Marginal Revolution: How to praise your kids

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How to praise your kids

...a growing body of research—and a new study from the trenches of the New York public-school system—strongly suggests it might be the other way around. Giving kids the label of “smart” does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it.

It turns out you should praise them for their effort, not their intelligence. If you praise kids for their intelligence, they tend to avoid tasks they fear they will fail at. And get this:

Scholars from Reed College and Stanford reviewed over 150 praise studies. Their meta-analysis determined that praised students become risk-averse and lack perceived autonomy. The scholars found consistent correlations between a liberal use of praise and students’ “shorter task persistence, more eye-checking with the teacher, and inflected speech such that answers have the intonation of questions.” ...image maintenance becomes their primary concern—they are more competitive and more interested in tearing others down. A raft of very alarming studies illustrate this.

That is, by the way, from New York magazine.

Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 15, 2007 at 10:10 AM in Science | Permalink

Comments

Well, it does ring a bell from dealing with my own.

I guess my doubt about the summary (haven't clicked through) is that it seems to assume there is One True Way of handling kids. My own two react very differently to different types of goading, threats, bribes and other forms of cajolery/punishment/encouragement/whatever, and I'm sure there are others further apart on the spectrum. So "make the praise fit the child" seems more likely than "one type fits all".

Posted by: tom s. at Feb 15, 2007 11:24:18 AM

I've been doing this slighly wrong. Time to change.

I've recently moved to an almost 100% positive reinforcement regime with my boys, with no reaction to behavior I don't like or want to inhibit. It's working great. This is another tool for happier kids

Posted by: mickslam at Feb 15, 2007 11:51:28 AM

Shouldn't this have been obvious. You don't praise a kid for something they didn't have anything to do with (intelligence). You praise behavior, not abilities. As the saying goes, I would rather have a child of average IQ that works hard than a lazy smart kid.

Posted by: subrosa at Feb 15, 2007 12:03:58 PM

When we moved my daughter, at age 10, to a private school, she soon put her finger on the big difference. "My teachers used to say 'Oh well done, that is clever of you'. Now they say 'Nearly right, dear, now try again.'"

Posted by: dearieme at Feb 15, 2007 12:09:58 PM

That certainly rings true with my own experiences. Having it drilled into me from an early age that I was "gifted" tended to make it easier to be the underachieving kid whose teachers and parents were constantly telling them that they were "capable of so much more" than for me to actually try my hardest and risk the possibility that I wasn't actually as smart as everyone said I was and to be exposed as such. That continued all the way through law school (as Tyler can testify to... I was a slacker in his class as well). Bizarrely it became easier to do the paper at the last minute with little to no preparation than to actually bust ass trying to do the best paper I could do. As sort of a "have your cake and eat it, too" phenomenon, it allowed me to do less work and still never risk the possibility that someone could be disappointed in my “best work”. After all, if you get an B+/A- on a paper you BS-ed your way through, you could still be an Einstein, albeit a lazy one. Get an A-/A on a paper you really worked hard on (without the professor instantly pulling you into their office to tell you that they’d be honored to write your recommendation for a PhD program at the best department in the nation) and you risk being simply above average, toppling all your carefully crafted illusions.

Posted by: Mike K. at Feb 15, 2007 12:28:41 PM

Mike K -- wow, that IS me. Every word. Anyway, I'm sure that added nothing to this conversation, but I needed to share!

Posted by: Alcibiades at Feb 15, 2007 12:36:08 PM

Mike K. and Alcibiades, I'm in the same boat.

subrosa,

As the saying goes, I would rather have a parent that appreciated my talents than one who nagged me for being lazy.

Posted by: Steve at Feb 15, 2007 12:50:38 PM

yep, same boat here also,
flunked out of an ivy league college before i pulled my head out of my ass.

Posted by: leo at Feb 15, 2007 1:39:32 PM

In my experience, children that attend schools for the gifted at the grammer school level behave as the study predicts. I took my daughter out of the Fairfax County gifted program after 6 months, because I felt the damaging effect of the social environment far greater than the positive effects of a better academic program.

Posted by: joan at Feb 15, 2007 1:51:55 PM

It's an interesting issue for economists. You should praise children for incurring costs, rather than praising them for being able to do something at low cost due to high ability.

