Is It Better to Praise a Child's Intelligence or Effort

Short Answer

Is it better to praise a child's intelligence or effort? In a study reported in a 1998 issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers investigated this question by randomly assigning fifthgraders into three groups. One group received praise for their intelligence after working on a set of problems; another group received praise for their effort; and a third (control) group received general praise that did not mention a specific attribute. Each child was then asked to write a description of the problems for a child in another state, including how many he or she solved correctly. One response variable was whether the child lied about how many problems he/she had solved correctly. The data are organized in the following table:
-Analyze these data to investigate whether they suggest any relationship between the type of praise given to a child and the child's propensity for lying about performance. Write a paragraph describing your findings, and support your findings with a graphical display and calculations.