Dadly Sin #2: The Overpraised Child
Resilience > Self-esteem
Obligatory Dad Joke:
Science puns make me numb.
… But math puns make me number.
Note: I quote Carol Dweck + other leading psychologists a fair amount in this post. What I am expressing here isn’t novel; rather, my aim is to synthesize the learnings into actionable steps for myself and any others who may be interested.
To Tree or Not to Tree
Tis’ interesting. Despite attending Bruin Woods as a kid, Stanford was the dream for almost as long as I can remember.
At age 7, I recall a conversation with a neighbor (Stanford alum) who talked about “Sand Hill Road” and this mystical group of people called “Venture Capitalists” who make your dreams come true.1 From that point forward, Stanford imprinted on me in a big way. I HAD to get in (after all, didn’t you know your dreams are MADE there?!?).
FORTUNATELY I grew to be 6’5” and lived near a rowing club. The stars aligned. I was recruited for crew and admitted through the athletics backdoor. Thank goodness too – for those that got in on smarts alone, the application odds are ever not in your favor.
Not all of us were quite so lucky.
One noteworthy moment from my Freshman year:
Stanford had many a zany tradition2 — one in particular was an end of the year dance called “screw your roommate” where dormmates would find dates for one another. Despite the name of this one, folks actually selected decent matches.
Two doors down, one of my dormmates was paired up with a nice girl. I remember her because she was so hyped to be at Stanford. I can’t say I blame her — Stanford is pretty magical. Right after the dance, she posted this on her blog:
“I get too caught up in looking forward to summer and going home that I forget to be thankful for the beautiful people God has placed into my life. I love Stanford.”
One week later, I rolled out of bed, opened up my laptop (we didn’t have smartphones back then, kids), and beheld the following:
Her name was Azia Kim. 17 years later, this continues to be one of the most fascinating and bizarre scandals that has befallen Stanford’s campus.
Tl;dr – she pretended to be a Stanford student for EIGHT MONTHS. Going so far as to pretend to sit & take 3-hour finals and access her dorm room via window (she didn’t have a school-issued key).
Like me, Azia’s identity was tied up in “being smart” and “getting into Stanford”. Unlike me, she did not grow to be 6’5”. She also had not been taught how to deal with rejection or confront whatever challenged her self-identity. And so… she just didn’t.
There are clearly a lot of psychological issues that underlie a decision to imitate a Stanford student. But one that I hope to unpack is the vaunted self-esteem movement and our praise-laden culture.
The self-esteem movement
"High self-esteem does not prevent children from smoking, drinking, taking drugs, or engaging in early sex. If anything, high self-esteem fosters experimentation with such vices." - Roy F. Baumeister, PhD
I work for a mental health company called Rula. As I have become more immersed in this world, I have noticed an underlying trend: While things are objectively better than ever (war, longevity, poverty, wealth, etc.), we are also becoming increasingly depressed.3
Why?
A colleague pointed me in an fascinating direction. Take a gander at the below, as it highlights a noteworthy societal evolution:
“I have five children who range in age from four to twenty-eight. So I have had the privilege of reading children’s books every night for a whole generation, and I have seen a sea change in children’s books over the last twenty-five years.
Twenty-five years ago, the emblematic children’s book was The Little Engine That Could. It is about doing well in the world, about persisting and therefore overcoming obstacles.
Now many children’s books are about feeling good, having high self-esteem, and exuding confidence.” - Martin Seligman PhD., Learned Optimism (1997)
It goes without saying – We parents want the best for our children. We want them to be happy… to be successful… to find love… to be good people….
The question is: how do you make that happen?
The answer – according to 1990’s state legislatures — self-esteem.
Self-esteem riseth
“The self-esteem movement reinforced self-esteem in American society but, at the same time, turned people into narcissists.” Jean Twenge, PhD (paraphrased)
Since the 1969 publication of The Psychology of Self-Esteem (where Nathaniel Branden claimed self-esteem to be the single most important facet of a person), the belief that one must do whatever one can to achieve positive self-esteem has become a movement with broad societal implications.4
Of particular note — the 1990 California legislature sponsored a report which suggested that self-esteem be taught in every classroom as a “vaccine” against social ills and as a tool for promoting reliance and success.5 Other states quickly followed suit.
