A critical eye: Praise directed toward traits increases children’s eye fixations on errors and decreases motivation

Abstract

Although there is evidence that praise of different types (i.e., generic vs. nongeneric) influences motivation, it is unclear how this occurs. Generic praise (e.g., "You are smart") conveys that a child possesses a trait responsible for their performance, whereas nongeneric praise (e.g., "You worked hard") conveys that performance is effort-based. Because praise conveys the basis for success, praise may change the interpretation and salience of errors. Specifically, generic praise may highlight the threatening nature of error (i.e., the child does not possess this trait). Because attention is drawn to threats in the environment, we expected generic praise to increase attention to error. We used eyetracking to measure implicit responses to errors (i.e., visual attention: fixation counts and durations) in order to determine the relation between visual attention and verbal reports of motivation (persistence and self-evaluations) in 30 four-to seven-year-old children. Children first saw pictures attributed to them, for which they received either generic or nongeneric praise. The children then saw pictures attributed to them that contained errors-that is, missing features. As a pretest and posttest, the children saw pictures that were "drawn by other children," half of which contained errors. The results indicated that children who received generic praise ("you are a good drawer") produced more and longer fixations on errors, both their "own" and on "other children's," than did children who received nongeneric praise ("you did a good job drawing"). More fixations on errors were related to lower persistence and lower self-evaluations. These results suggest that generic praise increases attention to errors because error threatens the possession of a positive trait.Keywords Visual attention . Motivation . Persistence . Self-evaluation . Gaze . Eyetracking . PraiseChildren encounter failure multiple times a day. The type of praise that children receive influences their motivation after failure (Cimpian, Arce, Markman, & Dweck, 2007;Kamins & Dweck, 1999;Zentall & Morris, 2010). Praise directed toward effort, or nongeneric praise (e.g., "you did a good job"), increases motivation (e.g., high persistence), whereas praise directed toward traits, or generic praise (e.g., "you are good at that"), decreases motivation (e.g., low persistence). Less understood is how generic praise reduces motivation. One hypothesis proposes that generic praise links traits to performance, such that errors provide evidence that a child lacks a trait responsible for success (Cimpian et al., 2007;Kamins & Dweck, 1999). According to this account, error should be more threatening to children who hear generic praise than to children who hear nongeneric praise (Cimpian, 2010). Generic praise likely increases vigilance for error as well as changing motivational goals (e.g., avoid future error). To investigate the relation between praise and error vigilance, we measured the effect of praise on visual attention to error, an implicit response.Alth...

Regular Exercise Enhances Task-Based Industriousness in Laboratory Rats

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High fives motivate: the effects of gestural and ambiguous verbal praise on motivation

“…For example, when a child is told, “You’re a good drawer” after drawing a picture, this praise provides an explicit attributional framework in which the trait of being a good drawer is linked with the outcome. Subsequently, errors threaten the possession of this trait as demonstrated by increased visual attention (i.e., fixations) to errors (Zentall and Morris, 2012). Children who receive verbal trait praise and then experience errors in their work tend to demonstrate decreased task motivation (Cimpian et al, 2007; Zentall and Morris, 2012).…”

“…Subsequently, errors threaten the possession of this trait as demonstrated by increased visual attention (i.e., fixations) to errors (Zentall and Morris, 2012). Children who receive verbal trait praise and then experience errors in their work tend to demonstrate decreased task motivation (Cimpian et al, 2007; Zentall and Morris, 2012). Although verbal effort praise has a more positive impact on motivation, attributions from verbal trait praise are more heavily weighted than attributions conveyed through verbal effort praise (Zentall and Morris, 2010).…”

“…To investigate the effects of praise types on motivation, we modified a task used in several previous experiments (Cimpian et al, 2007; Zentall and Morris, 2010, 2012), in which children hear stories about themselves drawing pictures and receive praise for drawing pictures without errors. Although children do not directly experience successes or failures, this method has produced clear effects of praise type (Cimpian et al, 2007; Zentall and Morris, 2010, 2012), such that children who heard stories about themselves receiving verbal trait praise were less motivated than those who received verbal effort praise.…”

“…Although children do not directly experience successes or failures, this method has produced clear effects of praise type (Cimpian et al, 2007; Zentall and Morris, 2010, 2012), such that children who heard stories about themselves receiving verbal trait praise were less motivated than those who received verbal effort praise. Moreover, those findings were similar to experiments in which the children experienced actual successes and failures (e.g., Mueller and Dweck, 1998).…”