"A couple of weeks later, when faced with more opportunities to give and share, the children were much more generous after their character had been praised than after their actions had been. Praising their character helped them internalize it as part of their identities. The children learned who they were from observing their own actions: I am a helpful person. This dovetails with new research led by the psychologist Christopher J. Bryan, who finds that for moral behaviors, nouns work better than verbs. To get 3- to 6-year-olds to help with a task, rather than inviting them “to help,” it was 22 to 29 percent more effective to encourage them to “be a helper.” Cheating was cut in half when instead of, “Please don’t cheat,” participants were told, “Please don’t be a cheater.” When our actions become a reflection of our character, we lean more heavily toward the moral and generous choices. Over time it can become part of us."
If you are familiar with Carol Dweck’s work on praising action instead of intelligence, what does that tell you relative to Adam Grant?
I respect both Adam Grant and Carol Dweck, but what do common people get from reading both their work that is well backed up by research? Confusion
Dweck's work is about praising correct/good actions, not action in general. She doesn't advocate praising effort that has zero/no chance of success.
The key conclusion of her work is consistent with the passage you quoted. Instead of praising a child for trying in systematic ways, praise the child for being one of those 'organised' kids who tries in systematic ways rather than [insert ineffective way that kid could work hard with low likelihood of success]
I would think that is more problems from the reporting of these studies. There is certainly an argument that making the studies allows the shoddy reporting.
However, my hope would be we could do both. Run as many cheap studies as we can. Just honestly report on the limited applicability. And keep adding to a corpus of data. Patterns may emerge.
At some level, these do provide data to look at. Right?