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Comment by hegemonicon | Hacker News Reader

The most famous study confirming this is the one where they give two groups of kids relatively easy math problems. The first group they tell "wow, you must be really smart to complete all those!", the second group they tell "wow, you must have worked really hard to complete all those!". They then give them another set of problems far above their skill level. The second group of kids, the 'hard-workers', work much longer at the problems before giving up on them. And when both groups are given another set of relatively easy problems, the first group's performance takes a nosedive.

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You can find more on that study at http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/.

But I have a fundamental disagreement with the simplistic message of complimenting effort rather than brains. And that disagreement is that you're training kids to work hard, but not necessarily well. In my childhood the messages we got pushed us to always look for the trick. As an adult I really value the mental habit of always looking for the shortcut that makes things easy.

Another interesting variant I find myself using with my son is to compliment him for showing smarts, but follow it up with a theory that brains need practice to continue working. Thus "smart" becomes a compliment for what he does, and not what he is. For instance I'll say something like, "How did you get so smart? You must have been really using that brain! Just look at what you've learned!"

The principle is to commend something that is improveable and controllable. That can be refined by adding information: encouraging the best/most-effective activities.

You might be interested in the book "Punished by Rewards" by Alfie Kohn. It goes into detail about why praise can be detrimental, and what to substitute for it. From the description on his site <http://www.alfiekohn.org/books/pbr.htm>, it "[draws] from hundreds of studies, [and] demonstrates that people actually do inferior work when they are enticed with money, grades, or other incentives." The biggest revelation for me was that 'other incentives' includes both praise and punishment.

After reading his stuff, it's pretty frustrating to realize how much society depends on this bogus punishment/reward system.

"It goes into detail about why praise can be detrimental, and what to substitute for it."

What, then? ;)

"Rewards and punishments are just two sides of the same coin -- and the coin doesn't buy very much. What is needed, Kohn explains, is an alternative to both ways of controlling people. The final chapters offer a practical set of strategies for parents, teachers, and managers that move beyond the use of carrots or sticks."

Has anyone read those final chapters and could tell us whether there are any actionable alternatives in there at all?

OK I've read some Amazon reader reviews and it seems like the alternative strategy is to simply give tasks or set goals and leave rewards or punishments out of the picture.

As one reviewer put it: "I believe Kohn realizes rewards are necessary, just not the rewards/reinforcement that have been in use. Learning is its own reward. If this wasn't true, why would these people who reviewed the book have read it? Were they paid to read it? Love is its own reward. Meaningful debate/discussion is its own reward. Generosity is its own reward. Using these as your reinforcers will bring results."

I know this is true, but it doesn't help. Incentives are a side-effect of competition for talent. If a business owner or manager doesn't offer them, people will find the above intrinsic rewards and enjoy them, but will still leave once the competition comes knocking with carrots.

Kohn says that compensation is perfectly fine, as long as it's not used as a cudgel to mold behavior. You should get high quality employees because they want to be successful and good at what they do, not because you pay them to be. One way of solving the problem you propose is to pay your people well, so competitors have a hard time offering significantly more, and then give them the opportunity to enjoy themselves at work. Why would they leave?

I understand that Netflix does something like this. They pay salaried employees top dollar, give them choices about what to work on, and demonstrate their trust with policies such as the no-vacation-policy policy. < http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664 >.

Great link, thanks!

Accelinova provides chapter 10 for free off of their 'bookshelf': < http://www.accelinnova.com/pdfs/kohn.pdf >. This chapter is focused on motivation in the workplace, and he does have several concrete proposals, organized into sections: 1. Abolish Incentives - While pay is not a motivator, it can be a demotivator. "Pay generously and equitably...Then do everything in your power to put money out of [the employees] minds." 2. Re-evaluate Evaluation - Do away with the regularly scheduled performance review, and instead give employees regular, useful feedback, and in particular, the entire process of giving feedback should be separate from the process that determines compensation. 3. Create the Conditions for Authentic Motiviation - Attend to "the collaboration that defines the context of work, the content of the tasks, and the extent to which people have some choice about what they do and how they do it." He goes on to give more details about these three conditions in the second half of the chapter.

The other 2 chapters in this end section are similar, with one each focusing on raising children and how to structure education.

Thanks!

I had the same question and re-read the end over again looking for the answer. I didn't find it. The whole premise of the book was rewards (including praise) undermines our intrinsic motivation. Compare it to a book on global warming: here's why it's a Bad Thing. So how is everyone going to live without a car? Who knows--that's not the subject of the book; it is trying to raise your awareness of the affect of driving on the planet.

