Do you praise effort or talent?

In 1998 Carol S Dweck published a paper called “Praise for intelligence can undermine (children’s) motivation and performance” in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

I put the brackets around the word children because I think this applies equally to adults. I know you will tell me if you disagree.

The hypothesis that she was testing was that:

• you can praise for intelligence
  “Wow… you must be really smart to have done that“
• you can praise for effort
  “Wow… you must have worked really hard to have done that“
• One leads to a significant improvement in aspiration and performance.

Before reading on, have a guess at what you think her findings were.

Here is what she did.

She gave several hundred New York kids a test. Having marked them she praised:

• half the group for the effort that they had put in
• half for their intelligence at getting the marks they got

She then offered each group a choice of two further tests. One was at the same level and one slightly harder.

• Of the students praised for effort 90% chose the harder test.
• Of the students praised for intelligence 90% chose the same level test.

Her conclusion was that the “effort” group were keen to learn from their earlier mistakes while the “Intelligence” group were frightened of failure.

She then offered the kids the chance to look at other peoples test papers.

• The students praised for their intelligence chose to look at the papers of those who had done worse than them and boost their self esteem.
• The students praised for effort chose to look at the papers of those who had done better than them and learn from their mistakes.

In subsequent tests:

• the average score for the “effort” students rose by 30%
• The average score for the “intelligence” praised kids dropped by 20%

Michael Foley interprets this as “If you want success, focus on failure”.

I just think it is more important to recognise effort than intelligence.

Effort is tangible

People know when they have had to strive for something so recognition of it has some meaning. Praising someone for being smart doesn’t seem to have the same value.

So here is our call to action this time.

• Consider how you praise your learners.
• Do you praise them for being smart or for the effort they put in?
• Are you going to do anything differently now?

Confession: As a parent of teenage boys this may have been one of the single most important studies I have read as I recognise myself as an “Intelligence” praiser.

Not any more!!

struggling hand image by Frodrig

Paul and Ally are working on an exciting 6-part (online) course to help your learners fully engage with your training - sign up for the 'early bird' list for advanced notification and more info

If you liked this, you may also like these:

1. Feedback and the X-Factor In April, Annabel shared how her experience of restoring an old, WW2 Jeep  helped her learners...
2. Brain Friendly(ness) as a way of life? In his book “Blink” Malcom Gladwell makes several references to the work of  Dr. John Gottman....
3. Do you want to boost recall by up to 15% This seems to indicate is that by doing all our training in training rooms we are depriving...
4. We Can Challenge Our Brains Or Our Bodies, But Not Both, Says Study A recent article reports an experiment where subjects who were exposed to a challenging mental task...
5. Beyond unconsciously competent Pt.2: keep in the flow In the Beyond unconsciously competent Pt.1: Now what? we looked at “Flow” taken from the book...