Posted by: Keith at Feb 15, 2007 1:52:54 PM

"I felt the damaging effect of the social environment far greater than the positive effects of a better academic program."

I agree. I think that's why Ayn Rand speaks to a lot of kids from that environment, because some kids get tired of the teacher-pleasing and the whole gifted-kid rat race, and Rand tells them to use their brains how they want and not to give a crap about pleasing this or that authority figure or how you "stack up."

Posted by: Keith at Feb 15, 2007 1:57:21 PM

Another Mike K. clone...although I'm not sure if I waited until the last minute and settled for the B was because I was worried about having my illusions shattered if I didn't get the A, or if I was just lazy and didn't care about the grades. I think it was both, depending on the class.

I'm very glad I read this article though, as I can already see myself programming some bad habits into my 3 and 4 year olds. At heart I am prideful of being very smart, and I still coast on raw ability too often instead of working to my peak. I've been worried about how to avoid having my kids adopt this same behavior pattern, and this study has given me hope that some changes in reinforcement may be able to make a big difference.

Posted by: Lou at Feb 15, 2007 2:36:50 PM

Could be...

Like the rest of ya, I just read the bit above and haven't (yet?) gone to the source. The first few sentences struck me as scary in their potential for possibly explaining my disappointing acheivments to date by ascribing that to simple well-intentioned compliments. Of course being aware of the fact that people see themselves in every few words strung together (particularly those that "explain" their reasons for not being successful) I don't really put too much stock in this as an explanatory theory but it does give me something to think about (and hopefully - now that I know, or can pretend that I know, the cause - overcome?).

But the final few sentences quoted do not appear to reflect my personality or school experience too well.

Here's my deal:

I was told that I was a genius for as long as I can remember. And indeed, I was always at the top of my class. At the top of my class but never the teacher's pet. In fact, my station was often demoted out of the honor roll for being a smart ass to teachers. I hated (and I do mean Hated) authority from my very earliest years and never sought to please. My answers do not have the "intonation of questions" but rather of pronouncements. And indeed, my brothers were also the tops of their classes as well.

But. The fact that I consider myself to be brilliant may very well be (one of) the roadblock(s) to acheivement for me. You see, I am plagued with perfectionism and have never had any interest in doing any "normal" things. Anything I do must be Revolutionary, Amazing and must be something that clearly manifests my amazingness. Because, after all, I'm a genius.

Oh, and of course I also don't really relish being tested by giving something my all and failing at it. Then the only thing that makes me mnuez - my genius beyond that of mere mortals - would be shown not to exist. And if I'm not the best in the world at something that isn't life meaningless?

That by the way, actually was - literally was - how I saw my life in my very young years and which may still be of some influence today. I literally believed that anyone who was not the world's best at something was nothing.

Wow, I oughtta go to confession more often. - To be accurate though, I still consider the ideas expressed in the post to be only possibly relevant to myself. Were I blessed with credulity however, I'd finely prefer to believe them as the Word of the Lord and might be able to convince my mind into leading me towards greater personal success now that I "know" the reasons for past failures. And thus would succeed.

I'll try that.

Posted by: mnuez at Feb 15, 2007 2:36:57 PM

Like so many others I saw a little bit of myself in that article. My bright friends and I have talked about this very same thing and even tried to brainstorm ways to avoid similar habits in our kids. Now that I read the article it seems so obvious. Thanks for the great post and link.

Posted by: eriks at Feb 15, 2007 3:16:11 PM

add me to the list of MR readers who were summed up perfectly by Mike K.
i'd wager that most of the 'intelligent' people in our society are, too.

Posted by: Dave McDougall at Feb 15, 2007 3:54:09 PM

Keith: funny; I thought Ayn Rand appealed to many gifted adolescents precisely because they weren't surrounded by similarly gifted people, so they (erroneously) came to think themselves better than everyone else (merely because they were better on one, often irrelevant, criterion), and found in Rand a justification for the social exclusion they faced (for being smart, different, or clueless bastards; take your pick). In my experience being around other comparably gifted kids, preferably before college, is very helpful for gifted kids' social development, because it bursts that particular bubble -- they have to realize they may not be the smartest person in the world, and start thinking about defining themselves by effort or by other talents, and learning some humility. And it's also good for social development in the highly awkward simply because it's a target-rich environment where the barriers to social interaction are lowered...certainly I found the difference between myself and most people in my high school too big to bridge, and it wasn't until I'd had a lot of experience practicing in easier interactions that I learned to get along with most people. (Now I'm a teacher, so I've come a long way...)

