The Power (and Peril) of Praise

This article was just too good not to share. I'll warn you, it's long (five web pages). I'll also summarize for you, but would encourage you to read it for yourself too. I liked how they didn't just reference a study and leave it at that, they really followed through and wrapped up the topic.

How Not to Talk to Your Kids: The Power (and Peril) of Praising Your Kids -- New York Magazine

The article starts out looking at the difference between praising a student's intelligence and praising their effort. The first study they reference discovered that students praised for their intelligence often gave up on or avoided new challenges and did quite poorly when given a challenge. The students that were praised for their effort took on new challenges and tried harder - usually doing better.

“Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” Dweck [the researcher] explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.” In follow-up interviews, Dweck discovered that those who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized—it’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts.

The article goes on to discuss praise as it relates to self-esteem, and the effects of the 'self-esteem movement' which espouses that "praise, self-esteem, and performance rise and fall together" (you know, the 'everyone gets a trophy' movement). 

After reviewing those 200 studies, Baumeister concluded that having high self-esteem didn’t improve grades or career achievement. It didn’t even reduce alcohol usage. And it especially did not lower violence of any sort. (Highly aggressive, violent people happen to think very highly of themselves, debunking the theory that people are aggressive to make up for low self-esteem.) At the time, Baumeister was quoted as saying that his findings were “the biggest disappointment of my career.”
Now he’s on Dweck’s side of the argument, and his work is going in a similar direction: He will soon publish an article showing that for college students on the verge of failing in class, esteem-building praise causes their grades to sink further. Baumeister has come to believe the continued appeal of self-esteem is largely tied to parents’ pride in their children’s achievements: It’s so strong that “when they praise their kids, it’s not that far from praising themselves."

The article brings it back home with a discussion about how we should praise and reward our kids. It ties back into the initial suggestion that praising the effort or the process is more effective and productive than praising the outcome or their intelligence. By praising kids differently, or rather by praising them specifically, we can help them build their cognitive and problem solving skills and teach them that persistence does pay off. There's reward in trying and not just in winning.

Cloninger has trained rats and mice in mazes to have persistence by carefully not rewarding them when they get to the finish. “The key is intermittent reinforcement,” says Cloninger. The brain has to learn that frustrating spells can be worked through. “A person who grows up getting too frequent rewards will not have persistence, because they’ll quit when the rewards disappear.”

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This rings true with what I know from being a speech therapist. Have you ever seen a completely prompt-dependent kid? They don't even think about what they're doing/saying, they just watch your face for cues of praise and land on the closest thing once they see it. We've taught them not to think but to look for the reward (but that is fairly rare, thankfully). I've also noticed this when assessing students and the difference between the effort put out when you tell a kid, "I like how hard you are trying" or "I like how you looked at all the pictures" vs just saying, "you're so smart, you're doing great". I'm reminded of neurological studies of dementia patients that show that even in a state of deterioration, the brain can still learn new things. Regardless of our innate intelligence capacity, our brains are amazingly designed to keep learning.

This also strikes a tone with my personal values. I've never bought into the idea that giving everyone a trophy was going to make the world a better place. I don't really think that making everyone feel good produces better work ethics, and I think that learning from our clearly defined mistakes is a valuable part of life, academic and personal. I'm also a believer that positive self-esteem is a mask for empty pride and that we shouldn't 'believe in ourselves' as much as we believe in God (Proverbs 3:5 comes to mind).

I know there is balance in all things, and we can't walk around living like doormats. However, my value isn't found in my opinion of myself but is found in God's opinion of me - and although humbling, it is also pretty encouraging. He unconditionally loves me even though I don't deserve it, and walking around with that in your head will get you farther than believing in yourself. Knowing that God finds value in you gives you a purpose and success is found not in achievements but in dependence on and reflection of Him. This is really the kind of praise I want my kids to get: praise that builds their character, teaches them to put others first and to live by a higher standard than one they or the world sets. Praise that teaches them to persist in all that life brings (academic or otherwise) and in faith and to trust in their Creator.

Anyway, very interesting and worth the read!