The Perils of Praise

A colleague of mine sent me a very interesting article from the New York Magazine entitled

"How Not to Talk to Your Kids - The inverse power of praise."  By Po Bronson.  

I read it and had the following reaction; Oh Great! So now I am not allowed to tell my kids they are smart!  I already had to stop telling my daughter she was pretty.  Now this. Uhhggg!!!!  Actually that was only part of my response because on the other hand I was fascinated.  How can praise be a bad thing?  What is the psychology behind this phenomenon?

So here is the back-story of why I stopped telling Raye she was pretty.

On my daughter Raye's first day of Kindergarten I was a typical nervous dad.  The moment I picked her up from school, I wanted to hear how everything went.  The conversation went something like this, "So Raye how was it?"

"Fine."

"Did you make any friends?"

"Not really."

"Well, did you play on the play ground?"

"Yes."

"Well, who did you play with?"

"No one really."

At this point, I worried.  What is wrong?  Why isn't she making friends?  Is she going to be the kid with no friends?  Remember, this is day one, and this is my first baby.  My sweet baby girl.

"Raye why didn't you play with anyone?"

"I couldn't decide who was prettiest."

"Ahhh...... What?!!!"

"I couldn't decide who was prettiest."

Explosions are going off inside my head.  What is going on here? How is it that my sweet thoughtful daughter is so shallow on her first day of school?  Isn't this kind of shallow thinking supposed to develop in middle school and crystallize in high school only to be reconciled in adulthood?  How has my sweet innocent daughter already been socialized to value looks over substance? This must be television's fault?  Did I miss the Wiggles episode where you only play with good-looking people?   Did Arthur the aardvark avoid the awkward aardvark?  (Sorry for the unnecessary alliteration)  Or have I been teaching my daughter to value people's attractiveness?  Is this my fault?  I had a lot to think about.

And here is what I came up with.  First of all, my daughter is beautiful.  (Of course she is…look at me)  From the day she was born she has been told how pretty she is.  Strangers would stop me in the mall to tell me how pretty my daughter was.  I would start most every day saying something like, “Raye you look so pretty today.”  Raye heard the word “pretty” and equated it with “good.”  As a psychology teacher I should know better.  Words are powerful.  And to a very young child the meanings of words are learned through context.  In her mind “pretty” equals “good.” 

From that day forward I stopped telling my daughter that she was pretty.  That sounds harsh doesn’t it?  Instead I would say, “Raye, you look so ‘nice’ today.”  See what I did there?  And that evening Raye and I had a discussion about beauty.  We talked about what makes a person beautiful.  We talked about kindness.  And while I felt like I was teaching her a very important life lesson, it turns out she already understood; as children inherently do. 

Her best little friend in her kindergarten class was the girl who was kind to her.  To Raye, this little girl was beautiful.  Now, I am going to be a little mean in order to make my point.  The little girl who Raye was best friends with, who she would describe as beautiful, was an awkward looking child.  By shallow, physical appearance standards, she was unusual looking.  But to Raye she was pretty.  I didn’t have to explain to Raye this young girl’s beauty.  She understood.  And she wasn’t being shallow that first day.  She was using language, as she understood it.  But I did worry that if we didn’t start to use different words, if we didn’t have some conversations, that as she grew older and understood that society does value outward appearance, that she might develop some misconceptions.  So every night I tuck her into bed I ask her, “Raye, what is beauty?” 

And she replies, “Beauty is kindness.”

If you walk up to Raye now as an 11-year old and ask her what beauty is she will tell you, “Beauty is Kindness.”  And she knows because she is beautiful.  And pretty too, just don’t tell her that, but wow, she sure did look nice when she left the house this morning.

This article, about the inverse power of praise, specifically talks about praising intelligence.  I came to understand the danger of telling my daughter she was pretty, but I thought I was safe telling both of my kids how smart they are.  I want to them to know they are capable and competent. Shouldn’t that be okay?   We try to build our kids up.  We have to build their self-esteem, right? (That’s why everybody gets a trophy at the end of the season – a whole other rant). 

From the article:

“Giving kids the label of “smart” does not prevent them from underperforming. It might actually be causing it.”

No!!!!  How have I managed to mess this up?  Being a parent is hard.  Being a parent who also teaches psychology is enough to create constant worry that everything I do is going to cause life-long psychological damage.  I know just enough to be dangerous.

The article reports on studies done by Carol Dweck of Columbia University (now at Stanford) that examine the effects of telling kids they are smart, on their persistence and performance on difficult tasks. 

