Carol Dweck - A Study on Praise and Mindsets

For over a decade Carol Dweck and her team studied the effects of praise on students. This study involved a series of experiments on over 400 5th graders from all over the country.

The results will blow your mind.

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To start, Carol Dweck and her team gave all the students a really easy non-verbal IQ test. At the end of the test they praised the students in one of two ways:

One group was praised for their intelligence: "Wow great job - You must be really smart at this"

The other group was praised for their effort: "Wow great job - You must of worked really hard at this"

Dweck wanted to look at how this subtle difference in the way that they were praised effects the students mindset and performance.

After praising the children they gave them an option for the next test. One choice was to take a harder test that Dweck told the children would be quite difficult, but a great opportunity to learn and grow. The other choice was to take a second test that was similar to the first, and one they would surely do well on.

67% of the students that were praised for their intelligence chose the easier option. While 92% of the students that were praised for their effort chose the harder option!

The next test they gave the students was incredibly difficult - One that they would surely all fail. Carol Dweck wanted to look at how the different groups attacked this challenge. She noticed:

The effort group worked harder, longer, and actually enjoyed this test more than the intelligence group - Who quickly became frustrated and gave up early.

For the final step of the study Carol Dweck and her team gave all of the students a test that was just as easy as the first. The results are pretty convincing:

The intelligence group actually did worse on this test than they did on the first. Their average score dropped by 20%

The effort group did better. Their average score ended up increasing by 30%.

It's amazing that such a subtle difference in the way that they were praised had such an impact on the students and their mindsets.

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Thanks to Carol Dweck for the interview!
Song: "My Other Love" by Pretty Lights

[maryjocommerford]

This is a good reminder to reflect on how we give students feedback.

[HieuNguyen-dxmx]

This is so true! From our childhood, we were praised as intelligent, smart when we did thing well(performance) and were criticized as stupid, incompetent when we did thing wrong and almost no one praise our for the effort or encourage effort. So as kids.. we made an understandable but poor choice to focus on performance than being better at what we do. We hestitate to ask questions, avoid challenges, put little effort to work better. It make us shift focus on just few things that we are comfortable, the tiny comfort zone. Step outside of the zone is just so frightening and not worth the efforts.
I believe this is one of the reason why so many people are insecure and don't enjoy life as we should be.
100% certainty that we should cultivate a growth mindset over fixed one.

[meghancary]

This is so helpful. Thank you for taking the time to spread the word on this!

[roidroid]

I really wish that education programs for gifted kids focused more on this kindof personal growth and resiliance stuff, rather than just pushing them to excell with challenge after challenge.  Since these perfectionist problems are so common for these kids, it's very important to make sure they're innoculated against them.

An analogy: Gifted programs are increasing the speed of the kids, they're teaching them to run at their full potential, run at their full speed.  But there are brick walls scattered around the landscape for all of these kids.  What they really need is to be taught howto JUMP.  Otherwise those kids are going to hit those walls at their full gifted speed, thus it's going to be an unusually violent & damaging impact which they may not recover from.

Another analogy is like encouraging a kid's car racing hobby.  Don't give your kid a fast car until they've developed the skills nessesary to handle it.  Those skills are the priority, defensive driving lessons asap.

[andresfelipeescallonportil]

The learning process is indeed what needs to be encouraged to be able to succeed.

[Happilyfamily]

Great presentation of Dweck's work! Thanks for putting this powerful video together.

[jamespagous]

I’m doing this for revision on my psych GCSE and this is also a life skill

[TheHappinessChick]

Fantastic video! I've heard and read about Dweck's research but I'm super impressed that you're put it so succinctly! Very powerful stuff that every teacher and parent needs to know! 

[emmanueleverett]

Trevor thank you so much I was Priest a lot and when it came to the process I didn't know how to handle it now that I'm older I'm trying to learn as much as I can by enjoying the process

[cactoos]

My therapist showed me this. Glad he did. Gives me a different perspective on things and how I should praise people.

[eriksundell]

Well done presentation! I love it when i see presentations that is as awesome they can be!

[carlosfelipe.rodriguez]

Brilliant presentation, Trevor. You summarised Carol Dweck's Mindset research nicely. I'm a high school teacher and I came here from HarvardX's Leaders of Learning course on edX.

[Pauseitivityinaction]

Thanks for a very informative and simple explanation of Carol Dweck's work.  I plan to share this with my business clients to challenge them to consider how they might incorporate this into their feedback processes.

[matthewcilia]

Very surprising results from such a simple variation between two experiments. The power of mindset can change one's perspecrive in both present and future. It's impossible to nurture this feature and share it with others to make the best use of it.

[ellenclark]

Makes you really think about what you say and how!!! Very thought provoking

[sophiemurdoch]

im studying this at my school so thank you very much for the key summary

[jessbragg]

While i do agree with praising "the effort" part opposed to the "intelligence"part, there are times that telling your child he or she did something intelligent ARE warranted like creating an art book at 7 years old(with a detailed story line), or they beat a tough video game in less time than most people do(like 2 days!), then the "effort AND intelligence" part have merged and become one. Basically, because of their "effort", they have increased their intelligence, right? So, if i tell my kid he is smart, even when he does something smart, he won't try to improve himself later in life?that doesnt seem entirely true because i praised my kid for his intelligence at times and he is now 8 and he is a youtuber creating his own thumbnails & adds his own subtitles.He still takes on challenges. It just goes to show, NO 1 thing works for EVERYONE i guess. GREAT VIDEO!nice job

[Freakontheway]

Thank you so much for sharing! This will help tremendously
Diana, from The Netherlands

[leicalove]

Problem is, if the intelligent pupils have no challenge and do not have to put effort in their work, they never get praised unlike students who struggle right from the beginning. This is why we need individual teaching and also have to keep an eye on the talented!

[anneembrey]

Thanks for putting together a video focused on the data! It's just incredible. I am a believer in the growth mindset and the idea of Grit!