Reavis Rachael D, Miller Stephanie E, Grimes Jordyn A, Fomukong Abou-Nica N M
a Department of Psychology , Earlham College , Richmond , Indiana , USA.
b Department of Psychology , University of Mississippi , Mississippi , USA.
J Genet Psychol. 2018 May-Jun;179(3):117-122. doi: 10.1080/00221325.2018.1441801. Epub 2018 Mar 13.
Although work with children demonstrates a benefit of process-focused praise relative to person-focused praise on post-failure motivation, few studies have examined this result in adults. We tested the effect of three types of praise on adults' post-failure outcomes: person-focused intelligence ("high intelligence"), person-focused effort ("hard worker"), and process-focused effort ("worked hard") in a sample of 156 adults recruited from Amazon's MTurk. Participants completed a set of easy visual pattern recognition problems and were told that they performed better than most adults and were given one of the three types of feedback. They then completed more difficult problems and were told that they had not performed well. Participants in the "hard worker" condition (compared to "worked hard") were more likely to endorse intelligence as a reason for failure. They also reported lower perceived success and less enjoyment than participants in other conditions. Participants in the "high intelligence" condition were more likely to attribute their failure to intelligence than participants in the "worked hard" condition. The results suggest that the benefit of process-focused praise typically found in children (worked hard compared to intelligent) was mostly not replicated in adults, and person-focused effort praise was detrimental in a non-college student adult sample.
尽管针对儿童的研究表明，相对于针对个人特质的赞扬，关注过程的赞扬对失败后的动机有好处，但很少有研究在成年人中检验这一结果。我们测试了三种类型的赞扬对成年人失败后结果的影响：针对个人特质的智力赞扬（“高智商”）、针对个人特质的努力赞扬（“努力工作者”）以及针对过程的努力赞扬（“工作努力”），样本为从亚马逊土耳其机器人平台招募的156名成年人。参与者完成了一组简单的视觉模式识别问题，并被告知他们的表现比大多数成年人更好，然后收到三种类型反馈中的一种。接着他们完成更难的问题，并被告知他们表现不佳。“努力工作者”组的参与者（与“工作努力”组相比）更倾向于将智力作为失败的原因。他们报告的感知到的成功程度和愉悦感也低于其他组的参与者。“高智商”组的参与者比“工作努力”组的参与者更倾向于将失败归因于智力。结果表明，通常在儿童中发现的关注过程的赞扬的好处（“工作努力”比“聪明”）在成年人中大多没有得到重现，并且针对个人特质的努力赞扬在非大学生成年人样本中是有害的。