It turns out students, who have been told they are smart, shy away from tasks where they might fail.  They fear taking risks.  They have learned the reinforcing power of praise:  “I do well - the teacher (or parent) is pleased - tells me I am smart - smart = good.”  However, these children have also learned to fear opening themselves up to any ridicule or doubt of that inherent intellect.  They don’t want to risk losing that label of “smart.” So when my son stresses over a word problem and I try to be reassuring by saying, “You can do it Declan, you’re so smart”;  I am creating a situation which in his mind sounds like this, “If people are smart then they can do this.  I am having trouble with this, therefore, I must not be smart. If I’m not smart then I must be dumb.  Dumb = bad”

Dweck’s study, referenced in the article, explains how a group of students are given a test of puzzles on which they all should perform well.  The students are then given a single line of praise for their strong performance.  They are either told, “You must be very intelligent” or “You must have worked very hard on this.”  That’s it.  Just that one line of praise was enough to produce very significant differences.

Subsequently, the students are given a choice for the next round of tests.  They can choose a test that will be harder but from which they are told they will learn a lot, or they can take a test as easy as the first one.  90% of the students who had been praised for their effort choose the harder test.  A majority of the kids praised for their intellect wimped out and opted for the easy test.  They want nothing to do with jeopardizing their “smart” status. 

In a second version of the experiment the students were not given a choice for the second set of tests.  They were all given a much more difficult test.  A test they were all sure to struggle with.  The two different praise groups responded differently.  The “effort” praise group explained their failure to be the result of not trying hard enough.  They were more persistent and remarked that they liked the test.  The “intellect” praise group attributed their failure to the fact that they weren’t that smart after all.  They gave up and experienced more distress. 

They followed this second round of tests (this forced failure) with a third round of tests that were on the same level as the original test.  And now comes the most profound effect; the “effort” praise group showed a marked improvement from their original test (approx. 30%), while the “intellect” praise group underperformed by nearly 20%.

So what is going on here?  What is the basis of this difference?  What are we praising when we praise “smarts?”  We are inferring that intellect is something you possess, something you inherently are.  It is not something you can control.  Whereas, with “effort” you are giving the kids something that is in their control.  When faced with failure the “effort” group sees a solution – harder work.

Dweck remarks, and I can confirm, that smart kids discount effort. I get to teach the “smart” kids – as I only teach the Advanced Placement courses.  All of my students are above average.  They feel if they are smart then they don’t have to put forth effort.  They eschew studying.  They avoid real thinking.  They want to know what they need to know and then they want to give that back to me.  My task is to challenge them to figure out what they need to know.  It is my challenge to make them uncomfortable so that they have to employ effort and not rely on their innate giftedness.  Otherwise they will not develop the skills to cope when things are truly difficult.

I have “smart” students who won’t admit to studying.  It is almost as if they see it as a sign of weakness to admit that they had to put in the effort and struggle.  I am making some progress, and I have some students who are great workers.  They are grinders who have experienced success and failure in very difficult and fast paced courses through brute force of effort.  I know that they are not always successful in the immediate endeavor, but I am confident that they will be successful in the endeavors they will face in their future.

Which brings me back to how I have adversely affected my own children by telling them they were smart.  After I read this article, I panicked and worried how to undo the damage.  So I went into over-reaction mode.  As I picked Raye and Declan up from school that day the conversation went like this, “So Raye, how was school today?”

“Fine.  We had a test in math.”

“Oh? How did you do?”

“Good.  It was easy.”

“Was it easy because you are so naturally gifted in math or because you worked hard?  You know it is always important to work hard.”

At this moment my daughter quickly understands what I am after and says with a knowing sigh, “Because I worked hard.”

Translation – “If I answer what you want to hear will this interrogation stop?”

So I move onto Declan.  “Declan how was your day?”

“Good.”

“Did you learn anything new?”

“No.”

“Why not?  A whole day at school and you didn’t learn anything?’

“I already knew it all.” 

This one is going to be my problem kid.

“Did you know it all because you are just ‘smart’ or because you studied hard?”

“I’m just smart.”

I have my work cut out for me. 

But I will say that I have been working hard to discuss what happens when things do get hard.  And my kids have struggled at times with various things.  We have developed a script where I ask them, “What do we do when it gets hard?”

And they reply, “We work harder.”

It’s the Savage way.

One last thing- I have given a bit of the details of the article, but I strongly encourage you to read it for yourself.  There is so much great information here.  How Not To Talk To Your Kids

And please leave me feedback in the comments.