Are You Smart or Hardworking? How Praise Influences Children's Motivation

Recruit children ages 9 to 11. For the purposes of this demonstration, only one child is tested. Larger sample sizes (as in Mueller and Dweck’s study¹) are recommended when conducting any experiments.

Make sure the participants have normal hearing and vision.

1. Prepare the materials.

1. Obtain three sets of similar puzzles or problems with about 10 items per set. Two sets should be of moderate difficulty, and one set should be very difficult for a child to complete. In this demonstration, use tangrams.

2. Data collection

1. Introduction to the task
   1. Sit the child on the opposite side of the table as the experimenter.
   2. Explain that the child is going to be solving some puzzles. Say: “I am going to show you some puzzles. Let me show you how these puzzles work.”
   3. Demonstrate how to complete a very easy tangram. 
2. Initial performance measure
   1. Tell the child: “Now you are going to have a chance to complete some puzzles. I want you to complete as many puzzles as you can in 5 minutes. Remember that you need to complete each puzzle correctly before you can move to the next one.”
   2. Set a timer for 5 min and stop.
3. Praise manipulation
   1. Encourage the child by saying: “Wow, you did very well on these problems. You got [number of puzzles completed] right. That is more than [percent of puzzles completed] of the puzzles!”
   2. At this point, randomly assign the child to one of two praise conditions.
      1. In the praise for ability condition, the experimenter says: “You must be smart at these puzzles.”
      2. In the praise for effort condition, the experimenter says: “You must have worked hard at these puzzles.”  
4. Failure experience
   1. Tell the child: “Now you are going to do another set of puzzles. You will have 5 minutes to work on them. Remember that you need to complete each puzzle correctly before you can move to the next one.”
   2. Set a timer for 5 min.
   3. Present the very difficult tangrams.
   4. When the timer goes off, say: “You did a lot worse on these puzzles. You got less than [percent of puzzles completed] of them right.” 
5. Post-failure performance measure
   1. Tell the child: “Now you are going to do another set of puzzles. You will have 5 minutes to work on them. Remember that you need to complete each puzzle correctly before you can move to the next one.”
   2. Present the second set of moderately difficult tangrams.
   3. Stop when the timer goes off.
6. Debriefing
   1. Explain what the study was about to the child. Say: “This study was about how children react to different kinds of praise when they are doing these puzzles.”
   2. Reassure the child about the overall quality of their performance. Say: “The second set of puzzles was very hard. It was made for much older children than you. You actually did a great job solving all of the puzzles.”  

3. Analysis

1. The dependent variables in this study are the number of puzzles that the child completes during the initial performance measure, and the number of puzzles that the child completes during the post-failure measure.
2. Compare the child’s initial and post-failure performance using a repeated measure analysis of variance, with time as the within-subjects factor and condition as the between-subjects factor.