Praise for intelligence, rather than for effort, after success undermines children's motivation and performance after a later failure¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 3 studies · 2 review r2, 1 causal r? · q3
Currency · newest study 2007 · 1 of 3 entries checked against their sources (automated) · not reviewed by a person

All three recorded entries concern person- or ability-oriented praise ("You must be smart at these problems") given to children after success, and its effects once the children later fail: one set of experiments with fifth graders (Mueller & Dweck 1998), one narrative review (Henderlong & Lepper 2002), and a practice guide that cites the Mueller and Dweck experiments (Halpern 2007). Neither tests praise in general, praise as a component of feedback on academic work, or learning outcomes beyond performance on the problem set after failure; the review finds sincere process or effort praise can enhance motivation, and that the harm of person praise is moderated by age and gender.

Subclaims¶

q3 i? Praise for intelligence after success leads children to prefer performance over learning goals, and to show less task persistence, less task enjoyment, more low-ability attributions, and worse task performance after a later failure than children praised for effort. → Mueller & Dweck 1998

q3 i? Person- or ability-oriented praise ("you're a good boy," "you must be really good at puzzles") can increase vulnerability to helplessness after failure and dampen intrinsic motivation relative to process praise or neutral feedback, but the effect is moderated by the child's age and gender and depends on having a no-praise control condition. → Henderlong & Lepper 2002

q3 i? Elementary students praised for intelligence after success were likely to attribute future failures to lack of ability, show lower interest and less persistence, and adopt performance goals, whereas effort-praised children attributed failure to lack of effort and persisted more. → Halpern 2007

Evidence¶

Mueller & Dweck 1998¶

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), 33–52. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.75.1.33

q3 · peer-reviewed experiment (six studies) · i? · no standardized effect size reported · n=128 (Study 1) · causal · r?

Six experiments with fifth graders (Study 1: N = 128) manipulated the type of praise given after success on a nonverbal problem set (Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices): praise for intelligence ("You must be smart at these problems"), praise for effort, or a neutral control. Children then attempted a harder problem set and failed. Children praised for intelligence subsequently preferred performance goals over learning goals far more than those praised for effort (69% vs. 12%), and after failure their problem-solving scores dropped relative to their pre-failure baseline while effort-praised children's scores rose, F(2, 120) = 17.62, p < .001 — alongside lower task persistence and enjoyment and more ability (rather than effort) attributions for the failure.

Henderlong & Lepper 2002¶

Henderlong, J., & Lepper, M. R. (2002). The effects of praise on children's intrinsic motivation: A review and synthesis. Psychological Bulletin, 128(5), 774–795. doi:10.1037/0033-2909.128.5.774

q3 · narrative/systematic review of the experimental praise literature · i? · no pooled effect size (narrative synthesis) · n=N/A (review) · review · r?

A narrative review and synthesis of the experimental literature on praise and children's intrinsic motivation and perseverance. The authors conclude that person- or ability-oriented praise can undermine motivation and increase helplessness after later failure relative to process-oriented praise (citing Kamins & Dweck, 1999, and Mueller & Dweck, 1998), and that in upper-elementary children person praise dampened intrinsic motivation relative to a neutral-feedback control — but only for girls, not boys — showing the negative effect is real but moderated rather than universal. Provided praise is sincere and process/effort-focused, the review finds it can instead enhance motivation; the harm is specific to person/ability-focused praise and to postfailure conditions.

Halpern 2007¶

Halpern, D., Aronson, J., Reimer, N., Simpkins, S., Star, J., and Wentzel, K. (2007). Encouraging Girls in Math and Science (NCER 2007-2003). Washington, DC: National Center for Education Research, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. https://ies.ed.gov/ncee/wwc/PracticeGuide/5

q3 · i? · review · r2

Small randomized experimental studies (Mueller and Dweck 1998) cited under Recommendation 2. The guide contrasts these children with those given effort praise, who "were more likely to believe that subsequent failure was due to lack of effort, show higher persistence." No effect sizes printed.

