Praise and intelligence: Why telling kids they are smart can make them act dumb

when praise backfires - demotivated, reluctant students sit in class at desk

In cultures around the world, people have tended to take a cautious view of praising children for their talents and abilities. It seems that just about everybody – from hunter-gatherers, to agriculturalists, to folks living in industrial societies – have had the same idea: If we pump up individuals with praise, they might become conceited, entitled, bossy, or narcissistic.

But then something happened – the rise of the Self-Esteem movement in the late 20th century. In places like the United States, some people became convinced that children needed ego-boosting praise to achieve (Baumeister et al 2003; 2018).

Want your kids to succeed? Tell them they are bright and talented – over and over again. Then maybe they will feel motivated to perform well.

The trend rippled throughout the educational system and major media. The classic preschool program, Blue’s Clues, ended each episode with a cheerleading session for its young viewers: “Hey, you know what? You’re really smart!”

Well-intentioned? Certainly. But probably not the best approach. Research suggests that certain types of praise can backfire. In particular, telling kids that they are smart can make them avoid or sabotage challenges. It may even put them at risk for thinking they are stupid or pathetic. What works better? Praise that is focused on specific behaviors — such as perHere is the evidence.

When you praise kids for their ability, it makes them focus on looking good—not on learning.

In a landmark series of experiments on American 5th graders, researchers Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck (1998) found that kids behaved differently depending on the type of praise they received after working on a test of abstract reasoning (“Raven’s Progressive Matrices”).

Kids who had been praised for their intelligence tended to avoid subsequent challenges. Instead, they preferred easy tasks. They were also more interested in their competitive standing–how they measured up relative to others–than they were in learning how to improve their future performance.

By contrast, kids who had been praised for their effort showed the opposite trend. They preferred tasks that were challenging. They were more interested in self-improvement than they were in finding out how other children had performed.

Kids differed in other respects, too. Compared to kids praised for their effort, kids praised for their ability were

  • more likely to give up after a failure
  • more likely to perform poorly after a failure, and
  • more likely to misrepresent how well they did on a task.

Twenty years later, Shufen Xing had her colleagues conducted similar experiments on 5th graders in China. Once again, kids were less likely to improve their performance after failure if they had previously received praise for their ability (e.g., “I can see you must be really clever!”), rather than praise for their effort (Xing 2018).

In addition, Xing’s team uncovered evidence that praising ability led kids to sabotage their performance on difficult tasks by rushing through them or taking less time. It’s as if the kids were thinking, “Hmm. I’m afraid this challenge is going to mess up my reputation. Maybe I can spare myself embarrassment by doing rushed, careless work. Then I can use this as a face-saving explanation for why I didn’t perform well.”

It might be a conscious thought, or an unconscious one, but the effect is the same: The student self-handicaps in order to protect his or her self-worth.

Praising kids for their abilities may backfire in other ways, too.

When we praise kids for their intelligence, they may learn to view their failures as evidence that we were wrong. They aren’t intelligent after all.

In the Mueller and Dweck study, kids were given moderately difficult problems to solve, and when each kid was finished, he or she was told “Wow, you did really well on these problems. You got….a really high score” (Mueller and Dweck 1998).

In addition, there were three different experimental conditions. Each kid was either

  • praised for his or her intelligence (“You must be smart at these problems”)
  • praised for his or her effort (“You must have worked hard at these problems”), or
  • given no additional feedback (the control condition)

Next, children were given a second set of problems—this time, very difficult ones—and they were asked to explain why they performed poorly.

The kids who had praised for their effort on previous tasks responded the same way as controls did—attributing their failure to a lack of effort. But the kids who had been praised for their intelligence attributed more of their failure to a lack of intelligence.

There is also evidence that past praise can set up children for future feelings of shame.

girl in library at desk gazes at viewer, while boy studies in the background

In an experiment conducted on children in the Netherlands, Eddie Brummelmann and his colleagues asked more than 300 elementary school kids (ages 8-13) to fill out a questionnaire measuring their self-esteem.

Then — a few days later – each child played two rounds of an online game: a practice round, and a competitive round.

Although the kids didn’t know it, they were each randomly assigned to receive different kinds of feedback, regardless of their actual performance. For instance, after the first (practice) round, each child received either:

  • person-based praise (“Wow, you’re great!”), which comments on a child’s personal traits;
  • process-based praise (“Wow, you did a great job!”), which directs attention to a child’s behavior; or
  • a control condition, in which the child wasn’t given any praise, but merely informed that the next round of the game was about to begin.

