Being Gifted is Actually a Disadvantage

“You’re so smart!” “You worked so hard!” Which of these do you think feels better? The former proves to be a popular choice. However, it may not actually be the best thing for you or your children.

Many believe that praising qualities like smartness or cleverness will motivate children to perform better, it actually might not. Children without natural academic ability can actually benefit from feedback from teachers and parents that don't promote innate traits. This type of feedback causes a growth mindset and benefits children by making them more hardworking and perseverance, teaching them to learn from criticism and their mistake, and overall having a higher level of achievement.

Practice makes perfect, but you don’t need practice if you’re born perfect.

And there are these children, who are born ‘perfect’. Born with natural academic ability so they don’t even have to try to succeed. Compliments of their smartness and natural talent follow them around but these are only going to hurt these ’gifted’ kids in the long run. In fact, praising children for their persistence or strategies (rather than for intelligence) emphasises hard work and the continuation of these behaviours in the future. If you praise children for their hard work and perseverance now it will motivate them to keep having these behavioural patterns in the future which is exactly what will benefit them the most. When faced with challenge they will be less likely to give up and will believe with more time and effort they can overcome these struggles.

Now, some may claim that anyone can be hard working, what difference does praising this in specific over other traits, like cleverness, make? However, attributes like intelligence, smartness and cleverness provide negative connotations and the, “implication that such traits are innate and fixed. [This] leaves people vulnerable to failure, fearful of challenges and unmotivated to learn.” (Carol S. Dweck, The Secret To Raising Smart Kids, 2015) What this evinces is that praising traits like smartness and intelligence, in naturally academically talented or when success occurs for non-academically talented kids, can actually demotivate students.

This can cause children praised on their smartness to be, “much quicker to doubt their ability, to lose confidence, and to become less effective performers as a result. (Heidi Grant Halvorson, The Trouble With Bright Kids, 2011) This all comes down to the fact that improvement and mastery instinctively comes down to, “intense commitment for extended lengths of time in the face of obstacles (Carol S. Dweck, Giftedness: A Motivational Perspective, 2008),” It’s about working hard and being resilient when things don’t go well for you and this simply doesn’t happen in schools to kids who naturally excel. Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that academically gifted and naturally academically talented kids won’t succeed, it just means praising qualities that can be improved with time and effort and learning from criticism.

Learning from criticism is one major advantage of a growth mindset. Children without natural academic talent often feel like they have many disadvantages and weaknesses but these can all be solved with a growth mindset which promotes learning from mistakes and criticism.

Children with natural academic talent are usually the ones who worry about how much intelligence they possess and compare themselves to others. They are, “often afraid to make mistakes and reveal inadequacies (Carol S. Dweck, Giftedness: A Motivational Perspective, 2008),” and will, “[avoid] failure at all costs [to maintain] the sense of being smart or skilled (Maria Popova, Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives, .” These youngsters are so accustomed to being praised for their smartness and intelligence that they will actually look for easier tasks instead of a challenge because they want to keep up the impression of themselves being smart. This happens because they believe that, “you’re either naturally great or will never be great (Derek Sivers, Fixed Mindset vs Growth Mindset, 2014),” and that ability is innate and natural. This signifies that if youth with fixed mindsets don’t succeed at first, they assume they have failed and will never be able to succeed.

This boils down to the fact that children with a fixed-mindset want to prove that they have certain qualities and, “mistakes crack their self-confidence,”(Carol S. Dweck, The Secret To Raising Smart Kids, 2015) and take away their chance to prove and showcase their ‘natural gifts’. This contrasts to how youth with a growth mindset react to feedback and the judgement that, “flaws are just a TO-DO list of things to improve (Derek Sivers, Fixed Mindset vs Growth Mindset, 2014).” With students who are not naturally ‘smart’ or gifted, they have to work harder to do as well as the gifted kids so when they are praised for their hard work they understand that qualities like intelligence can be improved with effort and that, “attributing poor performance to a lack of ability depresses motivation (Carol S. Dweck, The Secret To Raising Smart Kids, 2015).” simply because they themselves have experienced a boost in their intelligence through hard work.