"Elementary school students who were given praise about their intelligence after correctly solving a problem were likely to attribute future failures to lack of ability, have lower interest, show less persistence on future tasks, and have a goal for future tasks of looking smart."

Studies bearing on this claim¶

Should the positive comment and the assurance speak to the learner's ability, or to their work and effort? This table gathers the studies behind this claim and the 2 narrower claims that bear on it: 5 distinct studies (3 review, 1 causal, 1 theoretical), q2–q3, 0 of 5 with an effect size coded. One row per study, codes as each entry records them; no effect is averaged and no verdict is drawn. Built by scripts/synthesize_claim.py from eval/synthesis/; a row that looks wrong is fixed on the claim it comes from.

Discussion¶

Mechanism. The claim rests on three converging mechanisms. First, praise is low in informational value: feedback improves learning to the extent it tells learners how to improve, and generic praise ("good job") carries no actionable information — see Assessment for learning improves achievement.. Second, person-directed praise ("you're smart") encourages a fixed view of ability, which leads learners to avoid challenge and disengage after setbacks, whereas process praise ("you used a good strategy") is less damaging and can support persistence. Third, praise directed at the self rather than the task shifts the learner's focus from the learning goal to self-presentation and external approval, consistent with concerns from behaviorism that extrinsic social reinforcers can crowd out intrinsic engagement, and with self-determination theory, which predicts that controlling praise undermines autonomy — see Autonomy supports intrinsic motivation..

Boundary conditions. The effect is not uniform. Praise that is specific, task-relevant, and tied to process or strategy is far less harmful than generic or person-directed praise, and may even function as useful feedback when it highlights what was done well and why. Praise also plays a motivational and relational role — particularly for younger learners and for students who rarely receive positive attention — that may offset informational costs in some contexts; relational benefits of belonging and positive teacher–student relationships are documented independently in Belonging interventions improve outcomes.. The strongest negative effects are expected when praise is the dominant form of feedback, when it is directed at the person rather than the work, and when learners are old enough to interpret it as evaluative judgment.

Constraints on the claim. The claim should not be read as "all praise harms learning." Conditions under which the predicted negative effect weakens or reverses include: (a) praise that specifies the strategy or criterion being reinforced, which effectively becomes informational feedback; (b) early-grade contexts where praise functions primarily to sustain engagement and teacher–student rapport rather than to convey performance judgments; and (c) low-frequency praise embedded in otherwise substantive feedback, where the informational content dominates. The negative effect is most plausible when praise crowds out task information, targets the person's ability, or is delivered publicly in ways that invite social comparison. [-W] These constraints mean the claim holds only for a narrow band of praise use; designers should treat praise-heavy feedback as a risk condition, not a universal harm.

Open questions. The precise dose–response relationship between praise frequency and learning outcomes, and whether process praise produces measurable learning gains (as opposed to merely avoiding harm), remain contested in the literature. The Evidence section records one set of experiments (Mueller & Dweck 1998) and one narrative review (Henderlong & Lepper 2002), both on person or ability praise followed by failure; the broader mechanisms above (informational dilution, crowding out of task focus) are not tested by either, and no recorded study measures learning gains from or against praise in routine feedback.

Learner Variables¶

• Motivation — outcome: instruction changes it

Related Claims¶

• Feedback Most Effective At Task And Process Levels — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it

• Feedback improves learning by a medium amount on average, but its effect varies widely with the information it carries, and a substantial share of feedback effects are negative — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it

• Assessment for learning improves achievement. — the informational alternative: feedback that tells learners how to improve.

