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receive praise. According to Meyer’s findings, by the age of twelve, children believe that earning praise from a teacher is
     not a sign you did well—it’s actually a sign you lack ability and the teacher thinks you need extra encouragement. They’ve
     picked up the pattern: kids who are falling behind get drowned in praise. Teens, Meyer found, discounted praise to such an
     extent that they believed it’s a teacher’s criticism—not praise at all—that really conveys a positive belief in a student’s
     aptitude.
    In the opinion of cognitive scientist Daniel T. Willingham, a teacher who praises a child may be unwittingly sending the message
     that the student reached the limit of his innate ability, while a teacher who criticizes a pupil conveys the message that
     he can improve his performance even further.
    New York University professor of psychiatry Judith Brook explains that the issue is one of credibility. “Praise is important,
     but not vacuous praise,” she says. “It has to be based on a real thing—some skill or talent they have.” Once children hear
     praise they interpret as meritless, they discount not just the insincere praise, but sincere praise as well.
    Excessive praise also distorts children’s motivation; they begin doing things merely to hear the praise, losing sight of intrinsic
     enjoyment. Scholars from Reed College and Stanford reviewed over 150 praise studies. Their meta-analysis determined that praised
     students become risk-averse and lack perceived autonomy. The scholars found consistent correlations between a liberal use
     of praise and students’ “shorter task persistence, more eye-checking with the teacher, and inflected speech such that answers
     have the intonation of questions.” When they get to college, heavily-praised students commonly drop out of classes rather
     than suffer a mediocre grade, and they have a hard time picking a major—they’re afraid to commit to something because they’re
     afraid of not succeeding.
    One suburban New Jersey high school English teacher told me she can spot the kids who get overpraised at home. Their parents
think
they’re just being supportive, but the students sense their parents’ high expectations, and feel so much pressure they can’t
     concentrate on the subject, only the grade they will receive. “I had a mother say, ‘You are destroying my child’s self-esteem,’
     because I’d given her son a
C.
I told her, ‘Your child is capable of better work.’ I’m not there to make them
feel
better. I’m there to make them
do
better.”
    While we might imagine that overpraised kids grow up to be unmotivated softies, the researchers are reporting the opposite
     consequence. Dweck and others have found that frequently-praised children get more competitive and more interested in tearing
     others down. Image-maintenance becomes their primary concern. A raft of very alarming studies—again by Dweck—illustrates this.
    In one study, students are given two puzzle tests. Between the first and the second, they are offered a choice between learning
     a new puzzle strategy for the second test or finding out how they did compared with other students on the first test: they
     have only enough time to do one or the other. Students praised for intelligence choose to find out their class rank, rather
     than use the time to prepare.
    In another study, students get a do-it-yourself report card and are told these forms will be mailed to students at another
     school—they’ll never meet these students and won’t know their names. Of the kids praised for their intelligence, 40 percent
     lie, inflating their scores. Of the kids praised for effort, few lie.
    When students transition into junior high, some who’d done well in elementary school inevitably struggle in the larger and
     more demanding environment. Those who equated their earlier success with their innate ability surmise they’ve been dumb all
     along. Their grades never recover