Kids Praised for Being Smart Are More Likely to Cheat

For example: in Belgium, in recent years a lot of kids are (often) given points for effort so they can pass a certain grade. More and more the case. I talked to a teacher friend about this, and while he thinks its great, I think it's ridiculous. Do we want a society of people who put in some effort yet achieve nothing?

Now, not that I think the educational system shouldn't be flexible and account for the fact that not everyone has the same level of intelligence or ability (everyone is different + has different talents, which is great!), but you can end up with some weird situations. Add to that the fact that the people who become teachers are generally of quite low quality (very few bright minds end up teaching) and you can easily see the quality of education declining.

While grades are to be looked at on a case by case basis (and I'm aware people don't often find their passions and talents until later in life), I don't believe that you should get (too much) points for effort. You don't get points in life for effort either.

And yet, our work is completely the opposite. Your boss doesn't care how much effort it took you to do that thing, only that it got done.

Parents inevitably take this approach at home as well. An A is an A is an A. Good marks are what we look for, and are a mental shortcut to know if your child is doing their work at school. But we see this can backfire, as children learn that getting all the answers right on a test are all that matters. Maybe instead our school system needs to instead evaluate relative performance, not absolute performance. A grade should say "Sally improved by 50% this term", and parents can praise that result. The tests that a child takes should adjust to take into account that child's proficiency, to ensure that child is always being challenged.

Aside: Getting all the answers right on a test is also a poor signal - you're essentially clipping the measurement of a child's performance. Kids should be used to failure, and learning how to take on new challenges. Why not give a test where the expected mark is 50%?

This was a direct result of my "intelligence complex" and yet I have no trouble learning new things. I actually get extremely bored if I'm not digging in depth into new subjects every 6-9 months. Speaks to why I have several unfinished websites because I wanted to learn a new framework, unused golf clubs, tons of cooking utensils but no food, etc.

I love to learn, I just never learned how to be motivated or competitive or persistent.

Both my wife and I were labelled as "gifted". My wife scored 145 twice on the IQ test, so she's much smarter than me. We were both praised as smart throughout our childhood, but we were also both very competitive. We never had any problems with lacking motivation and working hard. Losing never discouraged us, because winning was always much more motivating.

I was never tempted to cheat, mainly because I always felt that if I lost, I deserved the loss. To me, there's no sense in being competitive if you're going to fabricate your wins, but that's a moral system I developed on my own very young.

My kids are a bit different. They're definitely much smarter than their peers, but I often see them giving up when they lose, when we plays games and such. I definitely stress to them the importance of never giving up, and the value of effort over natural skills and always trying hard. I tell them that just because they're smart doesn't mean that they will always win, and that people who work hard will always beat the lazy smart person. Also, never fear losing because winners always lose more because they're always competing, but it's the big wins that matter more than small losses.

I hope they take this message to heart, because I have friends who fear failure and it's debilitating to them. Even the idea of applying for a new job is too much because they can't handle rejection, which I find extremely sad.

I doubt it was the wording of the praise, but rather the lack of my own effort and application in learning things that were hard for other students.

I think it's more likely that praise had little to do with your behavior, and you would've been the same regardless. I think it's tempting to backsplain our behavior with things we happen to remember from our past.

For example, pretty much everyone struggles with their own attention span and learning new things.

If you are told "you got the answer, you must have worked hard", then you get to own your success and you learn that if you work hard, you can earn success.

The journey and the reward on completion are important, but the most important is teaching them improvement to prevent coasting. In life, success comes from many integration and market tests, tests can be failed but once you pass you have a solid release iteration and improvement, continuously build on that by comparing yourself to yourself via diffs at checkpoints.

when i coach kids in basketball, i like to praise "effectiveness", which is a combination of stamina (staying with a task, both physically and mentally) and decision-making (doing the best thing in the moment given your capabilities).

these notions go beyond simple effort and results by weaving in underlying positive behaviors and sets the child up to succeed at their level, while also stretching them so they're never too complacent about their current accomplishments.

it's a super-tricky balancing act, and i get it wrong all the time, but it's rewarding when you see a child grow without them even realizing what's going on.