• Autonomy supports intrinsic motivation. — the motivational mechanism through which controlling praise backfires.
• Belonging interventions improve outcomes. — the relational function of praise that may offset its informational costs.
• Behaviorism — praise as an extrinsic reinforcer, and its limits for learning.
• Self-determination theory — controlling praise undermines autonomy and intrinsic motivation.
• Feedback that is specific and actionable improves learning — the informational alternative to praise (page not yet created).
• Person-directed praise fosters fixed mindsets and challenge avoidance (page not yet created).
• The article argues extrinsic rewards such as grades can reduce intrinsic motivation and should be phased out — related
• Expected tangible rewards reduce later free-choice engagement with a rewarded task, while verbal praise does not — related
• Proximal goals and ability attributional feedback for early learning raise self-efficacy more than distant goals and effort feedback, by a review's report of earlier studies — related
• Prolonged reading failure leads students to attribute failure to fixed low ability and define reading as a failure situation — related
• Synthesis and Evaluation subtests measure general mental ability rather than knowledge for lower grades or unfamiliar content — related
• Appropriately used technology can support practices that improve achievement, but inappropriate use can harm student performance — a broader claim this one bears on
• Students with belonging, purpose, collaboration, goal-setting, and perseverance skills alongside academic knowledge are more likely to reach their full potential — related
• Smaller classes related to more interactions; task-directed and praising interactions linked to more time on task and higher achievement, but organisational and personal interactions rose contrary to expectations — related
• Collaboration scripts improve collaborative skills and domain learning, but highly prescriptive scripts can undermine learner motivation and agency — related
• A CCSR research review concludes that four academic mindsets (belonging, growth beliefs, self-efficacy and value) increase perseverance and improve academic behaviors — related
• Teachers treat resilience under challenge as a teachable skill that current routines and dashboards do little to support — related
• Extrinsic goals are more strongly associated with cheating than intrinsic enjoyment of learning — related
• The relationship between effort and meaning follows an inverted U-shape: moderate friction enhances meaning and motivation while excessive friction overwhelms — related
• Process praise to toddlers predicts fourth grade math and reading comprehension achievement via children's incremental motivational frameworks — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Parents' beliefs about failure and reactions to children's failures, not their own mindsets, predict children's mindsets — related
• Praise for intelligence (person praise) induces a fixed mindset and helpless reactions compared with process praise — possibly the same claim (merge candidate)
• Parents' own incremental theories did not predict their process praise use or their children's motivational frameworks, and counter-intuitively correlated with more person praise — related
• Students generally attempted fewer items under ego-involving than task-involving feedback, but among praised students the gap was not significant — related
• Person praise and feedback manner significantly interact on task motivation, such that praise raises trials under ego-involving feedback and lowers them under task-involving feedback — related
• Under task-involving feedback, pre-task person praise reduces motivation and indirectly lowers task performance; under ego-involving feedback it indirectly raises performance — related
• Person praise raises state self-esteem (d = 0.40), and under task-involving feedback higher state self-esteem is negatively related to motivation, supporting a distraction mechanism only in the low-threat condition — related
• High-level prompting and specific praise continue to predict students' social reasoning one turn later (Lag-2), suggesting a vicarious reinforcing experience — related
• Cognitive Load Theory lacks a motivational focus, which becomes problematic when interpreting interventions that foster effortful learning strategies — related
• Extrinsic rewards deplete intrinsic motivation for already-motivated activities once the rewards are removed — related
• Parental focus on compliance harms homework learning, while supporting effort and process helps — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Most praise functions as a verbal reward, creating dependence on others' approval rather than self-generated criteria — related
• Goal orientations moderate self-efficacy perceptions in ways not originally predicted by self-efficacy theory — related
• Gaming participants did not report the negative consequences of task failure; low-stakes experimentation and regeneration supported perseverance — related
• Recorded natural-language feedback was associated with lower odds of subsequent persistent failure than no feedback in the randomized course subset — related
• Error framing is expected to induce differential mastery and performance-avoid orientations, shaping self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation — related
• Self-handicapping decreases effort to protect self-worth, in contrast to defensive pessimism — related
• Labeling children as visual versus hands-on learners biases adults' and children's judgments of intelligence and subject expectations — related
• Specific observable mindset-signaling behaviors have been identified that convey peers' implicit beliefs about ability — related
• Negative emotions are not uniformly detrimental; differentiation by valence, arousal, and object focus is needed — related
• Feedback targeting reading self-efficacy had a positive effect on motivation, while error-focused feedback and rewards had mixed effects on long-term interest and engagement — related
• Adult ability attributions of young children's success increase test cheating, per the article's title — related