[Music] Welcome to another episode of After Skool. I'm Andrew Huberman, professor of neurobiology and ophthalmology at Stanford School of Medicine, and the host of The Huberman Lab podcast. Growth mindset is the idea that we can get better at things, that is, that our abilities are not fixed but rather that our abilities are malleable. And the beauty of growth mindset is that it forces us to step back and ask ourselves some simple questions. These are questions that you could ask yourself right now, and in fact, I highly recommend you do. You could ask yourself, for instance, what have I been told I'm really good at? You should also ask yourself, what have I been told I'm really poor at, that I'm just not good at? What have I told myself I'm really good at, and what have I told myself I'm really bad at? And then a second set of questions is, what am I good at and why did it come

naturally to me, did I apply myself for many years. Meaning, did I apply a lot of effort to learning that thing, or perhaps both, right? And then, it's also important to ask yourself, why am I not good at other things? Is it simply because you've never applied yourself at those things, or is it because you tried and had an early failure? Or perhaps you tried and tried and tried for many years, and you continued to fail at that thing, or you just didn't reach a level of proficiency that made you want to pursue it further? In asking yourselves those questions, you are asking yourself not just what you're good at and bad at, and why. You should also be thinking about where the messages of being good at something or being bad at something arrived from. Did they arrive from outside you, meaning from your parents, from your coaches, from your teachers? Or was it the case that despite a lot of positive feedback, you just sort of decided you weren't good at something? Or conversely, was it

the case that despite a lot of negative feedback, that you would never be good at something, or that you weren't good at something, that you continue to persist because there's certainly people like that. The more negative feedback they get, the more they dig their heels in to prove themselves as capable of becoming good at something. So I do recommend as we March forward in this conversation, you think about those questions: what am I good at, what am I bad at, why am I good at those things, why am I bad at those things, and ask yourself to what extent your labels, that is your identity, is attached to the things that you are good at or bad at. And the reason I'd like you to ask yourself those questions is that next we're going to talk about research from Dr. Carol D's laboratory that was really the seed of the entire field of growth mindset. It relates to a specific set of experiments that really show that the specific feedback we get, meaning whether or not we get

feedback that is attached to our identity, like a label like smart or great athlete or talented, sends us down a very different path of performance in the short and long run, as compared to whether or not we receive feedback that's based on effort, meaning you tried really hard or you really seem to apply yourself under conditions where you're getting the right answer over time because you simply refuse to quit. Those are two very divergent sets of feedback, and as you'll learn in a moment, the sorts of feedback that we get, especially early in life or early in an endeavor. So, this doesn't just apply to young kids; this applies to adults too who are taking on a new skill or are trying to expand on an existing skill. Those two divergent forms of feedback get integrated into our core beliefs about what we think is possible for us in a given endeavor. And the great news is we can also modify those core beliefs simply by changing the feedback that we give ourselves.

research paper. I'd like to discuss briefly that beautifully embodies the runway that led to the discovery of growth mindset is a paper from Dr. Carol Dweck as well as her colleague Claudia Mueller, and the title of the paper essentially says it all. The title is Praise for Intelligence Can Undermine Children's Motivation and Performance. Right, that should be surprising that praise for intelligence can undermine motivation and performance. I would have thought, and I think many people probably believe, that if you tell a child or an adult that they're really good at something, and you're genuine about that feedback, meaning they're performing well, and you say, Great, you're doing really well, you're so smart, you're so talented, that their performance would continue to improve, that it would bolster their motivation to engage in that activity, which hopefully they enjoy, that it would serve to encourage them. Right, the kid thinks, Not only am I engaging in this activity, but I'm getting positive feedback, presumably from people that I care about or whose opinion I care.

