Happy Valentine's Day!

[alexmegami]

But I want to talk about something else.

Namely, this study.

...Normally, when I read studies, I go, "That's not me. This doesn't describe me at all." I tend to be the anecdote that falls through the data, you know? Even in areas where one would think I could say, "Yeah, I see myself there" - anything out of PSYCH 318, say - by and large, no.

This? This is me. Even though intellectually I know that effort is really what makes people succeed, it's a very hard mentality to break.

But I really should break it.

Arts & Letters Daily is fantastic, by the way.

Comments

[kisekileia.livejournal.com]

Wow. That is really interesting.

Honestly, I do believe that intelligence is important, but I think I probably suffered a lot from having the "you're smart" thing so drilled into me. Look at me now -- I'm an extreme example of the kind of "smart"-labelled person who can't take failure, and look where it's gotten me.

[safti]

Uh. Wow.

That sounds all too familiar.

Also, happy Valentine's Day, my dear. *hugs you*

[alexmegami]

You too! *hugs & snugs*

.praise.specifity.

[audiolight.livejournal.com]

I'm in PSYCH 212 this semester with Drysdale - and some of this stuff in the article isn't Earth-shattering. Like pretty much everything else in Ed Psych, people know what the tools are, they just use them ineffectively 99% of the time.

"Time-Outs" are good examples of psychological tools that are well known about that are poorly used. People will:

a) Use them as a punishment instead of what it's supposed to be - a removal of a positive reinforcement stimulus that is leading to negative behaviour
b) Say to the child that they can "come out when they feel like it" - because clearly, the acting out child will definitely take their actions more seriously after that... yeah right.

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Self-Esteem building is important. Without self-esteem, the kid is set up for a lot of problems later in life - namely the inability to perform things that involes risk, conviction, and a belief of self-efficacy. And yes, that conclusion is supported by large amounts of well-designed studies.

One of the ways to build self-esteem is use of praise. However, like all good psychological tools, you can use praise effectively and non-effectively.

People just forget why they're giving out praise - as the author of the article pointed out: some people do it for social reasons (high self-monitors probably engage in this the most), which is completely the wrong reason. The reason you're using praise is to raise a person's self-efficacy - cognitively adjusting their belief from "I can't do anything right" (a marker of depression in later life - global, stable attributions) to "Well, I might not be able to do this right, but I sure can do all these other things right. I just need to work at this one thing harder and I'll be good at this too." (specific, temporary attributions).

So, when you say: "My, you're smart!", what are you telling the kid? Nothing! The kid isn't actually smart at *everything* - it just isn't possible. Thus, when you give global, stable attributions to their state of intelligence, and they fail at something, guess what - they give the same attribution right back to you. It's easy to see how they resolve the cognitive dissonance: "My mom said I'm generally smart, but I can't do this - why? I guess I'm not really generally smart. She lied about that - maybe I'm really no good at anything." Suddenly, your praise is completely seen as insincere. I'm not surprised at the results of the study, look what they said to the kids in the study! In one condition they *specifically* praised the effort, in the other they *generally* praised the intelligence. That's not just a dichotomy between effort/intelligence comments - they've confounded it by dichotomizing specifity and generality. What would be better if they ran the study again, instead using conditions of Praise of "Effort" vs. "Specific way they thought about or approached the problem". Then compare. I'm betting the effects will be lessened at the very least.

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Alright, I'm done my psychology geekery for the day.

- Administrator

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

I hear you on the "if I'm smart I shouldn't need to expend effort" mentality. I've been trying to break it by starting with small things - I used to be completely disorganized and now I've gotten to the point where I can reorganize an entire office worth of files so that *anyone* can use them, for instance - but I think where it's hurt me the most is in doing things that I really love (acting, singing, etc.). I know that I'm not always going to be able to get it right the first time, but my innate perfectionism is hard to overcome - and because it's something I love, it's so much worse when I can't get it right the first, second or fifth time. So I don't even try.

I hope we both have better luck overcoming this in the future...