I was about to reply “hmm, I wonder how you could reward someone for making an effort rather than just for succeeding, or reward them for noticing when they make a mistake.” Then I read the article, and realized that that’s basically what it talks about.
Yeah, failures are important. But the natural tendency, whether teaching others or trying to change our own behaviour, is to correct and criticize failures–which is basically negative reinforcement and trains people to stop trying because failing is so painful. The interesting new point in the article is that positively reinforcing for success, if done in a certain way (the “wow you’re smart!” group of kids) can actually have the same effect as negatively reinforcing for failure.
More generally, a positive motivation often contains an implicit negative motivation—a threat of not receiving the same reward next time. (“What pushes you forward, holds you back.”)
Telling someone they are smart implies that the teacher has ability to judge smart and stupid students based on their work. So if tomorrow the work is not good enough, the same student could be judged as stupid. This could also happen if the student tries something new, where they obviously cannot have as good results as when they stick with what they already know well.
Telling someone they work hard avoids this danger somehow. Maybe because it contains an actionable advice what to next time to achieve the reward—so it feels more under control, less threatening.
Maybe the secret is in finding a motivation that feels under control, but not too much to allow cheating. Maybe it’s a moving target; I suspect that given enough time, some children in the experiment would find ways to appear working hard without doing the hard work.
Telling someone they work hard avoids this danger somehow. Maybe because it contains an actionable advice what to next time to achieve the reward—so it feels more under control, less threatening.
Yeah, working hard is something that isn’t associated with a fixed mindset in the same way that intelligence is. A lot of people see intelligence as something that you either have or you don’t.
I was about to reply “hmm, I wonder how you could reward someone for making an effort rather than just for succeeding, or reward them for noticing when they make a mistake.” Then I read the article, and realized that that’s basically what it talks about.
Yeah, failures are important. But the natural tendency, whether teaching others or trying to change our own behaviour, is to correct and criticize failures–which is basically negative reinforcement and trains people to stop trying because failing is so painful. The interesting new point in the article is that positively reinforcing for success, if done in a certain way (the “wow you’re smart!” group of kids) can actually have the same effect as negatively reinforcing for failure.
More generally, a positive motivation often contains an implicit negative motivation—a threat of not receiving the same reward next time. (“What pushes you forward, holds you back.”)
Telling someone they are smart implies that the teacher has ability to judge smart and stupid students based on their work. So if tomorrow the work is not good enough, the same student could be judged as stupid. This could also happen if the student tries something new, where they obviously cannot have as good results as when they stick with what they already know well.
Telling someone they work hard avoids this danger somehow. Maybe because it contains an actionable advice what to next time to achieve the reward—so it feels more under control, less threatening.
Maybe the secret is in finding a motivation that feels under control, but not too much to allow cheating. Maybe it’s a moving target; I suspect that given enough time, some children in the experiment would find ways to appear working hard without doing the hard work.
Yeah, working hard is something that isn’t associated with a fixed mindset in the same way that intelligence is. A lot of people see intelligence as something that you either have or you don’t.