This has bled into American culture everywhere.
For instance, 85% of parents believe it is important to tell their children they are smart.6 One parental anecdote that epitomizes this perspective:
“Kids need self-esteem. I want my daughter to have the courage to apply for that big job, her dream job. And that requires self-esteem.7
This concept is great in theory. Disaster in practice.8
Now why on earth would that be the case? Why would telling a child that they are smart, skilled, capable, [insert amazing adjective] be potentially detrimental?
Let’s unpack the why by diving into the effects of praise and what that has to do with our dear friend, Azia.
The unintended consequences of overpraising
"Praising children's intelligence harms motivation and it harms performance. These were some of the most surprising findings we've encountered." - Carol Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Spoiler Alert: I am obsessed with my kids. And as a product of the 90’s, I want nothing more than for my children to be successful and have high self-esteem.
Rarely does an opportunity go by where I fail to encourage our 4-year old, Charlie:
“Oh you are so smart. Wow - you are such a good artist. What a natural!” 9
To my surprise, it seems as though I have been approaching her praise and self-esteem the wrong way.
“When we praise children for their intelligence, we tell them that this is the name of the game: look smart, don’t risk making mistakes.” - Carol Dweck
Back in the 90’s, Carol Dweck’s team ran some famous studies on the impact of praise on children.
In one study in particular, Dweck dispatched four research assistants to fifth-grade classrooms in New York, where they administered a nonverbal test to the students. These puzzles were designed to be relatively easy, ensuring most children would perform well.
The students were randomly divided into two distinct groups for the experiment. The first group was commended with, “You did great! You are so smart!” while the second group was praised with, “You did great! You must have worked really hard!”
Following this, both groups were presented with a more challenging quiz. The outcome was telling:
The first group (praised for intelligence) struggled with the tougher quiz and tended to give up more quickly.
Conversely, the second group (praised for effort), demonstrated greater perseverance, attempting the difficult problems until they managed to find the solutions.
I will put some more specific study details in the footnotes, but TL;DR - with just one line of praise, those who were praised for their intelligence had worse academic outcomes, were less likely to persist in the face of resistance, and (perhaps most troublingly) were more likely to cheat / sabotage others.10
Again. All from one line of praise.
🫢 Sorry, Charlie.
Praising identity vs. behavior
"If parents want to give their children a gift, the best thing they can do is to teach their children to love challenges, be intrigued by mistakes, enjoy effort, and keep on learning. That way, their children don’t have to be slaves of praise. They will have a lifelong way to build and repair their own confidence." - Carol Dweck
Identity based praise (“you are smart”)
On many an occasion in high school, peers flaunted their minimal study efforts as a badge of their god-given gifts (who am I kidding?… I did this too).
This attitude is toxic. It breeds fragility and a fixed mindset (a stark departure from the resilience the self-esteem movement originally intended to cultivate).
Carol Dweck and other child psychologists have highlighted the pitfalls of identity-based praise. For these children, image-maintenance becomes their primary concern.
"If I'm not the genius I believed myself to be, then who am I??"
This culture of praise creates a brittle sense of self, where challenges to self-identity are not just obstacles but existential threats. As such, children accustomed to such commendation are more likely to become overly competitive, focusing on downplaying others / seeking shortcuts to maintain their self-image rather than on personal development.11
My suspicion is that something along these lines transpired with Azia. Driven by the existential need to preserve the image constructed for her, she felt compelled to be a “Stanford student” — no matter the cost.
Behavior based praise (“you worked hard”)
"Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control. They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure." - Carol Dweck
Effective praise targets effort, not innate skillz. Children need to know that their effort is what dictates outcomes.
As demonstrated via Dweck’s and other’s studies over recent decades, students who are praised for their behaviors become more resilient.
This has long-term implications for success as well. Effort routinely trumps IQ.
