williterate

Following up this article I commented on months ago, this piece further shapes how I wish to parent in the area of praise for performance.

Now, new research shows that too much praise for children as young as 1 to 3 can have negative repercussions down the road.

It was done by Carol Dweck, a Stanford researcher, who has been studying children’s coping and resilience mechanisms for 40 years. For the last 14 of them, she’s focused on what she suspects is the culprit behind less resilient children: Praise.

Her latest research is “Parent Praise,” and it’s a longitudinal study. In it, researchers observed, and coded, praise from parents with children 14 months old to 38 months old to see if it was more person-based (“you are really smart”) or process based (“you must have tried really hard”). When the kids were 7 and 8, they checked back to see how they felt about taking risks and whether qualities like intelligence were fixed or malleable.

The process kids won.

“The parents who gave more process-praise had children who believe their intelligence and social qualities could be developed and they were more eager for challenges,” Dr. Dweck told me.

In her previous research, she’s showed that praising children for their intelligence or abilities often undermines motivation and hurts performance. Kids who are told they are smart care more about performance goals and less about learning. Kids praised for their efforts believe that trying hard, not being smart, matters. These kids are “resilient” and take more risks.

Consider this study, which she did variations on for years. Researchers give two groups of fifth graders easy tests. Group one is told they got the questions right because they are smart. Group two is told they got the questions right because they tried hard. Then they give the kids a harder test, one designed to be far above their ability. Turns out the “smart” kids don’t like the test and don’t want to do more. The “effort” kids think they need to try harder and welcome the chance to try again. The researchers give them a third test, another easy one. The “smart” kids struggle, and perform worse than they did on the first test (which was equally easy). The “effort” kids outperform their first test, and outperform their “smart” peers.

Here’s the scary part. In one variation of the study, the researchers tell the kids they’re going to give the same test at another school. They ask them to write a note to students in the other school telling them how they scored. Forty percent of the “smart” kids lie about their results, compared with  10 to 12 percent of the “effort” kids.

What I find particularly interesting about this is that I think I can pretty accurately predict who, among my colleagues, received person-based praise and who received process-based praise. Some people believe they deserve praise or promotion just for doing their jobs or for having relative seniority. Others seek out opportunity and pursue challenges. In a recent example, who do you think got a promotion? And who do you think was not happy that it wasn’t them?

I’ve been paying attention to the media attention surrounding the unfortunate killing of the released exotic animals in Ohio and trying not to take my anger and bafflement out with my fists. This morning there was a report on NPR relating the events to a book recently published called The Ridge. The story itself contributed to my seasonal nostalgia because the author was in Bloomington, IN, my home for 4 years of my life, and discussed the Exotic Feline Rescue Center (EFRC) in Center Point, IN. Below shows the route from my childhood home (A) to the Exotic Feline Rescue Center (B), a distance of 2 miles.

The EFRC was “founded” in 1991, when I would’ve been in grade 8, 12 or 13 years old. I first became aware of the center’s existence when my mom and I were at the grocery store and saw a dumpy pickup truck in the parking lot with a live black panther stretched across the dashboard. Soon after we found out that a man had moved in near us and was living with three large, exotic cats.

Of course we visited. My parents drove us one weekend afternoon, and we knocked on this man’s door and asked to see his cats. He had what seemed at the time like an oversized doggie door cut into the side of his house and leading into a fairly large (maybe 50’ x 50’) fenced-in area, so the cats could freely roam from the man’s bedroom (he told us) to their outdoor residence.

Throughout high school, I would visit three or four more times, and each time this man (Joe Taft was his name) had rescued a few more animals. He would tell me about how he could no longer travel to New Mexico, but I never asked why. On one visit he instructed me to wait in his living room. He went down a hallway and opened a door at the end of the hall, releasing a bear cub (maybe the size of a midsize dog) into the living room where I stood. It was incredible. The cub barrelled out of the hallway and ran around my feet before Mr. Taft began wrestling with it like a faithful pet. He wasn’t equipped to care for bears, so he was looking for a permanent home for it.

I do not agree with the trade of exotic animals as pets, and when he was a one man show, I had misgivings about Mr. Taft’s motives. However, the center has grown to be a wonderful retirement community for exotic animals who have been neglected and abused, who have suffered declawing and other injuries of domestication. And they’ve provided invaluable volunteer and educational opportunities for high school and college students, and residents of my home town, that would be hard to come by in most places.

Check out some of the cat biographies. Some of the cats’ histories are difficult to read, but the bios also illustrate that these animals could have it much worse.