Gunderson et al.

Unlike previous studies, focus here was on determining whether praise of their efforts was more effective in motivating children than praising the child themselves. For example, telling a child that they are ‘a very good girl’ was argued to be less effective in motivating them than telling them that they had done a ‘very good job’ of something.

Praising the child rather than their effort leads to something known as entity theory or entity motivational framework, which argues that a child will not try hard at a task which they already believe that they will not be good at.

On the other hand, process praise where the efforts of the child are praised, is thought to lead to children believing that they can improve, and this theory is known as the incremental theory or the incremental motivational framework.

All of this links to the work by Dweck because it is argued that children who are praised directly are more likely to develop a fixed mindset than those whose efforts are praised, who are more likely to develop a growth mindset. Gunderson wanted to look at this theory using a method that had more ecological validity and therefore a natural setting was used for this research.

Aim

The researchers wanted to find out if praising a child’s effort in accomplishing a task was more effective in motivating a child than praising the child themselves.

They were also interested in finding out if girls were given more personal praise than boys and if the type of praise given at an early age affected a child’s reasoning and motivation five years later, i.e. was their behaviour influenced by ability or by effort?

Procedure

• 53 children and their primary caregivers all from the Chicago area of the USA were used as participants
• Children and parents were visited in their homes by a researcher every four months beginning at 14 months of age
• Interactions were recorded for 90-minute periods and the praise that was given to children was examined at visits when the child was at the age of 14 months, 26 months and 38 months
• Parents were not instructed to engage in any specific activities, but were asked to go about a typical day as they would without an experimenter present
• Observations were made and then categorised into whether parents gave ‘process praise’ – “you have tried so hard with that”, ‘person praise – “you are fantastic!” or ‘other praise’ – “you got it!”
• Children were then asked to complete two questionnaires (approximately three months apart) when they reached about seven years of age, about their motivational framework (i.e. to try and decipher if it was ‘fixed’ or ‘growth’). This means that this research was longitudinal, as it took place over a long period of time.

Results

• When parents used a larger percentage of process praise, their children reported more positive approaches to challenges and believed that their traits could improve with effort (parents used process praise 18% of the time and person praise 16% of the time, so there was little difference between the two
• However, the other two types of praise (person praise and other praise) and the total amount of praise were found not to be related to children’s responses
• Parents of boys used a greater percentage of process praise than parents of girls
• Later, boys were more likely to have positive attitudes about academic challenges than girls and to believe that intelligence could be improved.

Conclusion

The findings suggest that improving the quality of early parental praise may help children develop the belief that their future success is in their own hands and that they are responsible for their own successes and failures, rather than this being determined by their genetics and other factors that they cannot change.

It was also concluded that boys tended to have more of an incremental framework than girls, which fits with the findings of other studies: that girls tend to attribute failure to ability more than boys do.

Strengths of the study

• The study has been influential in determining how children believe that their futures are influenced, either by themselves or others
• These findings in a natural setting matched those found by Dweck whose data was gathered in an artificial setting, meaning that the studies have reliability and validity
• The researchers who observed the children and noted their behaviour did now know that praise was the point of interest, therefore they were not biased in their reporting
• The findings are important for early educators whose teaching methods can be amended to encourage growth mindsets
• Many questions were raised that promotes future research in a similar area in the future

Weaknesses of the study

• Although the study shows a clear link between praise and motivational frameworks, this is only causal and cannot be scientifically proven
• It is unclear if the praise given whilst the experiment took place (i.e. between ages one and three) was influential in determining motivational frameworks or if this is because of praise that happened between ages four and seven, which were not studied
• The study was unable to show why there was a difference in attitudes between boys and girls, only that one existed
• Parents could change their behaviour when being recorded, which does not give a true indication of their normal behaviour
• The sample size was very small and therefore not representative of a larger population
• There are also questions about the ethics of the study as parents were told that the study was about development and not praise and were therefore deceived.