Department of Psychology, Hangzhou Normal University, Hangzhou, P.R. China.
Zhejiang Lab, Hangzhou, P.R. China.
Child Dev. 2022 Nov;93(6):1889-1902. doi: 10.1111/cdev.13829. Epub 2022 Aug 8.
This research examined the effects of overhearing an adult praise an unseen child for not needing to work hard on an academic task. Five-year-old Han Chinese children (total N = 270 across three studies; 135 boys, collected 2020-2021) who heard this low effort praise tended to devalue effort relative to a baseline condition in which the overheard conversation lacked evaluative content. In Study 3, low effort praise increased children's endorsement of essentialist beliefs about ability and their interest in becoming the kind of person who does not need to work hard to succeed. The findings show that overhearing evaluative comments about other people, a pervasive feature of daily life, can have a systematic effect on young children's beliefs about achievement.
本研究考察了儿童无意中听到成人因无需努力完成学业任务而表扬某个未露面的孩子时，对其产生的影响。在三项研究中，五岁的汉族儿童（总人数 N=270，其中男孩 135 人，收集时间为 2020 年至 2021 年）听到这种低努力表扬后，与听到缺乏评价内容的背景对话相比，往往会贬低努力的价值。在研究 3 中，低努力表扬增加了儿童对能力的本质主义信念的认可，以及对成为那种无需努力就能成功的人的兴趣。研究结果表明，无意中听到有关他人的评价性言论——这是日常生活中的一个普遍特征——会对幼儿对成就的信念产生系统影响。