After the second (competitive) round, each child received good news (“You won!”) or bad news (“You lost!”).

The researchers measured how kids were feeling immediately before and after the competitive round of the game. And what did they find?

As you might expect, kids felt worse after learning that they had lost the competitive game. In particular, they reported an increase in feelings of shame. But this change of mood depended, in part, on what kind of feedback they had received earlier. As the study authors explain,

“…children experienced a sharp increase in shame following failure after they received person praise… but not after they received process praise… or no praise” (Brummelmann et al 2014).

In other words, person-based praise (“You’re great!”) seems to have set kids up for a particularly big spike in shame after they experienced a failure.

Moreover, the effect was especially strong for children with low self-esteem. These kids reacted to failure much more negatively if they had previously received person-based praise (Brummelmann et al 2014).

What about praising younger children, like preschoolers and toddlers? Are they affected the same way?

Is it ever too early to start emphasizing process-based praise over person-based praise? Maybe not.

Research supports the idea that young children thrive on praise.

For example, in a study tracking the development of 4-year-olds, researchers found that parental praise was a substantial predictor of a child’s vocabulary growth. Kids who received lots of parental praise tended to have larger expressive vocabularies. They also showed more growth in their mathematics skills by the age of 5 (Carver et al 2022).

But research also suggests that the type of praise matters. Praising kids for specific behavior – rather than generic traits – has been linked with better outcomes.

For example, consider an experiment performed on 4-year-olds.

In this study, preschoolers watched a puppet show in which the protagonist drew a picture and was praised by a teacher.

  • Some preschoolers saw the protagonist receive generic praise about his overall ability (“You are a good drawer”).
  • Other preschoolers saw the protagonist receive praise only for that specific drawing (“You did a good job drawing”).

Next, the protagonist made a mistake that the teacher commented on. How did the kids feel about the show?

The kids who’d watched the protagonist receive generic praise (“You are a good drawer”) were more upset about the subsequent mistakes. When asked if they would like to draw themselves, these kids answered no.

By contrast, the kids who had been exposed to the specific praise (“You did a good job drawing”) were more likely to show an interest in drawing (Cimpian et al 2007).

More experimental evidence backs this up.

In similar experiments (conducted on kindergarteners), another team of researchers tested the effects of both types of praise, but in different proportions.

The best outcomes – kids who came away feeling happier and more interested in drawing – were linked with the highest rates of specific, process-based praise. When kids heard even small amounts of generic (“You’re a good drawer”) praise, they showed less motivation to persist after failure (Zentall and Morris 2010).

In addition, observational research – tracking young children over the course of several years – suggests that specific, process-based praise nudges kids in the direction of higher academic achievement.

Elizabeth Gunderson and her colleagues (2018) began a long-term study by watching American toddlers in their own homes. The researchers recorded what, if any, types of praise the children received from their parents. And they noted three types:

  • Process-based praise, which they defined as praising a child’s “efforts, strategies, or actions”. Examples: “Good listening.” And “That’s a nice try.”
  • Person-based praise, which the study authors defined as praise that “emphasizes the child having a fixed positive quality”. Examples: “Good girl.” And “Let’s show her how smart you are.”
  • Other praise that was “neither clearly person-directed nor process-directed.” Examples: “Perfect.” And “Yay!”

When the children were in the 2nd or 3rd grade, the researchers interviewed them about their beliefs about intelligence, learning, and achievement. 

In addition, the children were tested twice in mathematics and reading – once in the 2nd grade, and again in the 4th grade.

How did children perform on these tests? It depended on what kids believed about intelligence, learning, and achievement. The more kids believed in the power of effort – and in the importance of tackling challenges in order to learn new things – the better their academic scores.

And this, in turn, was influenced by the kind of praise they received as toddlers.

When kids received a lot of process-based praise as toddlers, they were more likely to develop an “incremental motivational framework” – believing they could improve their abilities through effort and strategies.

What about person-based praise? It wasn’t linked with these outcomes.

Combined with the evidence from experimental studies, it looks as though person-based praise (“You’re so smart!”) doesn’t help children achieve academic success.

So what’s the bottom line?

I think we need more high-quality experiments to really understand what’s going on. But based on the available research, it’s reasonable to be cautious about using person-based praise with children.

