I think part of what Po Bronson & Ashley Merryman were saying, which maybe doesn’t come across in my post, is that kids and adults respond to praise differently. There’s some evidence that praise can increase adults’ intrinsic motivation.

If you’re looking for more on this topic, I highly recommend Carol Dweck’s book Mindset. It’s totally delightful to read, and really explains the difference between the “fixed” and “growth” mindsets, and gives great examples of how to provide “process praise” (praising effort) vs “person praise” (praising fixed traits beyond a person’s control).

Basically, the down side of telling people they are “smart” and “creative” is that they can become afraid of taking any risk (including the risk of showing effort) that might show that they aren’t “smart” and “creative.” But if you praise people’s effort, like saying, “that was a creative solution you offered at the meeting,” or “your combination of vegetables in the salad is creative,” is then they can ask themselves, “what other solutions could I come up with in the future?” or “what other vegetable combinations could I try in my salad?” or whatnot. Process praise can direct people to replicate that effort, and the effort is something they can control.

*But* I also totally know what you mean about there being an unintended consequence of overemphasizing effort! I wrote about that in a couple earlier blog posts:
The Downside of Always Telling Students to Try Harder (1)
The Downside of Always Telling Students to Try Harder (2)

I look forward to continuing this conversation!

I think there’s also an unintended consequence of overemphasizing effort – in the real world, there’s a strong influence of luck, building networks, innate intelligence (or at least intelligence that had been built up by that point by effort and innate ability), reprioritization, shifting directions, oh yeah and did I mention luck?

I’ve seen so many friends burn out because they thought that putting effort in was the only thing they could do and they kept meeting failure.

On the other hand, maybe students would have more self-confidence if they discovered that through effort, they could succeed? This is a very thought-provoking post.