digest
Short Summary
Main recommendation: praise children for their effort, strategies, and persistence (effort feedback) rather than for innate traits like being "smart" or "talented" (intelligence feedback). In the Dweck and Mueller study described, children praised for intelligence later chose easier problems to keep receiving praise and their performance dropped, while children praised for effort chose harder problems and improved.
Key Points
- Effort feedback is tied to verbs (choices, behaviors, and persistence), while intelligence feedback is tied to identity labels such as "smart" and "talented."
- Children praised for intelligence tended to pick problems they already knew they could solve, a performance goal to keep the praise coming.
- Children praised for effort more often chose harder problems that offered more to learn.
- Raw performance diverged: the intelligence-praise group's scores fell significantly on a second set of problems, the effort-praise group's rose significantly, and the control group stayed roughly flat (e.g., about 75 percent correct both times, as Huberman describes it).
- The speaker argues the same dynamic applies to adults, who can undermine their own performance through identity-based self-affirmation.
Details Worth Noting
- Concrete instructions: When giving feedback, praise the specific action the child took, such as trying hard, persisting, or trying again after a wrong answer, rather than a label about who they are. Examples from the study include "You tried really hard on that problem," "The way that you persisted was great," and "You spent time and tried again and again," said even when the answer was wrong. Praise effort when a child is succeeding, and avoid calling them smart or talented, which the speaker says can lead them to avoid challenge.
- The study included over 100 children and had three groups: intelligence feedback, effort feedback, and a control group receiving neither.
- The speaker notes that telling a struggling child they are stupid or deficient is rare (one would hope), but labeling high performers with identity terms is very common.
- The speaker says identity-based praise can undermine performance "not right away, but eventually."
Bottom Line
How you praise children shapes whether they seek challenge or protect their image, and effort-focused praise is the one that the study linked to better performance.
