(no subject)
One of the things that fascinates me is how our brains work. I’ve been listening to various books in my attempt to understand things. The current one is “How we Decide” by Jonah Lehrer. He was describing a study by Carol Dweck where children were given nonverbal puzzle tests. Half were praised for their intelligence: “you must be smart at this.” The other half were praised for their effort: “You must have worked really hard.”
Next they were given a chance to choose to take a test. 1. one more difficult than what they had taken, but they’d learn something from it. 2. one which was pretty much like what they had taken.
Most of kids praised for their intelligence chose the safe test, #2. but most of the kids praised for effort, took #1.
Then they were given a test ranked for several grades higher than they were currently taking. Many praised for effort commented that this was their favorite test yet.
Afterwards, they were offered a chance to look at a child who did better or worse than they. Those praised for intelligence choose to look at tests that were worse, to help them feel better. Those praised for effort looked at tests that did better, to learn from them.
Link to study:
https://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/system/files/Intelligence%20Praise%20Can%20Undermine%20Motivation%20and%20Performance.pdf
The book is talking about the science behind “emotions” how they are developed through our brains testing all the variables and keeping track of false and positive results. Mistakes become vital learning tools. “Unless you can experience unpleasant symptoms from being wrong, your brain will never revise it’s models. Before your neurons can succeed, they must repeatedly fail.” (Lehrer, chapter 4)
So yeah..
“wow, you worked really hard on that.” Is much better than “wow, you’re really smart.”
(for those of you with kids, you can experiment on them!)
Now to see how I can implement that into my self talk.
Next they were given a chance to choose to take a test. 1. one more difficult than what they had taken, but they’d learn something from it. 2. one which was pretty much like what they had taken.
Most of kids praised for their intelligence chose the safe test, #2. but most of the kids praised for effort, took #1.
Then they were given a test ranked for several grades higher than they were currently taking. Many praised for effort commented that this was their favorite test yet.
Afterwards, they were offered a chance to look at a child who did better or worse than they. Those praised for intelligence choose to look at tests that were worse, to help them feel better. Those praised for effort looked at tests that did better, to learn from them.
Link to study:
https://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/system/files/Intelligence%20Praise%20Can%20Undermine%20Motivation%20and%20Performance.pdf
The book is talking about the science behind “emotions” how they are developed through our brains testing all the variables and keeping track of false and positive results. Mistakes become vital learning tools. “Unless you can experience unpleasant symptoms from being wrong, your brain will never revise it’s models. Before your neurons can succeed, they must repeatedly fail.” (Lehrer, chapter 4)
So yeah..
“wow, you worked really hard on that.” Is much better than “wow, you’re really smart.”
(for those of you with kids, you can experiment on them!)
Now to see how I can implement that into my self talk.