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Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children's Motivation (1998) [pdf]

psychology.stanford.edu

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Re: Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children's Motivation (1998) [pdf]

#11

Post by HiroshiSan »

nibs wrote: post #9
RMcNeely wrote: post #7

Suddenly my life makes so much more sense.....

Gifted underachievement goes a lot deeper than reinforcement. Eventually, gifted people learn synthesis comes more easily to them and can learn to coast or become anti-social as a result and still get by. Peter Thiel on his thoughts re: Elon Musk: "[He is] very smart, very charismatic, and incredibly driven -- a very rare combination, since most people who have one of these traits learn to coast on the other two." Qu…

Was Elon always this way? Or did he end up working on one trait that was lagging behind?

Re: Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children's Motivation (1998) [pdf]

#12

Post by splouk »

nibs wrote: post #9
RMcNeely wrote: post #7

Suddenly my life makes so much more sense.....

Gifted underachievement goes a lot deeper than reinforcement. Eventually, gifted people learn synthesis comes more easily to them and can learn to coast or become anti-social as a result and still get by. Peter Thiel on his thoughts re: Elon Musk: "[He is] very smart, very charismatic, and incredibly driven -- a very rare combination, since most people who have one of these traits learn to coast on the other two." Qu…

Interesting quote and I think it rings true. Though I think it's not uncommon for someone to posses two of those three qualities, certainly having all three is rare.

Re: Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children's Motivation (1998) [pdf]

#13

Post by lifeisstillgood »

Stop trying to game your kids.

Praise them whatever. Love, security, praise, attention, just go for it.

I doubt very much that all the noise around raising children can be filtered out to be able to differentiate between sentences.

Just raise kids with love and fun.

Re: Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children's Motivation (1998) [pdf]

#14

Post by taylorwc »

timthorn wrote: post #10
dllthomas wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"You worked really hard on it that!" seems a bad thing to say without having observed the kid working hard. I know if I'd been told I worked hard on something that came easily, it would have cost the speaker credibility. My tentative plan, for my son, is to phrase it as a question. "Did you work hard on this?". If so, praise the hard work. If not, "let's find you something more challenging".

In addition, the work being praised needs to be effective.

I disagree. If your child does something to the absolute best of his/her abilities, but is not very effective, isn't that still praiseworthy?

I have a two year old who exhibits no mastery of the English language, but I praise her when she tries out a new word on for size and keeps attempting to perfect it.

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