The power of right praise

The nature versus nurture debate involves trying to determine if human behaviour is influenced by the person’s environment or by the person’s genetics. The widely accepted view now is that how we are raised and our genetic components contribute substantially to personality development. On similar lines, a debate on what determines academic success has been ongoing among educationists and social psychologists: is it innate intelligence or motivated hard work?

American psychologist Carol Dweck believes that this was not just a subject of academic debate. Most students, as well as adults who influence their thinking, carry an opinion that positively or negatively impacts learning. In her book Mindset—The New Psychology of Success, Dweck puts forth the theory of implicit intelligence.

In it, she divides students into two types — fixed IQ theorists who believed that their ability is fixed, probably at birth, and that there is very little they can do to improve it. The untapped potential theorists, on the other hand, believe that ability and success are acquired after learning and this requires time and effort. “More and more research in psychology and neuroscience supports the growth mindset,” writes Dweck. “We are discovering that the brain has more plasticity over time than we ever imagined and as such, the fundamental aspects of intelligence can be enhanced through learning.”

In her paper titled The Perils and Promises of Praise, the psychologist holds that it is possible for teachers and parents to enable students to change their mindset from the first to the second and thereby, prepare them for greater success. Unfortunately, the prevailing trend among parents and teachers of appreciating students for their wit is inadvertently causing just the opposite.

Appreciate hard work

Even when parents start on picture books to their children, for every right answer, parent rewards them with an ebullient, “Good boy!”, “Clever girl!” “You are so smart!”. The intention is of course to boost the child’s confidence. It is also an expression of the parent’s happiness over the ‘good’ IQ of the child. The child, in response, also experiences happiness. All valid reasons to continue with the style, as long as the bar is raised steadily and the child is exposed to more challenging tasks.

Through primary classes, most children breeze through the school prescribed assignments. Praise comes in easily and the student believes that he or she has the ability to do well in school. This is the period when students get to form the idea that some are naturally smart and some are not.

Dweck and her research team observed that the change usually comes when the child enters middle school. The transition comes at a time of great vulnerability as the curriculum becomes increasingly difficult, evaluation gets more stringent and the environment becomes more impersonal. The new challenges often destabilise students who were riding entirely on their intelligence for success. The setback in performance for some can be quite dramatic.

This is when the need arises for the educator or parent to bring about the shift in children from the fixed IQ mindset to the growth mindset. Dweck’s research team carried out an intervention programme where the students were made to realise that IQ is not a fixed factor and intelligence can be increased through learning. Through video shows and specially designed assignments, students learnt that the brain is like a muscle — the more they exercised it, the stronger it became. They learnt that every time they tried hard and learnt something new, their brain formed new connections and that over time this would make them smarter. They learnt that intellectual development is not the natural unfolding of intelligence but rather the formation of new connections brought about through effort and learning.

The results of the research present important findings for parents and teachers — reserve your words of praise for the student's perseverance, hard work, effort, improvement, and the like; and not for the speed of learning. The first, which is the right kind of praise, helps. The second ends up doing harm.