Of course, I find myself well-summarized by many of the points in this story too (though I never could stand Ayn Rand). But mostly I'm glad to see this article because I'd already encountered the praise-for-effort context in some teacher training seminar or other and had come out of that with a very bad taste in my mouth; it was being perverted to serve the general anti-intellectual nature of a lot of education these days. The point gets taken too far -- for instance, a friend of mine taught at a school where anyone could take honors math courses because differences in innate ability were believed to be nonexistent -- the dreadful result, of course, being that standards were steadily eroded since parents insisted on honors courses for their kids and couldn't accept poor grades as a result.

The students at my school put forth stupendous, humbling amounts of effort. I've learned tremendously from them. I respect their effort far more than I respect my intelligence -- and have learned, in fits and starts, to apply effort and not just ability when I take classes these days -- but I still have a long way to go. Most of them will turn out better than I did, I think.

Posted by: Andromeda at Feb 15, 2007 4:23:09 PM

How many of us "mike ks" derided other students who were *merely* hard workers and not as naturally smart as the *gifted* kids?

Posted by: eriks at Feb 15, 2007 4:30:59 PM

In the UK Channel 4 have just started a series tracking the lives of genius children. It will be interesting to see what becomes of them.

PS - Unlike many on this list, I was not one of these gifted kids ... nor was I a particularly hard worker.

Posted by: Caravaggio at Feb 15, 2007 8:20:24 PM

This study is somewhat old news.

See Rules, Praise, and Ignoring: Elements of Elementary Classroom Control.

These specific praise techniques have been used successfully in classrooms since the 70s as part a successful educational program. See Project Follow Through. and the performance of the Direct Instruction program. It's one of the few educational programs that's been successful with the lower half of the curve (raised performance by about a standard deviation). Naturally, it's been ignored by educators.

Posted by: KDeRosa at Feb 15, 2007 8:31:55 PM

I wonder how much one can read into studies on "what children say or do". I get slammed for using undergraduates in economic experiments and I'm supposed to believe what some 10-year-old tells me? What they need to do is take these kids out and have them run an obstacle course - tell half of them they're fast and praise the other half for good effort and then see if the fast kids want to prepare for a more challenging course by looking at the course or if they want to look at the other participants' times. Maybe the kids are trying to externally validate whether or not the experimenter is full of poop (family site - most of the time) when they are told they are smart.

Maybe there's a gender effect - she used all female researchers. Maybe "praise for being smart" out of a male's mouth means something different than "praise for being smart" out of a female's. Before you call me Larry Summers Jr...

'Repeating her experiments, Dweck found this effect of praise on performance held true for students of every socioeconomic class. It hit both boys and girls—the very brightest girls especially (they collapsed the most following failure).' Thus, there seems to be some gender effect in the study, so why not use male researchers to make sure before all the males start doing "the wrong thing"?

And how the heck does this pass an IRB review when you have phrases like, 'Just watching them, you could see the strain. They were sweating and miserable.'. What, you're going to debrief a bunch of 10-year-olds and tell them it really doesn't matter? What's that supposed to do for them the next time they have to take a test?

I have no problem praising effort, or telling kids that the brain is a muscle that needs to be worked (IMO, that's the best thing this article says). Of course, outcomes need to be rewarded because otherwise these kids are going to sit in a college classroom one day and moan when the teacher doesn't give a darn about effort. I mean, my employer doesn't care if I send 8 articles to the QJE (good try!!! pat on the back) they care if 1 of them gets published by the QJE. And they really care if more than 1 gets published. (NOTE: I won't go much deeper into my tirade on "rewarding effort in place of outcome" - let's say I had a teacher who did this with me and my friends in elementary school and we Were. Not. Happy. seeing crappy projects with higher grades than our good projects).

