On: I Was Told I Was Very Smart

[andreyf]

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.

[btilly → andreyf]

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.

[roundsquare → andreyf]

That doesn't explain why the other group of kids did well. Presumably they should have been just as bored.

[bd → roundsquare]

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."