In laboratory studies, praising a child’s effort encourages an : ability is malleable, success comes from hard work, challenges are enjoyable. Praising inherent ability encourages a fixed one. Whether the praise parents give at home does the same thing is a different question, because home is not a laboratory.
Half of it did. Parents’ praise of children’s effort at 14 to 38 months predicted incremental frameworks at 7 to 8 years, in 53 families. Early was not associated with later , so the two halves of the laboratory result did not survive equally.
In laboratory studies, praising children’s effort encourages them to adopt incremental : they believe ability is malleable, attribute success to hard work, enjoy challenges and generate strategies for improvement. Praising inherent abilities encourages fixed-ability frameworks instead.
The question here is whether that transfers out of the laboratory. Does the praise parents spontaneously give children at home show the same effects, over years rather than over a single session?
The answer splits. Parents’ praise of children’s effort at 14 to 38 months, in each of 53 families, did predict incremental frameworks at 7 to 8 years, which supports the causal mechanism identified in the laboratory.
The other half did not appear. Parents’ early praise of inherent characteristics was not associated with children’s later fixed-ability frameworks, so the home data support one direction of the effect and leave the other open.
wat. Praise for effort before age three showed up as a belief about effort at age eight.
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It takes a finding from brief laboratory manipulations and asks whether ordinary family speech carries the same weight over years.
How do we know?
Gunderson and colleagues recorded the praise parents spontaneously gave at home when children were 14 to 38 months old, then measured the children’s motivational frameworks at ages 7 to 8.
What is still unknown
Fifty-three families, and an association between what parents said and what children later believed rather than an experiment on it.
Learn something?
Where to next
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Does taking more vacations leave any lasting mark on how happy you are?longitudinal
Can six weeks of training change how a parent handles a child’s feelings?parenting