Why Effort Praise Can Backfire in Adolescence

Praise for process, which includes praising students’ level of effort and effective strategies, has shown promise in improving students’ motivation to learn. However, parents and teachers may interpret this to mean that solely praising students’ effort level is sufficient. Although praise for effort is effective in some respects in early childhood, it often stops working and even backfires by adolescence. In this article, we explain these findings developmentally. We suggest that effort praise can communicate that effort is a path to improving ability, but can also imply that the student needs to work hard because of low innate ability. We propose that adolescents are at greater risk for interpreting the praise in the second way because secondary schools often value innate ability more than effort and adolescents are conscious of ability stereotypes. We conclude with implications for theory and research. KEYWORDS—effort praise; motivation; adolescence How can parents and teachers motivate students to learn in school, believe they can improve their abilities, and persist through challenges? Adults can promote these kinds of motivation through the type of evaluative feedback they give, particularly through certain forms of praise (1). Adults’ use of praise for process (or process praise), which includes praising students’ level of effort (i.e., effort praise) and their use of effective strategies (i.e., strategy praise) upon success, can communicate that hard work and a thoughtful approach to learning lead to achievement and improved abilities (2). To the extent that students internalize this message, students’ beliefs about their academic competence and their capacity to persist through obstacles thrive (3). However, as this research has been disseminated in media that reach parents and teachers, adults may interpret it incorrectly to mean that solely praising effort is sufficient (3). Effort praise alone may be ineffective for many reasons (4), particularly considering that students use effort praise to assess their abilities. In this article, we highlight research indicating that effort praise can communicate expectations of low ability by the time students reach adolescence (5–7). This developmental finding has not been integrated with current theory on process praise, yet it brings to light how adults’ overemphasis on effort praise may undermine their attempts to motivate students. We also integrate this research by first reviewing the theory of process praise and describing the developmental factors that may account for why effort praise can communicate expectations of low ability by adolescence, and we review additional explanations for why effort praise may be ineffective for adolescents. We conclude with theoretical implications and suggestions for research to clarify when and why certain forms of process praise boost students’ motivation. THEORY OF PROCESS PRAISE Research on process praise began with the observation that teachers’ and parents’ responses to success vary in their messages about ability, effort, and performance (1, 2). Some adults respond to a student’s success with ability praise (e.g., “You must be smart at these problems”), which can convey that ability is the most important contributor to performance. Given the focus on innate talent, ability praise may also suggest that abilities are fixed entities (8). This message can have negative repercussions when students encounter failures; students may see negative performance feedback as evidence that they lack ability and cannot improve (1). Indeed, ability praise leads students to adopt more fixed beliefs about ability that result in lowered persistence after setbacks (1–3). Alternatively, adults may give process praise following a student’s success, linking the student’s performance to effort (e.g., Jamie Amemiya, Department of Psychology, University of Pittsburgh; Ming-Te Wang, Department of Psychology in Education, University of Pittsburgh. We thank Gail Heyman, Brian Galla, and Leanne Elliott for their feedback on earlier versions of this article. Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Jamie Amemiya, University of Pittsburgh, 210 South Bouquet Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15260; e-mail: jaa141@pitt.edu. © 2018 The Society for Research in Child Development DOI: 10.1111/cdep.12284 Volume 0, Number 0, 2018, Pages 1–5 CHILD DEVELOPMENT PERSPECTIVES