And to all of you gifted slackers out there - I would have enjoyed working with each of you on a project as kids! If it was test time I would have preferred to have been paired with another "hard working smart kid" but the "slacker kids" often had incredibly creative ideas and I tried to seek them out when there was some project to do (when time constraints were nonbinding). It's the one thing most "gifted and good grades kids" misunderstand about the "gifted and not good grades kids" - the second group usually has tremendous ideas (possibly better than the first group) but is lacking either the drive or the organizational skills to put the project together. In all honesty, I know there were smarter kids than me in high school, but there were no smarter kids at the top of the class than me - anyone smarter than me was in the middle of the class (B/C average or whatever the middle was) simply because they never did the required work, for whatever reason (I usually assumed it was because they didn't care, and not that it had anything to do with "being afraid to try" - I know one guy who got a 1400 on the SAT - pre-1995 adjustment, so 1450 or 1470 or whatever it is now - and most everyone was floored because he never cared about doing the work in school - but it didn't surprise me one bit).

Posted by: AZ at Feb 15, 2007 10:09:08 PM

mnuez,

you aren't alone. One of my closest friends was exactly like you. he was at least 30 and still exactly like that. I went to MIT where I found out rather quickly that I wasn't one of the best at any of the things I liked, but kept assuming somehow my potential was still there, but never could I find it. admitting to myself how average i was was a crushing blow. but for my friend, it was worse. he was so oppositional he wouldn't even allow himself to take rent-paying jobs if they were merely mundanely-above average. and when he actually would bite off more than he could chew and be afraid of failing? he'd create the most amazing artifices by which he could undermine his own success--and always blame the boss, the supe, the Authority for causing his failure. I think that my friend couldn't make the same realization I did--that for all his brilliance, he was still not going to live up to that fantasy. every time he tried, he ended up in as mental hospital, as the crushing weight of reality was too much to bear.

so tread carefully on cracking your illusion, and tread carefully on keping it in place.

but there were many other students there who felt shades of what you felt, and were hobbled by it, unable to do well, unable to admit their own failures. I myself found a better solution to my limitations and mundanity: progeny. now, i can achieve immortality with a much higher probability.

Posted by: anonymous at Feb 15, 2007 11:21:08 PM

Dr. Mahzarin Banaji, a Harvard social psychologist who is an expert in stereotyping, told me, “Carol Dweck is a flat-out genius. I hope the work is taken seriously. It scares people when they see these results.”

Dweck is the researcher that this article is mainly about. Banaji is clearly trying to take the wind out of her sails, calling her a genius like that.

Posted by: Mitch at Feb 16, 2007 5:59:33 AM

I read the article and felt like it was written about me. I have spent my entire life not living up to the potential I have been told I have. I have always hated school because everything was simultaneously too easy and too work intensive. So I became somewhat famous among my classmates for dominating classes (often to the teachers' dismay) and refusing to do homework. Why do a page of problems if I already know how? Thus my grades were never a proxy for my performance, but merely the poor teachers' attempts to reconcile my clear understanding of the material with my steadfast refusal to complete assignments. Thus I endured countless lectures about how much I could accomplish if only I applied myself.

The sentence in the article that made me cringe the most was the one noting that gifted girls handle failure especially poorly. I know that for a fact. When I went from being the MVP of the Junior Varsity soccer team, to perennially riding the pine on the varsity squad, I completely fell apart. That season I attempted suicide more times than I can count. Later, when I retook the SAT, my score went down by 300 points. Convinced that both my athletic ability and intelligence were merely fictions created by my parents, teachers, and coaches, and exacerbated by me I fell further into my depression. I hated myself for being such a fraud. If I wasn't the best and smartest (without effort mind you) I was worthless.

It's ten years later and I'm still grappling with these issues. I'm scared to death of having children like me, so this article was a much-needed ray of hope.

Posted by: Christina at Feb 16, 2007 12:27:02 PM

The article bolsters a point my husband has made ever since we had children--reserve praise for their efforts. Whenever people tell our daughter (who is gifted) that she is "so smart", we jump in to say, "She works really hard at school/piano/etc." And she does.

Interestingly, however, we find that when it comes to physical activity, she behaves like the gifted kids in the article who underperform academically. She gives up very easily or won't try at all because she thinks she is "no good" at sports and doesn't want anyone to confirm that. We have never artificially praised her at sports, but we have said that doing well at physical activity requires the same thing that mastering music or science or math require--lots of effort, lots of repetition, lots of practice. Still, she doesn't want to try for fear of not doing well.