In any case I’m totally unsurprised by this. Praising innate ability represents an entirely different value system from praising effort.

Praise from a parent, mentor or teacher regarding the effort put forth in those moments can prevent the learner from giving up.

But I do agree that kids (or even adults sometimes) need help recognizing the mind-blowing wonder of nature and natural phenomenon around them. I like to take the approach of asking my kids why they think animals are doing what they're doing or why the water is rough in some spots but not others, etc. They get more praise for a more thoughtful or logical answers (effort) without regard for accuracy (outcome).

It's amazing how few students are actually as bad as they appear to be on first pass. I basically go into every student/teacher interaction assuming the kid is above average, and I'm very rarely disappointed. That's because "average" is often pulled way down by issues surrounding self-image and study behavior, both of which have no bearing on raw ability.

Basically, "confidence + hard work" is usually enough to take a kid from below average to slightly above average.

Carol Dweck argues in her book (and the research behind it) that you're describing different symptoms of the same problem, rather than an inverse.

The problem being; a mindset that believes a normal person's ability at a task (at least at a high school level) is governed by fixed traits rather than something that can be changed.

- People who consider themselves inherently unskilled at a task are more likely to not bother.

- People who consider themselves inherently skilled at a task are likely to fear failure because it damages their self worth.

- People who focus on growth/learning/effort are less afraid of failure, attempt harder problems and are more resilient to setbacks

These ideas may seem trite these days but the book was published in 2006 so maybe less so then.

Reminds me something else: in college I failed hard, some times I tried to really learn but would drown at the second question. Surprisingly the topic I didn't even bother to learn, I had better grades. Because all I had was 2 hours, the subject and my brain. I didn't feel demotivated by not being able to answer question 2 since I was unable to answer any of these right off the bat. But after thinking, I could grab a few point here and there, and try every problems. It even became absurd when at a discrete math exam (that nobody loves) every body left after the first page thinking page 2 would be even harder. Turns out the remaining exercices were trivial, even for my tourist self. So I ended in the first pack.

If you have any favorite links from early child psych lit - please share.

I was homeschooled for much of my childhood and first went to a public school my Junior year of high school. I didnt think of myself as exceptionally smart - average at best. I was in a English class one day half way through the year when the teacher was putting us into group. A girl he paired me up with said, "Yay he's smart!" and that was the first time I ever thought I was a "smart" kid. That was a town in Vermont where the public education system was not very good.

Later when I went to college I realized I was just about average at most things, a bit above average at some, and significantly below average at many things (due to poor homeschooling).

As an adult I realize that I'm more intelligent than the average joe but when I'm in a room of professors or even people who have a passion for studying and learning I can tell I'm simply not at the same level as them.

The desire for adults to see genius children is detrimental I believe. I too grew up with lots of praise although it wasn't family only. It didn't help me much. Especially since I was kept in normal schools at normal pace, so now I'm bored and spoiled. College slapped 90% of that out of me. I still feel like a genius occasionally and although feel like a fraud most of the time.

to add some value to the topic of education, what people call intelligence in children is often an ease for some abstraction and systematic thinking. While most kids are scattered and down to earth. But there will be subjects or times when even your(my) nice brain will fail to appreciate some idea or detail. Especially outside of your natural tastes.

Rocky Balboa prepares for the showdown at the end of the movie with a series of boring morning runs, not with a series of exciting bar fights. Similar patterns apply to writing, music and even maths.

This is what testing should be focused on, IMO. Creating some visibility for the learner on long and short term progress, and a "reward" for improvement.

The canonical system (IMO) for this is Kano Jigoro's judo belt system and its descendants. Works great for kids. Seems like we could do it for math or reading too.

Umm. Stop trying to place blame on others or yourself. Nothing good can come from that. Results stem from effort, nothing more or less. Learning comes from trying, both success and failure. Understand where you went wrong and aim to do better in the future. When you fail again, rinse and repeat all of the above. And remember none of this is easy, you're trying to overcome deeply ingrained patterns of thinking and behavior.