toget to the ball, I praised the effort he
applied.
Just as the research promised, this focused praise helped him seestrategies he
could apply the next day. It was remarkable hownoticeably effective this new
form of praise was.
Truth be told, while my son was getting along fine under the newpraise regime,
it was I who was suffering. It turns out that I was thereal praise junkie in
the family. Praising him for just a particularskill or task felt like I left
other parts of him ignored andunappreciated. I recognized that praising him
with the universal"You're great—I'm proud of you" was a way I expressed
unconditionallove.
Offering praise has become a sort of panacea for the anxieties ofmodern
parenting. Out of our children's lives from breakfast todinner, we turn it up a
notch when we get home. In those few hourstogether, we want them to hear the
things we can't say during theday—We are in your corner, we are here for you,
we believe in you.
In a similar way, we put our children in high-pressure environments,seeking out
the best schools we can find, then we use the constantpraise to soften the
intensity of those environments. We expect somuch of them, but we hide our
expectations behind constant glowingpraise. The duplicity became glaring to me.
Eventually, in my final stage of praise withdrawal, I realized thatnot telling
my son he was smart meant I was leaving it up to him tomake his own conclusion
about his intelligence. Jumping in with praiseis like jumping in too soon with
the answer to a homework problem—itrobs him of the chance to make the
deduction himself.
But what if he makes the wrong conclusion?
Can I really leave this up to him, at his age?
I'm still an anxious parent. This morning, I tested him on the way toschool:
"What happens to your brain, again, when it gets to thinkabout something hard?"
"It gets bigger, like a muscle," he responded, having aced this one before.
-- http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves  - -  search://"Daniel Reeves"