Posted by: dgm at Feb 16, 2007 1:19:13 PM

I think the reason for the finding might be that the praise in the experiment was completely unrelated to either talent or persistance in maze solving. I don't think there is much of a problem when a smart kid is aware of being smart. But, when average children(which, by definition is what the majority of the experimental subjects were) have an unsupported belief in their own genius, problems naturally arise.

Posted by: me at Feb 16, 2007 4:03:45 PM

Even if the tests show that certain children react that way to having their intelligence praised, everyone is still different. Everyone reacts differently in those sorts of situations. I'm sure many people do not want to mess up and embarrass themselves, especially in an academic environment. I know I don't, but it happens and there's nothing wrong with it. We're in learning environments; we don't know everything going into it. I do somewhat agree with the test results, however, even though I believe that's not true for every child. When someone knows that he/she is good at one thing, and other people know that, as well, I'm sure that person feels he/she has to do well to prove themselves. I have felt that way before (it doesn't just have to apply to academics and school). But, just because a person knows and gets praise for what they excell and do well in doesn't mean that that hinders their ability in another area. They might be unsure, and some may well be less confident, but we shouldn't clump them in a group and say that hinders their talents in other aspects.

Posted by: Leah at Feb 16, 2007 6:11:08 PM

I think that this is a very good subject. When i was younger my mom and dad always used to reward me and my brother doing good in school. If we got good grades then we always got money. I think that when children do good they should get rewarded beacause that will make them want to keep working harded. Parents just dont have to give money, words of encouragement can also help. If parents try these methods then they will see a dramatic change in the sons/daughters actions.

Posted by: Kadeem Morgan at Feb 19, 2007 6:02:39 PM

As a mother and student I defiantly see the correlation between the two. The more kids are praised the more they want to please you, but as telling them how smart they are goes up their effort to try harder goes down. In my daughter’s case my husband and I fight with her every night about doing her homework (and she’s only in 1st grade) which she struggles with, especially reading; but I always tell her that I know she is smarter than that because that is what my mom told me. I find myself wondering if this is the right choice of words because I don’t want her to think that she isn’t smart just the way she is, I just want her to know she can do better with practice and a better attitude when starting.
The thing about her that is different than some of the kids in this study is that once she gets going she wants to keep on it and push herself by picking out extra work from school. If the teacher assigns one book she’ll ask for another but always picks the ones that are above her reading level which we then split up so as not to overwhelm her. Her reading has improved a lot over the last month and now implementing this new tool will help me to get more out of her. Thanks!

Posted by: cnjones at Feb 19, 2007 10:43:34 PM

i came on the net looking exactly for something like this.i'm so happy to find that my problem isn't just my fabrication but something real enough to be shared to this extent.
The write-ups above, i must say, have given real form to what was only misty in my mind.i'm one of the last minute people with an almost rude confidence in my abilities. The evil thing about my case is that i do so well even being the last to submit my paper with a minimal effort. It became my way.
This kind of attitude started earlier on in my life when i faced a major disappointment. i was suppose to lead my school in prayer and that morning the prayer was to be chanted.Aware of my responsibility as lead cantor, i practiced really hard days before this(recorded my voice and did a lot of self criticism).My peers noticed how hard i was practicing for this and were waiting to see how well i was going to do.On that evil morning it was time for me to begin the chanting and i went blank before the whole school. i tried to open my mouth but nothing came out. i had forgotten the tune i had practiced so hard for.Being a shy person i felt so embarrassed and confused,i wanted to fissle out of existence.My director worsoned the case when in jest he told me: " i could have done what u did without practice" i laughed but it hit me like a tornadoe.i gave up the hard work idea and settled for the average.Suprisingly however, this attitude made me less tense and confident since there was nothing to fear- i prepared myself for the humiliation( like that one incident)but instead i was praised for good performance.i realised(or so i beleived) that if i didnt put so much effort then the criticsm for failure wouldn't hurt so much.
Unfortunately it has made me very passive and uninventive. i do things only when i am compelled to them but once done everyone is amazed and praise me for it. Now that i am getting deeper into my adult life i know i have to be more positive or pro active about certain things in my life.
lech.

Posted by: lech at Apr 16, 2007 1:04:47 PM

I would like to learn phrase that will encourage my students, powerful ones. Not only on their schoolwork, but also something that can build their character.

thank you for sending me suggestions in advance.

Best regards,
Susan Lin

Posted by: Susan Lin at May 11, 2007 4:00:19 AM

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