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Dan, but you're so smart! How can we not tell you? :)

Good article though. Thanks for sending it.

- Uluc.

On Wed, 14 Feb 2007, Daniel Reeves wrote:

> 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.  4, 
> 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 twothings 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 researchand a new study from the trenches ofthe New 
> York public-school systemstrongly 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 worka series ofexperiments on 400 
> fifth-graderspaints 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 
> ofpuzzlespuzzles 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
=2E" 
> 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 =2E
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 firstscoreby about 30 percent. Those who'd  
> been told they were smart didworse than they had at the very beginningby 
> 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 stigmatizedit'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 
> girlsthe 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 prot=E9g=E9e, LisaBlackwell , 
> published a report in the academic journal ChildDevelopment about the effect 

> of a semester-long intervention conductedto improve students' math scores =2E
> Life Sciences is a health-science magnet school with high aspirationsbut  0 
> 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 teacherswho hadn't known which students hadbeen 
> assigned to which workshopcould pick out the students who hadbeen taught that
 
> intelligence can be developed. They improved theirstudy habits and grades =2E
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, 0 
> scholarly articles written on self-esteemand its relationship to 
> everythingfrom 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 beeffectivea 
> 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 equaland, 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 youngchildrenunder the age of 
> 7take 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 didwellit'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 
> criticismnotpraise at allthat 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 =2E
> 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 realthingsome 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 concernthey 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 schoolthey'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 recoveryincreasingeffortthey 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 havea firm belief that the way to bounce backfrom failure is to  
> work hardersounds awfully clich=E9d: Try, try again.
> But it turns out that the ability to repeatedly respond to failure byexerting
 
> more effortinstead of simply giving upis 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
=2E"
> That sold me. I'd thought "praise junkie" was just an 
> expressionbutsuddenly, 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 greatI'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 thedayWe 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 problemitrobs 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"
>
>
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