In the News: The danger of extreme praise
Carol Dweck and her colleagues have shown that different types of praise influence children’s beliefs and consequently, their behaviour in different ways. Some praise (e.g., “you’re smart”) reinforces a child’s belief that s/he has certain traits and talents. When a child believes s/he has a certain talent, and encounters difficulty in that area, s/he is prone to giving up. In contrast, when a child is praised for his/her effort and encounters obstacles in that area, s/he tends to work harder. A recent paper in Psychological Science discusses three studies by Brummelman et al. that indicate that extreme praise (e.g., “that was an incredibly beautiful painting” vs. “that was a beautiful painting”), when given by an adult to a child with relatively low self-esteem, can cause the child to avoid taking on challenges because s/he believes that s/he won’t be able to live up to the adult’s high expectations.