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"You're so smart!" is one of the most natural things a parent can say. Many parenting books now say it can backfire, and that you should praise effort instead. The research behind that advice is real, but it is also more mixed than the books suggest. This post explains what the main studies found, where later work disagreed, and how to praise in a way that is likely to help whichever way the evidence settles.
What did the original praise studies find?
The best-known work is Mueller and Dweck (1998). Across six studies, fifth graders solved puzzles and were then praised either for their intelligence or for their hard work. After a later failure, children praised for intelligence showed less persistence, less enjoyment, more low-ability explanations for failure and worse performance than children praised for effort. They also described intelligence as more of a fixed trait.
A study at home pointed the same way. Gunderson and colleagues (2013) recorded 53 families when children were 14 to 38 months old. The more parents praised children's effort at that age, the more likely children were at 7 to 8 years old to hold an "incremental" view: that ability can grow with work. Praise of fixed traits was not linked to later fixed beliefs.
Has the research held up?
Partly. When Li and Bates (2019) closely replicated Mueller and Dweck's study with 624 children aged 9 to 13 in China, they found only a borderline effect on post-failure performance in one study and no effect on any of the eight motivation measures. Further studies found no effect of the mindset manipulation, and children's mindsets were not related to their grades.
On the wider idea of growth mindset, two meta-analyses by Sisk and colleagues (2018) found weak overall links between mindset and achievement, and weak overall effects of mindset interventions, with some benefit for students from low-income families or who were academically at risk. Our post on what the growth mindset evidence shows goes into more detail.
So "praise effort, not intelligence" is reasonable advice, but it is not a switch that changes a child's motivation on its own.
Can praise be too much?
Yes. Brummelman and colleagues (2014) found that adults tend to give inflated praise, such as "You made an incredibly beautiful drawing!", to children with low self-esteem. In an experiment, inflated praise made children with low self-esteem less likely to take on a challenge, while it had the opposite effect for children with high self-esteem. Over-the-top praise can sound like a standard the child now has to meet.
What should you say instead?
Good praise is specific, honest and about something the child controls.
Describe what they did. "You checked your answer by putting it back into the equation" beats "Great job".
Name the strategy, not just the hours. Praising effort alone can backfire if the effort was not working. "You tried a different method when the first one didn't work" teaches more.
Keep it in proportion. Save strong words for real achievements. Children can tell when praise is automatic.
Praise progress. "Last month you got two of these right, today you got five" shows that ability grew.
Be careful after failure. Do not praise effort that did not lead anywhere as if it were success. Say, "That didn't work yet. What could you try next?"
Does praise change for teenagers?
Teenagers are quick to spot praise that feels managed. They respond better to specific notice and to being asked how they did something. Ask, "How did you work that out?" and listen. That question praises the process without a speech. Our guide to talking to teens about marks covers conversations after results.
When effort is there but the method is not
Sometimes a child works hard and still gets the same type of problem wrong, which is frustrating for everyone. Effort praise will not fix that; a better method will. The Fermi Problem Library has worked problems with a step-by-step solver that explains the reasoning rather than printing an answer, which gives you something specific to praise when your child spots where their own method went wrong.
This week, replace one "You're so smart" with a sentence that names exactly what your child did well.