As we’ve seen, person-based praise may make kids especially averse to the prospect of failure. In effect, this praise bestows a positive label on a child – marking him or her out as intrinsically smart or talented – and the child responds by wanting to protect that label. Even if it means avoiding the very challenges kids need to keep developing their skills.

In addition, kids may end up feeling more helpless, inept, or shamed in the wake of everyday failures. As Carol Dweck has argued, this may be because person-based praise encourages kids to adopt what she calls a “fixed mindset” about intelligence and ability.

When we approach challenges with a fixed mindset, we believe that our abilities are more or less predetermined or unchangeable. As a result, we may see little point in persisting after we make a mistake, or fail: We have nothing to gain by it. It’s proof that we’re fundamentally incapable.

By contrast, argues Dweck, process-based praise may encourage kids to embrace a “growth mindset” – a belief that we can improve our abilities with effort, strategic choices, and practice. You can read more about it in this Parenting Science article.

What’s the best way to use praise?

Telling kids they are smart can be counterproductive, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t praise them at all. As mentioned above, the right sort of praise — process praise — may give kids an advantage.

So instead of telling our children that they are smart or talented, we try these alternatives.

  • Praise your child for her or her strategies (e.g., “You found a really good way to do it”)
  • Praise your child for specific work (e.g., “You did a great job with those math problems”)
  • If your child is very young, you can also him or her for his persistence or effort (e.g., “I can see you’ve been practicing” and “Your hard work has really paid off”)

And keep in mind other important guidelines

There are other pitfalls to avoid. For instance, even praise for effort can backfire under certain conditions — especially as children get older and more sophisticated. For more information, see this article on the most effective ways to praise kids.

And what about the flip side of praise — criticism?

Criticism is even trickier to wrestle with, because criticism is intrinsically negative, and it tends to demotivate. But some intriguing experiments suggest a solution to the problem — one that is surprisingly simple. Check out my article “Correcting behavior: The magic words that help kids cope with mistakes.”

And if you’d like to learn more about the many ways that praise can affect performance, I recommend professor Carol Dweck’s classic book, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.


References: Praise and intelligence

Baumeister RF. 1987. How the self became a problem: A psychological review of historical research. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 52: 163–176.

Baumeister RF, Campbell JD, Krueger JI, Vohs KD. 2003. Does High Self-Esteem Cause Better Performance, Interpersonal Success, Happiness, or Healthier Lifestyles? Psychol Sci Public Interest. 4(1):1-44.

Baumeister RF and Vohs KD. 2018. Revisiting Our Reappraisal of the (Surprisingly Few) Benefits of High Self-Esteem. Perspect Psychol Sci. 13(2):137-140.

Brummelman E, Thomaes S, Overbeek G, Orobio de Castro B, van den Hout MA, and Bushman BJ. 2014. On feeding those hungry for praise: Person praise backfires in children with low self-esteem. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143(1): 9–14.

Cimpian A, Arce H-M C, Markham EM and Dweck CS. 2007. Subtle linguistic cues affect children’s motivation. Psychological Science: 18(4): 314-316.

Gunderson EA, Gripshover SJ, Romero C, Dweck CS, Goldin-Meadow S, and Levine SC. 2013. Parent praise to 1-3 year-olds predicts children’s motivational frameworks 5 years later. Child Development.

Gunderson EA, Sorhagen NS, Gripshover SJ, Dweck CS, Goldin-Meadow S, and Levine SC. 2018. Parent praise to toddlers predicts fourth grade academic achievement via children’s incremental mindsets. Dev Psychol. 54(3):397-409. 

Henderlong J and Lepper MR. 2002. The effects of praise on children’s intrinsic motivation: A review and synthesis. Psychological Bulletin 128(5): 774-795.

Mueller CM and Dweck CS. 1998. Praise for intelligence can undermine children’s motivation and performance. Journal for Personality and Social Psychology 75(1): 33-52.

Xing S, Gao X, Jiang Y, Archer M, and Liu X. 2018. Effects of Ability and Effort Praise on Children’s Failure Attribution, Self-Handicapping, and Performance. Front Psychol. 9:1883.

Zentall SR and Morris BJ. 2010. “Good job, you’re so smart”: The effects of inconsistency of praise type on young children’s motivation. J Exp Child Psychol. 107(2):155-63.

Content last modified 3/2024

Portions of the text are derived from earlier versions of this article, written by the same author.

image of students wearing school uniform and looking frustrated or bored at their desks by Caiaimage/Chris Ryan / istock

image of girl in library peering at viewer with boy in background by JackF / iStock