“What we found is that only 25% of job successes are predicted by I.Q. 75% of job successes are predicted by your optimism levels, your social support and your ability to see stress as a challenge instead of a threat.” - Shawn Achor
Compounding this finding, Dr. Clancy Blair (Penn State University) discovered that children excelling in both IQ and executive functioning skills were 3x more likely to perform well in math class compared to those with high IQ alone.
And as a cherry on top, to quote Professor Jonathan Haidt:
“Sixty years of research show that people with an internal locus of control are happier and achieve more. People with an external locus of control are more passive and more likely to become depressed.” (link)
… No wonder Dr. Becky Kennedy (author of “Good Inside”) says “cultivating happiness [and success] is dependent on regulating distress.”
How to praise effectively
The purpose of all of this this is not to scare parents into eschewing praise entirely. Far from it.
Rather, we need to be very specific with our praise. Once children hit roughly age 12, they begin interpreting generic praise as a sign that they are actually incompetent and need encouragement.12
So how do we do praise effectively? Some examples from the OG herself, Dr. Carol Dweck below:
You did a good job drawing. I like the detail you added to the people's faces.
You really studied for your social studies test. You read the material over several times, outlined it and tested yourself on it. It really worked!
I like the way you tried a lot of different strategies on that math problem until you finally got it.
That was a hard English assignment, but you stuck with it until you got it done. You stayed at your desk and kept your concentration. That's great!
I like that you took on that challenging project for your science class. It will take a lot of work—doing the research, designing the apparatus, making the parts and building it. You are going to learn a lot of great things.
Praising virtues: the exception to the rule
There is one notable exception to the “praise the behavior, not the identity” rule: Inculcating Virtue.
Telling someone, "You are a very kind person", has a stronger impact than emphasizing a specific behavior: "That was a very kind thing you did."
Case in point — Research shows students cheat less when warned against becoming “cheaters” rather than simply told not to cheat. In fact, framing cheating as an identity issue (“Don’t be a cheater”) reduces cheating by 50% (vs. the behavior-based group). This suggests emphasizing personal identity over mere action is a better path to imbuing virtue.
Young children, too, respond to identity-centric methods. They show a greater eagerness to assist in activities when encouraged to adopt the identity of a "helper" rather than being simply asked to help.
The brain is a muscle — train it
“We have taught our kids to fear failure, and in doing so, we have blocked the surest and clearest path to their success.” - Jessica Lahey, “The Gift of Failure”
As parents, our goal should not be to inflate our children’s self esteem artificially. Rather, the goal is to give them the tools to help overcome adversity, be resilient, and DO better.
This is not to say we shouldn’t unconditionally love our children. We 100% should. But our goal is to prepare them for the real world — and “high confidence” + “low competence” is a recipe for disaster…
A final trick that I stumbled upon — Tell your kids that the brain is a muscle. Dweck and her disciple, Dr. Lisa Blackwell, have demonstrable findings that merely alerting kids to this fact improves academic outcomes through increased resilience.13
One final note to my girls — Just remember, if you don’t get into Stanford, that is fine. Your mother and I will love you no matter what… Plus - there is always Cal 🤣14
To this day, this continues to be the rosiest interpretation of VC ever uttered.
Including the debaucherous Full Moon on the Quad, which began innocuously enough with seniors giving a rose to a freshman and a kiss on the cheek and then eventually devolving into a full blown make-out fest that it is today where everyone got mono… don’t worry mom — I was a bystander, not a participant.
This is doubly true for the wealthiest among us. Below is a direct quote from Melinda Werner Moyer in her book, Is My Kid The A**hole:
”Relative to inner-city kids from low-income families, affluent kids were more likely to use substances including alcohol, marijuana, and other illicit drugs and to suffer from anxiety. The affluent girls, they found, were also two to three times more likely to have symptoms of depression compared with national averages for teenage girls. It’s counterintuitive, considering all the advantages that these kids are afforded over the course of their lives.”
Just ask those raised under Dr. Spock, who made parents terrified of damaging their children’s self-esteem. Even he was taken aback at how “parents began to be afraid to impose on the child in any way” (Dr. Benjamin Spock).