Praise or a reward is the _easy_ solution. There is no motivator that applies to everyone, everywhere for every situation.

Here is a suggestion. Find out what the people you interact with want and tie it into the system. Do they want vacation? Do they want recognition? Money? As you scale up, create a corporate culture that values some set of things and attract people with shared values.

If anyone is interested in how to motivate employees without resorting to cash -- which doesn't work well -- I would highly recommend "Peak: How Great Companies Get Their Mojo From Maslow" which, of course, is heavily based on Maslow's work. Tony Hsieh said it helped him think about culture at Zappos; it's a good read.

http://www.amazon.com/Peak-Companies-Maslow-non-Franchise-Le...

So to restate: We need to praise intelligence as an applied behavior, not an intrinsic trait.

This mode of reinforcement really should be reapplied to anything "natural" vs practiced: athletics, grace, popularity, ninjitsu...

Do you have a daughter? Since this article is still on the front page I would like to ask HN how does one deal with the similar issue of letting a young girl know she's pretty without suggesting it's of central importance? The problem is physical attractiveness is more inate than intelligence. I think the best course is to suggest innate attractivness is happy chance to be taken advantage of, generally it should be treated with indifference. I don't want my little sister to be swept off her feet by the first boy who gives her flowers, but you don't want her to ignore any advantages she may have. It may also be useful to point out how much attractivness depends on cultural assumptions of beauty.

Interesting question, especially how you've phrased it. I don't have a daughter but I've got two little boys, so I'll try but I may not be the best too comment.

Since this article is still on the front page I would like to ask HN how does one deal with the similar issue of letting a young girl know she's pretty without suggesting it's of central importance

Well, my approach would be not to bother letting her know she's pretty. Let's face it, unless she is unlucky enough to be "ugly" in a way that removes her from the accepted norm, there is a high probability that somebody somewhere will date her and love her when she is older.

Not to discount the effect that our culture places on girls and physical attractiveness, but girls learn much from their parents, especially there fathers. If she can see that what she looks like doesn't matter to you one iota, odds are she will not see any real value in any guy that mentions how pretty she is. You can't be swept off your feet by somebody calling you pretty when being pretty isn't how you define your worth.

In other words, by worrying about her getting the pretty comment from you, you're probably working against your intended objective.

If she can see that what she looks like doesn't matter to you one iota, odds are she will not see any real value in any guy that mentions how pretty she is. You can't be swept off your feet by somebody calling you pretty when being pretty isn't how you define your worth.

Very well said. The next step is that she should see that attractiveness is not the most important trait to me (or her father). With this perspective, the thing to do is not to vaccinate her, but to praise her abilities and values so she never associates her worth with physical appearance. Thus, she can skip the whole trouble altogether.

So, this generalizes not to attractiveness, but what people tie their worth to.

What makes you think you have to let her know?

I realize you're in the big brother department and would like to protect her. But allow me to ask: would she be any less in need of your protection if she were plain-looking? or homely?

Children are incredibly bright. If she's pretty, she already knows. And I'd be willing to wager that she's already leveraging that knowledge when it suits her.

If you try to prepare her for it, all you're really doing is letting her know how important you think it is. And if she looks up to you, that will reflect on how she values it as a part of her identity. Which I feel is far more risky than calling her 'smart'. Because 'pretty' is transient.

I realize you're in the big brother department and would like to protect her. But allow me to ask: would she be any less in need of your protection if she were [very]* plain-looking? or homely?*

No, but a helpful response might be more straightforward and wouldn't be helpful until well into adolescence.

You're probably right all around, but family isn't the only influence, and depending on the family, friends are a greater influence on a person. Junior high and high schools have weird social hierarchy that frequently stresses physical appearance. Some girls seem to have a need for male approval. I just want her feel no need for that. And there probably isn't anything I can do better than spending time with her. For some girls, with different families, I doubt this is the case.

And I absolutely agree that it is a risky proposition and probably not worth playing.

Just praise her for her non-physical qualities, so that that when the twisted high-school value system kicks in, she'll at least be aware of an alternative value system.

I think that relates to how smart is synonymous with lazy: it's because smart always try find the easy way out.

The hard way to do something would require a lot of effort, but actually very little brain power. An example would be trying to modify a set of data. The hard way would be to do it by hand. That's the most obvious method and thus requires little brain power to arrive at. However the faster way is to write a Python script that does it.

Probably part of the de-emphasis on smarts is society's general attitude towards innate intelligence. We don't like to believe that some people are simply born better than others, so we stress that more effort is better instead.