Praises oriented towards effort and hard work are more beneficial because these attributes are seen as things that can be changed. Intelligence and other qualities that are often seen as innate can be improved with effort which eventually leads to a higher level of success.

“Our society worships talent and many people assume that possessing superior intelligence or ability - [...] is a recipe for success (Carol S. Dweck, The Secret To Raising Smart Kids, 2015).” This is a myth. Children without natural academic talent are actually more likely to have a higher level of success and fulfilment in the future.

In fact, children with so-called superior intelligence usually stay away from challenge and stick to what they already know thus lessening their overall skill and reducing their chance of a high level of success. This is primarily caused because naturally academically talented kids can often feel even more pressure to perform and live up to their ‘smart’ impression. These leads to them tending to, “avoid challenges because [they] make mistakes more likely and looking smart less so (Carol S. Dweck, The Secret To Raising Smart Kids, 2015).” This happens solely because they, “see their abilities as innate and unchangeable (Heidi Grant Halvorson, The Trouble With Bright Kids, 2011).”

A growth mindset provides the perspective that your abilities can be improved if you try hard enough. The problem with the fixed mindset is that these kids grow up to be, “far too hard on themselves and [...] give up too soon. (Heidi Grant Halvorson, The Trouble With Bright Kids, 2011)” They start believing that if they fail at something once, they will never be able to do it. Leading to them inescapably trying out fewer things and taking on minimum opportunities causing them to have less success and decreased amount of fulfilment.

Praising children and especially non-naturally gifted children on things that they did rather than something they are supposedly born with will inevitably give them a higher level of success in the future.

Carol S. Dweck and Claudia M. Mueller ran an experiment where they gave children 3 tests. The first with easy problems, the second with difficult and the third with easy problems again. After the first set, they praised half the kids on their smartness and half the kids on their hard work. The students then did a set of challenging problems where most of the kids couldn’t even solve one of the problems. Then the students completed another round of easier problems similar to the first set. From their experiments, Dweck and Mueller concluded that, “children who were praised for their smartness did 25% worse compared to the group who was praised for their hard work.” This proves that even one simple comment and challenging problems could alter these children’s beliefs in their own skill and make them question their ability.

If there are all these downsides to this type of feedback, why are parents and teachers still doing it? Simply because they don’t know. For generations of students and teachers, praising smartness, cleverness and teaching kids to aspire to be geniuses has been assumed to be the best way to ‘motivate’ students. But recent research has proved that the supposed best type of feedback might actually be the worst. Instead, parents and teachers should compliment skills that correlate with a growth mindset.

Many believe that praising qualities like smartness or cleverness will motivate children to perform better, but it actually doesn’t. Children without natural academic ability can actually benefit from feedback from teachers and parents that don't promote innate traits. This type of feedback causes a growth mindset. A growth mindset has many benefits and ensures success in the future. So, the next time you have to give praise or feedback to a student don’t opt for the easier, shallow comment, “You’re so smart” or “You’re so clever”. These remarks are trivial and serve only one purpose. To hurt these children’s abilities. The preferable and superior method would be to praise qualities that can be acquired through time and effort. Qualities that can be improved. These are the things that will lead to a growth mindset and cause students to become more hardworking and perseverant, to learn from criticism and overall having a higher level of achievement and success.

Bibliography:

Popova, Maria. "Fixed vs. Growth: The Two Basic Mindsets That Shape Our Lives." Brain Pickings. N.p., 29 Jan. 2014. Web. 12 June 2016. <https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/01/29/carol-dweck-mindset/>.

Dweck, Carol S. "Duke TIP." Giftedness: A Motivational Perspective. N.p., 21 Apr. 2008. Web. 12 June 2016. <https://tip.duke.edu/node/888>.

Halvorson, Heidi Grant. "The Trouble With Bright Kids." Harvard Business Review. N.p., 21 Nov. 2011. Web. 12 June 2016. <https://hbr.org/2011/11/the-trouble-with-bright-kids>.

Dweck, Carol S. "The Secret to Raising Smart Kids." Scientific American. N.p., 1 Jan. 2015. Web. 12 June 2016.