How do you take a bunch of ordinary kids, impair their performance and turn them into liars? Tell them they’re smart, that’s how. Praising children’s intelligence worsens both their motivation and their performance. So much for the self-esteem movement.
Carol Dweck, Author of Mindset, gives us insight into how motivation is affected by our belief system, gleaned from studies of hundreds of students, mostly early adolescents.
Carol and her colleagues gave a group of students a set of ten fairly difficult problems from a nonverbal IQ test. When the students finished, they were praised, but not all in the same way. The first group, let’s call them Group A, were told they had done very well on the test, and that they must be smart. Group B were also told they had done well, but were informed that they must have worked hard, or had put in a good effort.
Both groups were then retested with more difficult questions, and a funny thing happened on the way to the forum. Group A, the “smart” group began to balk, and interestingly, they did worse on the second round of questions. Group B, the “effort” group were eager for the next round – “let me at it” and and they did as well or better on round two.
A third and final set of questions were put before the two groups, questions of about the same difficulty as they had experienced in the first set. Only the “smart” group did more poorly than they had done in the first set of questions.
But there’s more, and it gets worse. Both groups A and B were then asked to write about out how they felt about the tests, and to describe how well they’d done. Almost 40% of Group A lied about their scores, and always on the side of embellishment.
The difference between the two groups was not their intelligence or their abilities, for they were evenly matched from the outset. The difference was in their mindset. Mindset is how we look at our basic qualities, and isn’t it fascinating in this example, how quickly their mindset was affected by being told they were “smart” or had “worked hard”? Why are some people so caught up in proving their ability, while others can just dig in and learn?
People with a growth mindset believe that their qualities can be cultivated through effort. The hallmark of a growth mindset is the passion for stretching themselves and sticking to it, particularly when the going gets rough. A fixed mindset, is, well, fixed. Those in the fixed camp believe that their qualities are carved in granite, and it creates an urgency to prove themselves over and over and over again. If you’re only so smart, so outgoing, and so ethical, well then you’d best prove you’re adequately endowed. Fixed mindset dwellers avoid taking risks and expending effort, because they are prone to reveal their inadequacies – if you’re a genius, then the only thing you learn from failure is that maybe you’re not so smart after all.
We are actually not very good at estimating our abilities, but it’s the fixed mindset people who account for most of the inaccuracy. Those in the growth mindset, believing their capacities can be changed, tend to be most open to getting the correct GPS reading on “you are here” maps. They thirst to know where they are falling short, because they are confident that corrective action is possible.
Malcolm Gladwell, author of several books, and writer for New Yorker proposes that we value natural, effortless accomplishment over achievement through effort. In the tale of the tortoise and the hare, for example, effort gets a bad rap. None of us wants to be the tortoise. We all want to be the hare with a bit more planning skill.
Kids, and adults for that matter, love to receive encouragement and praise. By all means lets give it to them, and in a way that will enhance their abilities, and not choke them. Let’s praise our kids for effort, not how smart they are.