There's no arguing the fact that not everyone is equally gifted in terms of brain power, so I think it's kind of silly to try to ignore intelligence. Intelligent people are creative, open minded, and flexible. But an intelligent person who's allergic to actual effort is the real problem we want to avoid. Also we're probably more equal in intelligence than we are in our ability to work hard. So in practice, this is probably why effort is a better indicator of ability to succeed than intelligence is.

And when both groups are given another set of relatively easy problems, the first group's performance takes a nosedive.

The other part (working longer on hard problems) is important, but this is probably not so bad - there's rarely a point in doing math problems below your skill level.

Um, I think you missed the point. After encountering a challenge the group that was initially praised for brains saw their performance drop on problems that should have been within their skill level. The group that was initially praised for effort saw their performance improve after that same challenge.

The moral is simple. When you praise children, you motivate them to seek more praise. If your praise is about something that is out of their control, such as innate intelligence, you discourage them from trying to take control of their circumstances. But if it is within their control, such as effort, they apply energy in a useful direction.

If you're a parent, which would you prefer to do?

Well, taking it out of the abstract, these kids were probably given math problems that were boring by the time you got to the second set. There's only so much 254+739=? you can do before you get bored. At that point, they weren't testing motivation, they were testing patience.

That doesn't explain why the other group of kids did well. Presumably they should have been just as bored.

They were praised for being "hard workers" meaning they could expect social approval for chugging through boring tasks.

The first group already got their social approval for being smart. Once labeled "smart", they already "knew" they were smart.

But ones that were labeled "hard workers" needed to keep up "hard work" to retain the (desired positive) label.

Just compare:

"I'm still smart, even if I performed bad on boring task."

vs.

"I'm still hard worker, even if I didn't put much effort into boring task."

Unfortunately if you go back to the actual research, kids who were complimented for being smart when given the choice preferred to be given easy problems for homework, and the ones who were told they were hard working preferred to be given difficult problems.

I take that as evidence from the students that boredom wasn't the cause of their results.

No the moral is if you lie to children, you can expect them to change their behavior based on your lie.

If you praise a child who is actually smart, for being smart, then things will work a lot better.

I understand the goal of this study was to see if increasing self esteem can help. But don't extrapolate that to also assuming that praising a child for things that really are praise worthy (including being smart) is bad.

The result of the study should be: don't lie in your praise.

It's not about lying in your praise, it's about setting the expectation that smart people don't have to work hard at things.

This is actually a serious problem among gifted children. They are told they are smart for most of their lives while the work is very easy. Once work gets difficult for them, they start to think "this is different, it's HARD. Crap, maybe I'm not smart after all".

The linked NY Magazine article covers this concept nicely.

I think the problem is largely standardized teaching - you set a syllabus that works for the median pupil, and depending on the deviation in ability most students might be in the range that it is ok. But at least a minority will be bored as they pick up the concept first time, and then have to wait while everyone else is walked through a number of iterations to ensure it sinks in. Meanwhile another minority is out of their depth, and can never keep up no matter how hard they try, and eventually they give up and/or become troublemakers (which can happen at the other end of the spectrum as well).

I remember the only time in school (5-16) I actually enjoyed it - instead of learning from the board, we had a year where the maths lessons were all taught from little booklets each with 10-20 pages, with a number of different subjects - about a third of the books were "core/basic" that everyone had to do by the end of the year, the rest you could move onto if you could pass the mini tests you could ask for once you had read it.

Everyone got to go at their own pace, the teacher just handed out and marked tests and answered questions as needed or helped out those most in need to get the basics covered.

Why did they stop?

A bit of both probably. Balance.

>> "If your praise is about something that is out of their control, such as innate intelligence, you discourage them from trying to take control of their circumstances."

I'm not sure kids really understand or believe the above. The more you learn, the smarter/cleverer you become. So praising them by saying they're really smart/clever, is praising them for learning.

Personally I'm more inclined to say "Wow you're very clever to get that right" and gets a better response from my kids, than saying "Wow you worked really hard".

When I was growing up I understood the difference. I was told that because I was 'smart' more was expected of me. I don't think I ever quite lived up to those expectations; the bar was somehow always just above the level where I was. But I do think that I ended achieving more than I would have otherwise been inclined.

I think it's important to always have that bar one notch above where you are. Complacent isn't something I'd ever want to be described as.

What would be really is interesting is the same study but with the first group being told they're hard-working and the second group not being given any praise at all. That would help test how far the "praise/incentives diminish performance" theory really goes.

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