by Stephanie Strand

 

I say it all the time to my sons: You're so smart. And why not? I want them to know that they're intelligent and gifted. That way, they'll be inspired to develop their talents, to throw themselves into learning, to face challenges head on. Right? Maybe not. There's a fascinating piece in New York magazine that has turned my perspective on praise right on its head. Psychologist Carol Dweck has been studying the effects of praise on students in New York City schools for ten years, and her work strongly suggests that praising a child for his intelligence may actually be setting him up for failure. In one of her experiments, using 400 fifth-graders as subjects, researchers took children out of class one at a time for a nonverbal IQ test consisting of fairly easy puzzles. At the end of the test, the researcher would praise the child in one of two ways - either you must be smart at this, or you must have worked really hard. The children were then given a choice for a second test - either a more challenging puzzle that they could learn from, or another fairly easy test. 90% of the kids praised for effort chose the difficult puzzle; the majority of those praised for intelligence requested the easy test. For the next round, the children were given a difficult test, which they all failed. But those who had been praised for effort had a much more resilient attitude toward failure than the "smart" group did. Finally, the children were given an easy test, like the puzzles in the first round. Those who had been praised for effort improved their scores by about 30%, while those who had told that they were smart did worse on the easy test than they had at the beginning, by about 20%. Why should this be? Apparently, when we praise kids for being smart, they may be interpreting this as meaning that they shouldn't need to put out any effort. In fact, effort becomes stigmatized as negative, indicative of a lack of intelligence. Being called smart may also make a child feel that he has an image to protect; therefore, he'll avoid taking risks, trying new things, or persisting in a task that doesn't come easily. He's at risk of growing into an adult who underrates his abilities and adopts low standards for success. So by continually praising my sons for being smart, I may be setting up roadblocks to success. I may even be wiring their brains in a way that is detrimental to their development. Here are a few other points in the article that jumped out at me:

1. There is a circuit in the orbital and medial prefrontal cortex that is activated in people who embrace struggle, who work through frustration and failure, who sweat it out and learn and finally succeed. This circuit apparently monitors the reward center of the brain. When the brain is in a dopa dry spell - that is, it hasn't received its success chemical for a period of time - this circuit is activated and encourages the brain not to give up, to persist, with the promise of a future reward. But a person who grows up being handed rewards too frequently and too easily won't have this persistence circuit wired. As a result, she'll have a tendency to give up on a task when rewards aren't forthcoming. She becomes a praise junkie and starts taking the easy access route.
2. Carol Dweck and her protege Lisa Blackwell conducted a study in which they divided a group of low achieving, minority students into two classes for an eight-week session. Both groups were taught study skills, but one group also received two 50-minute sessions in which they explored the idea that intelligence is not innate but is something that can be built by challenging the brain. In effect, they were asked to think of the brain as a muscle that will grow stronger with proper exercise. Without knowing which students were in each group, the teachers could pick out those who had been taught that intelligence could be developed because those were the kids who improved their study habits and their grades.
3. It's tempting to overpraise our kids because we want them to feel loved and valued. But in the end, if we constantly define our children as "smart", we rob them of the chance to discover this quality for themselves. And moreover, if we mistakenly send them the message that we love and value them for their intelligence, they'll be less likely to push themselves in areas where failure is a possibility, because on some level they may be afraid that they'll lose our affection.

I've been reflecting on all this, and I have to admit, I've taken the easy way out more than once rather than risk failure. I punked out on calculus. I dropped that FORTRAN class when it got tough. I switched out of directing when it didn't come naturally for me. Too bad! Maybe if I hadn't been so caught up in appearing "smart" and "successful", I'd have wound up smarter and more successful. Perhaps in the second half of my life I'll engage in struggle with more persistence. In the meantime, I'm so grateful I stumbled on that article. I don't want my boys to be praise junkies. I guess it's time to be a little more judicious with the compliments.

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Link to this article:

<a href="http://www.momsquawk.com/praising-children.html">Can Praising Kids Backfire?</a>