about wouldn't that serve to elevate performance. It does not. In fact, the exact opposite happened. So, I'll just give you a few of the key takeaways from this study. The way it was done is very interesting. They essentially gave feedback about performance that was linked up with a child's intelligence, telling a kid they're smart, they're talented, that they can learn things really easily, or that they're very good at learning this sort of thing. And they called that intelligence feedback. Or they gave them what was called effort feedback. The simple way to think about effort feedback is that it's more attached to verbs as opposed to labels. So, effort feedback consists of things like, you tried really hard on that problem, it was great, the way that you applied effort, it was great, the way that you persisted, it was great, the way that even when you got the wrong answer, you spent 10 minutes thinking about it and then you tried again and again. Or in some cases, even if they didn't get

the right answer telling them well even though you 
didn't get the right answer, it's really terrific   that you continue to try. Okay, so intelligence 
feedback was the sort of feedback that was tied   to labels of identity, things like smart, talented, 
etc., whereas effort feedback was tied to verbs,   choices, behavioral and cognitive choices that 
children made in an effort to learn or get better   at something. So in this study, which included over 
a 100 children, they either got the intelligence   type feedback or the effort type feedback, or 
there was a control group that didn't get either   the intelligence or the effort type feedback, 
and then they looked at a number of different   outcomes. So I'll just highlight a few examples 
of what they found. First of all, the kids that   got the intelligence-based feedback, when they were 
then later offered problem sets that were either   challenging or were of the sort that they knew 
they could perform well on, they tended to select   problems that they knew they could perform well on. 
These were what were referred to as performance.

goals. In other words, they picked problems that allowed them to continue to get the praise that they had received previously about being smart or talented. Whereas the kids that got feedback about their strong effort, when later presented with problems that were either easy or hard, more often than not they pick the harder problems that stood to teach them more. So that strike it says that if you tell a kid that they're smart or talented and that's the reason why they perform well when they encounter challenges, they are likely to go with the least amount of challenge so that they can continue to receive that praise or feedback. Whereas if you receive praise and feedback for your strong effort, then later you tend to pick environments, problem sets, etc., that allow you to exert the very effort that got you the praise in the first place. So in both cases, these children are essentially attached to the praise, right? In some sense, I mean we like to think that they enjoy

these activities, and they're benefiting from them as well. But in both cases, the praise really serves to reinforce a certain pattern of behavior. But in the case of giving intelligence feedback, the kids are really just trying to reinforce being told that they're smart or talented, as opposed to reinforcing the engagement in the activity that got them the praise in the first place. And the converse is also true. When kids are told, Hey, you really tried hard and that's great, or I like how you persisted, or You're so persistent, I can really see how persistent you are in trying to get the right answer, even if you don't get the right answer, well then when you present those kids with additional challenges, they work very hard to stay in challenge. And guess what, no surprise, the kids that are rewarded for effort and that continue to pick harder problems outperform the kids that are given the intelligence praise and feedback by a large margin. So what does this tell us?

tells us that the narratives that we hear from 
others. Of course, reinforce certain patterns of   behavior. What else does this tell us? This tells us 
that if you're a parent or teacher, you have to be   very careful about giving feedback to a child that 
is attached to their identity around an endeavor,   especially if they're performing well at that 
endeavor. Right now, of course, if a child is not   performing well at something, you also don't want 
to tell them that they're stupid, right? You don't   want to tell them that they're deficient, right? 
But that's a rare occurrence in the classroom.   One would hope that's a rare occurrence. Par on the 
field, one would hope, but what's very common, very   very common, is that when we see children or adults 
performing well, we tend to give them identity   labels as a way to try and reinforce whatever 
behavior we observe and we like. Now, the other   thing they looked at in this study were the actual 
raw performance on cognitive problems, and these

data, I must say, are just so interesting. They took the kids and they gave them all the same problem sets, and all the kids across the board, whether or not they were getting intelligence praise or effort praise, or they were in the control group, were performing more or less the same way. They were getting some of these questions right, some of these questions wrong. Then they gave them praise after they completed those problems. They either got intelligence praise, You're so smart, you're so talented, or they got effort praise, You tried so hard, you really persisted, that's fantastic. Then later they gave them another set of problems and they looked at performance. Now, remember, the first time around all the kids got some of the questions right and some of the questions wrong, so there's room for improvement for everybody. What they found was absolutely striking. The kids that were in the control group, so they didn't get any specific form of praise, they performed more or less the same way.

