“Students do much better when they believe that doing well is a function of hard work as opposed to innate talent.”

Why do some kids put forth little effort in school while others are motivated to achieve their personal best?

Over the past two decades, the main goal of Brainology, co-founded by Carols S. Dweck, Ph.D. and Lisa Sorich Blackwell, Ph.D., has been to discover what helps students achieve highly, and to apply the lessons learned toward improving motivation and achievement. Their research shows that developing a growth mindset — the core belief that abilities are malleable and not fixed — is critical to the adoption of learning-oriented behavior.

It turns out that beliefs and attitudes held by students have a strong influence on their achievement. In particular, students who believe that intelligence is something they can develop, engage in more effort-based strategies by working harder and spending more time on a subject as opposed to giving up.

Brainology research shows that students who embrace a growth mindset:

• believe their ability can be increased and value learning as a goal, even when it involves hard work or initial errors.
• feel that they have the ability, through their own efforts, to learn and master new material.
• identify difficulties as being due to lack of effort or inadequate strategy; not intelligence.

When students with a growth mindset have difficulty in a subject, they draw constructive, mastery-oriented conclusions and respond with positive, effort-based strategies. In one study, math students who believed their intelligence to be malleable performed better than equally able students who viewed their intelligence as fixed.

But how do students develop a growth mindset in the first place? The answer, at least in big part, is PRAISE. To determine the magnitude praise has on a child’s mindset, a group of researchers pulled fifth-graders out of class to take some simple puzzle tests. Following the test, each child received his or her score and was randomly given one line of praise for either intelligence (“You must be smart at this”) or effort (“You must have worked really hard”).

The students were then asked to choose a second test — another easy test similar to the first or a more challenging test where they would learn a lot. Of the children who were praised for effort, ninety percent chose the harder test while the majority who were praised for intelligence opted for the easy test.

The researchers continued the experiment by administering a third test far above the children’s grade level. As expected, the students performed poorly. However, those praised for effort on the original test tried various strategies to solve the puzzles and said they enjoyed the process. The students initially praised for intelligence were unhappy and assumed they just weren’t smart enough.

Following the artificial failure, the fifth graders were given an easy round of testing. On this final test, the students praised for effort improved their score by about 30 percent, whereas the “smart” group did worse by about 20 percent.

According to Dweck, “Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control. They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

New York Magazine’s article, How to Talk to Your Kids, delves further into this fascinating study and relates the results to additional research in the field. It also talks about the positive achievement which occurred when a group of students were taught that, with learning, the cells of their brain develop new connections and existing connections become stronger. Details on this intervention can also be found on The Science page at Brainology.

For further reading on how to develop a growth mindset in your personal or professional life, visit Carol Dweck’s Mindset website.