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.

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?

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.

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.

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."