Four Beliefs and Four Truths About Ability, Success, Praise, and Confidence

"You will understand why ability, success, intelligence, praise, and confidence do not make students [or ourselves or our children] value effort, or seek challenges, or persist effectively in the face of obstacles. And why they may often have quite the opposite effect." (pg. 2)

Last night Eric and I were reading a book which came highly recommended by an old professor of mine: Self-Theories by Carol Dweck. I pass on the high recommendation; it challenges commonly-held assumptions, brings illumination about how and why we act and achieve, and most importantly, gives us valuable knowledge that can help us to raise our children better. And, even better, it's well-written and engaging.

Let me tell you a little, first, about the author. Carol Dweck is a professor of psychology at Columbia University. This book is the thoughtful result of 30 years worth of research, and she's careful in her conclusions.

So, after this introduction, I'll just leave a teaser from the first chapter of the book:

"The hallmark of successful individuals is that they love learning, they seek challenges, they value effort, and they persis in the face of obstaces (see Sorich & Dweck, in press). In this book, I present research that explains why some students display these "mastery-oriented" qualities and others do not. This research challenges several beliefs that are common in our society:
1. The belief that students with high ability are more likely to display mastery-oriented qualities. You might think that students who were highly skilled would be the ones who relish a challenge and persevere in the face of setbacks. Instead, many of these students are the most worried about failure, and the most likely to question their ability and to wilt when they hit obstacles....
2. The belief that success in school directly fosters mastery-oriented qualities. You might also think that when students succeed, they are emboldened and energized to seek out more challenging tasks. The truth is that success in itself does little to boost students' desire for challenge or their ability to cope with setbacks. In fact, we will see that it can have quite the opposite effect....
3. The belief that praise, particularly praising a student's intelligence, encourages mastery-oriented qualities. This is a most cherished belief in our society. One can hardly walk down the street without hearing parents telling their children how smart they are. The hope is that such praise will instill confidence and thereby promote a host of desirable qualities. I will show that far from promoting the hoped-for qualities, this type of praise can lead students to fear failure, avoid risks, doubt themselves when they fail, and cope poorly with setbacks....
4. The belief that students' confidence in their intelligence is the key to mastery-oriented qualities. In a way, it seems only logical to assume that students who have confidence in their intelligence--who clearly believe they are smart--would have nothing to fear from challenge and would be somehow inoculated against the ravages of failure. It may seem logical, but it is not the whole story, or even most of it. Many of the most confident individuals do not want their intelligence too stringintly tested, and their high confidence is all too quickly shaken when they are confronted with difficulty...."

So here's the teaser. I highly recommend reading the book; it's hard to put down. Here's the publication information:

Author: Carol S. Dweck
Title: Self-Theories: Their role in motivation, personality, and development
Copyright: 2000 Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1-84169-024-4

If you read it or have read it, I'd love to hear your thoughts.