Play’s Republic

I would like to share the findings of a study that I read about in New York Mag this weekend. A disclaimer: the study is directly related to education but it is only loosely related to games.

Anyway, a Columbia University psychologist studied the effects that praise has on a child’s achievement. The children in the study were given puzzles—games ?—that they could successfully complete. After solving the puzzles, some of the children were praised for being intelligence and others for showing effort. Next, the children were asked to choose a new puzzle to complete, either a difficult puzzle that would help them learn or an easy puzzle. 90% of the children praised for effort chose to do the more challenging puzzle. The majority of the students praised for intelligence opted to complete the easier puzzle. In a similar test, the children were not given a choice of what puzzle to solve in the second round. All the participants were asked to solve a challenging puzzle designed for children of upper grade levels. The children were set up to fail. The children that were praised for effort, focused closely on the puzzles and enthusiastically tried for the answer. The children that were praised for intelligence became agitated and seemed to assume that failing meant that they were not smart. In conclusion, researchers believe that children praised for intelligence might be weary of challenging themselves academically because they are afraid of failure.

Here is a link to the article: “http://nymag.com/news/features/27840/”>