Even Braden himself believed that self-esteem still had to be earned, but that notion was cast aside over time by society in favor of elevating self-esteem through any means.
Toward a State of Esteem, 1990
I did SAT tutoring for a few years after graduating and one phenomenon that I quickly experienced – hearing just how smart every child was. But not only would the parents tell me, but they would do so in front of their kids. They just couldn’t help it – it was like a involuntary spasm.
Anecdote directly from Leonard Sax’s Book: The Collapse of Parenting
Directly from Po Bronson’s '“NurtureShock”:
”From 1970 to 2000, there were over 15,000 scholarly articles written on self-esteem and its relationship to everything—from sex to career advancement. But the results were often contradictory or inconclusive. So in 2003 the Association for Psychological Science asked Dr. Roy Baumeister, then a leading proponent of self-esteem, to review this literature.
His team concluded that self-esteem research was polluted with flawed science. Most of those 15,000 studies asked people to rate their self-esteem and then asked them to rate their own intelligence, career success, relationship skills, etc. These self-reports were extremely unreliable, since people with high self-esteem have an inflated perception of their abilities. Only 200 of the studies employed a scientifically-sound way to measure self-esteem and its outcomes.
After reviewing those 200 studies, Baumeister concluded that having high self-esteem didn’t improve grades or career achievement. It didn’t even reduce alcohol usage. And it especially did not lower violence of any sort. (Highly aggressive, violent people happen to think very highly of themselves, debunking the theory that people are aggressive to make up for low self-esteem.)
At the time, Baumeister was quoted as saying that his findings were “the biggest disappointment of my career.”
Directly from Martin Seligman’s “Learned Optimism”:
“Until January 1996, I believed that self-esteem was merely a meter with little, if any, causal efficacy. The lead article in the Psychological Review convinced me that I was wrong, and that self-esteem is causal: Roy Baumeister and his colleagues (1996)3 reviewed the literature on genocidal killers, on hit men, on gang leaders, and on violent criminals. They argued that these perpetrators have high self-esteem, and that their unwarranted self-esteem causes violence.
Baumeister’s work suggests that if you teach unwarrantedly high self-esteem to children, problems will ensue. A sub-group of these children will also have a mean streak in them. When these children confront the real world, and it tells them they are not as great as they have been taught, they will lash out with violence.
So it is possible that the twin epidemics among young people in the United States today, depression and violence, both come from this misbegotten concern: valuing how our young people feel about themselves more highly than how we value how well they are doing in the world.”
Not only does this help me feel like I am being a good, supporting parent, but let’s be honest… in many ways I am actually praising myself and building up my OWN self-esteem:
“Well if Charlie is so smart, then I MUST be smart as she is part ME after all.”
Direct from Po Bronson’s NurtureShock:
”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 because the likely key to their recovery—increasing effort—they view as just further proof of their failure. In interviews many confess they would “seriously consider cheating.”
Students turn to cheating because they haven’t developed a strategy for handling failure. The problem is compounded when a parent ignores a child’s failures and insists he’ll do better next time. Michigan scholar Jennifer Crocker studies this exact scenario and explains that the child may come to believe failure is something so terrible, the family can’t acknowledge its existence. A child deprived of the opportunity to discuss mistakes can’t learn from them.”
Now obviously this doesn’t happen to everyone who is praised in this way. But I can’t not note it after looking at the data.
Psychologist and researcher Wulf-Uwe Meyer uncovered that by the age of twelve, children often view praise from a teacher as a sign that they lack ability and that teachers think that they need extra encouragement.
Over the course of two years, randomized middle school students who received one 50-minute class on how the brain is a muscle and working it harder makes you smarter was enough to materially improve the students’ performance against a control group.
Jokes on me. 0% odds I would get into Cal these days.
Always had the sense that the self-esteem movement was a substitute for the hard work of parenting. Thanks for the confirmation.
Well-researched piece, Kevin.
I love the book Growth Mindset. In fact, after reading it I told my wife she could pick our son's name but I got to pick his initials - CAN - so he would always have a reminder that he CAN do hard things.