Mindset and the impact of praise on effort

Okay, more thoughts on Mindset by Carol Dweck. Today what stands out is the section where she describes how they took a group of students and they gave them questions from an IQ test and the point wasn't really to see how well they did, the point was to praise them in different ways. So one group was praised with a fixed mindset so they were said you're so smart and then the other group was praised for a growth mindset. Wow, that's a really good score you must have worked really hard. So in one they're praising some idea of innate ability and the other group they're praising effort and what they found of course was that afterwards these the group that, I should clarify this, before all of this the group was seen as having all generally the same mindset and I believe they all generally had about the same score.

After the praise when they went to continue what they found was that just that quickly introduced to the idea of ability over effort the group with the fixed mindset was less willing to take on further challenges. And then she goes on to talk about this idea of praising effort and it reminded me of something I heard when I was growing up it was just starting to come around and my parents were kind of of the age where this idea was coming around to them and it was the idea of instead of saying good boy or you're so smart it was good job. I think that's kind of the same thing and I'm wondering if this is even connected in some way.

But then I started to think about a little bit more and I wondered while these in this case these two mindsets seem like completely different modes they're actually not that different. I think it's possible you know obviously I haven't done the research here like Dwight has but I think it's possible that people are still even when in a growth mindset are still reacting to social dynamics. What I mean by that is one of the problems with the fixed mindset is you say good boy you're so smart they begin to see themselves as smart so everything that they do is a judgment of whether they're fulfilling that idea of themselves.

So they're less willing to take on challenges because challenges might suddenly show that they're not as smart as people think they are. And the idea is with the growth mindset is that they are willing to take on challenges and I think the reason they are willing to take on challenges is because the thing that they start to identify themselves with and the thing that they start to get praised for is the effort. And the reason I say that's not really that different is because you're transitioning them from you're so smart to you're such a good worker you're such you are so good at making effort.

And I don't think that's a criticism I think that's actually a good thing that they're close and similar because that means the transition between the two is not as difficult as it would be if they were completely different worlds and maybe that's why it can happen so quickly as it did in that group of students.