A psychology professor Carol Dweck (at Stanford) has a well supported theory about why some people achieve their potential and others do not. "The key, she found, isn't ability; it's whether you look at ability as something inherent that needs to be demonstrated or as something that can be developed." Praise can have a great effect in either promoting or undermining an individual's confidence and motivation.
Here's how I understand the Mindset theory...
- those with a "fixed" mindset of intelligence are concerned with how smart they are and prefer tasks they can already do well and don't like to make mistakes.
- those with a "growth" mindset of intelligence want to challenge themselves to increase their abilities, even if they fail at first.
But the best news of all is that the research showed that shifting that key self-belief in people was possible and made a major difference. There are some interesting implications and research she's done about this in business and young children.
** For kids the important thing to remember is to praise the child's efforts, not their intelligence.**
Here are links to 2 articles about her work:
http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/marapr/features/dweck.html
http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2007/february7/dweck-020707.html
6 years ago
2 comments:
That is interesting and good food for thought! I'll definitely be checking out those links-
I read thru the articles yesterday; I guess Dr. Dweck has been researching this stuff for years, so you're probably familiar w/ her from your studies. Her new book sounds like it could be interesting though..
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