Effects of Effort-Based Praise on Perseverance in Children
A major concern in psychology and education is that ability-based praise, as opposed to effort-based praise decreases task performance and reduces task perseverance in children. This is based …show more content…
These results are supported by two more meta-analyses specifically examining praise. One found that praise is generally beneficial to motivation (Henderlong & Lepper, 2002), and another found that praise is generally beneficial to performance while blame is generally detrimental (Kennedy & Willcutt, 1964). While all four meta-analysis do not differentiate between ability-based praise and effort-based praise, it is evident that praise in general is conducive to performance and perseverance in …show more content…
Of the studies that did include young children (4-5 year olds), researchers focused on the effects of praise on performance (Meddock, Parsons, and Hill, 1971; Kennedy, 1964) or on motivation (Henderlong & Lepper, 2007; Henderlong & Lepper, 2002); no studies were done on the effect of praise on perseverance. Thus, in this study, we are interested in the effects of effort-based praise on perseverance in a puzzle task in preschool children aged 4-5 years old. We predict that children in the effort-based feedback condition will persevere at a challenging task longer than children in the neutral feedback