Few people dislike to receive praises. Especially when we try our best to make a graceful performance. It’s praiseworthy. In our childhoods, we receives lots of praises, most of the praises were from our parents, neighbors, and teachers. Who don’t’ like to be praised? Please raise your hand.

  With the time goes by, we receive less and less praise. People ask us do everything well. We can’t make any mistakes.

I will give two examples, let us to distinguish between praise and punishment.

Of course, it’s impossible for us to careless about others’ appraisal on us. But next time, when you praise others, what I say today will remind you: different kinds of praises will create different results.

 It’s a real story happened to one of my friends. She was a great person graduated from National Taiwan University. After she graduated from college with the scholarship, she went abroad. And she choose Berkeley to be her graduate school. But at last, she graduated from Cornell . What happened? In the first year of her Berkley life, at one time, she spent almost 2 months to study and prepare for a report. Before she handed in her report to the professor. She told the professor with the spoil modest attitude. “I’m not sure if it good enough to hand in, please correct it for me.”

And guess what happened? She said, her professor was very angry and threw the report on the ground and blame her: “if even you don’t think that it’s perfect enough, please don’t waste my time.”  Is it punishment or humiliation? She decided to transfer to another school at that moment.

Another example, it’s about a long decade experiment of the psychologist of Stanford University.

 Professor Dweck has primary research interests in motivation, personality, and development. Her key contribution to social psychology relates to implicit theories of intelligence. This is present in her book entitled Mindset: The New Psychology of Success which was published in 2006. According to Dweck, individuals can be placed on a continuum according to their implicit views of where ability comes from. Some believe their success is based on innate ability; these are said to have a "fixed" theory of intelligence. Others, who believe their success is based on hard work and learning, are said to have a "growth" or an "incremental" theory of intelligence. Individuals may not necessarily be aware of their own mindset, but their mindset can still be discerned based on their behavior. It is especially evident in their reaction to failure. Fixed-mindset individuals dread failure because it is a negative statement on their basic abilities, while growth mindset individuals don't mind failure as much because they realize their performance can be improved. These two mindsets play an important role in all aspects of a person's life. Dweck argues that the growth mindset will allow a person to live a less stressful and more successful life.

This is important because (1) individuals with a "growth" theory are more likely to continue working hard despite setbacks and (2) individuals' theories of intelligence can be affected by subtle environmental cues. For example, children given praise such as "good job, you're very smart" are much more likely to develop an fixed mindset, whereas if given compliments like "good job, you worked very hard" they are likely to develop a growth mindset. In other words, it is possible to encourage students, for example, to persist despite failure by encouraging them to think about learning in a certain way.

Which type are you? Both of diligence and talent are important!