Praise for Intelligence can Undermine Children’s Motivation and Performance Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance. Journal of personality and social psychology, 75(1), 33.

Types of Praise Intelligence Praise Effort Praise “You are so smart” “You worked so hard”

Hypothesis Hypothesis: After failure, intelligence Praise leads to less – Task enjoyment: “How much fun were the problems?” – Task Persistence: “How much would you like to take these problems home to work on?” – Task performance: Test score

First, students were given an EASY test Experimental Design

Raven’s Progressive Matrices

Intelligence Praise Group Effort Praise Group You must be smart! You must have worked hard! Experimental Design Part 2

Experimental Design Part 3 Then, students were given a DIFFICULT test

Experimental Design Part 4 Students were given another EASY test

“I am not smart enough” “I didn’t work hard enough“ Attribution Score Effort Attribution Intellect Attribution

Conclusions Intelligence Praise causes ability attributions Intelligence Praise Decreases – Task Persistence – Task Enjoyment – Task Performance

Future Implications Praise for Effort!