You Are So Smart!
We’ve all had moments when our babes impressed us with their intelligence and we were sure we had spawned geniuses, the Einstein of the century, even! Sure they walked straight into a wall 10 seconds later, but still, Einsteins nonetheless! right?
No harm in saying, “wow! You are so smart!” right? After all, we want our kids to have high self-esteem and, maybe even more importantly, we want them know that WE think they’re smart.
Telling our children they are smart every once in a while is harmless, sure, but when it becomes a go-to phrase that we bring up every time we are even slightly impressed by their display of intelligence, that’s when it becomes problematic. The previous post about praise touches on a lot of the issues that are also present here. After all, saying “you’re smart” is also a form of praise that doesn’t focus on the process or the effort. But this one can be slightly more damaging in a more specific kind of way, so let’s get into it.
It all comes down to the growth mindset. We’ve heard the phrase, but what exactly does it mean? Put simply, there are two theories of intelligence, we refer to them as “mindsets.” Growth mindset means believing that one’s abilities aren’t innate, but they can be improved with practice and persistence and hard work. The opposite, fixed mindset, means that one is either capable of something or is not, and things that are not within the realm of accomplishment now will always remain there regardless of the effort put in. These mindsets are divergent, and nobody is purely one or the other, rather, it’s a spectrum.
Having more of a growth or fixed mindset is the difference between seeking out challenging tasks because you believe you have the ability to develop the skills to accomplish that task, and avoiding challenging tasks altogether.
Jason Moser from Michigan State University monitored the activity of the anterior cingulate cortex (or ACC) of 25 undergraduate students as they tried to identify the center letter in a string of similar-looking 5 letter series like “NNMNN” or “MMNMM,” a simple task that is easy to zone out with. These students also underwent an assessment to measure their placement on the mindset spectrum.
Over the course of the experiments, subjects who were higher on the growth mindset spectrum showed greater electrical activity in the ACC after they had made a mistake compared to those with fixed mindsets. This allowed the growth mindset participants to learn from their mistakes more easily and reduce the rate of errors.
This study comes years after a study by Carol Dweck from Stanford University that established the theories of mind. If you’re reading this blog, this stuff is important to you, perhaps even fascinating. I recommend you dive into Carol Dweck’s study and its implications further on your own. This video is a good place to start:
In the meantime, here at GBLC, we are conscious of offering intentional words of praise that focus on hard work and the process instead of intelligence and outcomes.