as they did before so if they were getting 75% 
of the answers right the first time, they got 75% of the answers right the second time. The kids 
that were in the intelligence praise group, their performance went down significantly, whereas 
the kids that were in the effort praise group, their performance increased significantly. Okay, so 
this is a viral effect where giving intelligence praise reduces performance and giving effort 
praise improves performance, which is absolutely striking and tells you everything you need to know, 
which is if you're a parent, you're a teacher, and of course, as we all give ourselves feedback, 
rewarding yourself for effort is the best way to improve performance. Rewarding yourself based 
on identity labels, so smart, so talented, you're a great athlete, etc., all that stare in the mirror and 
do self-affirmation stuff can actually undermine performance, and in fact, it does undermine 
performance. It may not do it right away, but eventually it does, and in a moment, I'll explain 
why. The other thing this study looked at that I

just have to mention is this notion of persistence. So remember earlier, I said that the kids that got intelligence praise tended to pick easier problems down the line, whereas the kids that got effort praise tended to pick harder problems. It turns out that the kids that got intelligence praise also tended to take on fewer problems overall. They tended to limit the total number of challenges that they engaged in, whereas the kids that got the effort praise, that you work so hard, you're so determined, that was so impressive how you just kept going even when you got some answers wrong, those kids not only opted for harder challenges, they not only performed better, but they also took on many more challenges. So these data really make clear that the effort praise is the way to go. Now I know many people have heard this whole thing about don't reward the person, reward the effort, reward the verbs as I'm referring to it, but it's actually pretty rare that we hear effort rewarded.

in everyday settings, and it is very common for us to overhear intelligence praise or Talent praise. You know a kid comes home with a trophy, and we tell them, You're a great athlete. Right, kid comes home with a great report card, you're so smart. Congratulations, a kid comes home with some sort of win in their world, and we tend to give them a label because we like to think that that label will get internalized, and they'll start to view themselves as a winner. We tell them, You can do anything, you're a winner, you're a winner. And of course, you don't want to tell children or yourself or any other adult, You're a loser, right? We do not want to do that. You don't want to undermine performance that way. But it's very clear based on this research and a lot of other papers similar to it that we all have a giant blind spot sitting in our psychological field when we are getting and receiving praise that really it is the sort of praise that attached to the very efforts that led

to the results that will lead to even improved 
results over time. Okay, so this paper is really   truly important. It's a landmark paper in the field 
of psychology, motivation, learning, and performance,   and that's why I'm discussing it in such detail 
here. But it actually includes one additional piece   of information that I also think everyone should 
know about, and that is the tendency for children   who get intelligence praise to misrepresent their 
performance on subsequent efforts. What do I mean   by that? In this paper, they had the children 
perform on a given task, and then they either   got intelligence praise (You're so smart, you're so 
talented) or effort praise (You work so hard, you're   so diligent), and then they had them do a series of 
other tasks and then report their results to other   kids. What they found is that children who get 
intelligence praise, when they need to report their   scores either by walking up to the board and 
putting a little mark where their particular

score is or telling another student what their 
score was or even writing it down on a piece of paper covertly so that it's not visibly being 
compared to all the other scores. The kids that got intelligence praise tend to lie about their 
score, and as you could imagine, they tend to lie in the direction of making themselves appear as 
having performed better than they actually did. So this is a pretty sinister aspect of intelligence 
praise that we don't often hear about. Even if you've heard telling a person that they are smart 
or talented can ultimately undermine performance, rarely if ever do we hear that telling someone 
that they're smart or talented can increase the probability that that person is going to 
misrepresent their performance in the future, whereas the kids that receive the effort praise 
do no such thing. They faithfully represent their performance. So just to illustrate how important 
the findings in the study really are, the paper was published in 1998, but just two years prior, 
in 1996, there was a survey of parents asking to

what extent do you believe that intelligence 
is fixed, and 85% answered that they thought that intelligence was fixed. That means they 
believe that the brain was sort of a vessel of fixed size. That of course when we're born 
into the world, it's kind of empty. We don't have any knowledge, but that the job of schooling was 
to teach kids things and reveal an intelligence capacity that was innate and that couldn't 
be increased upon. Whereas nowadays, we really understand, mainly through our deeper understanding 
of neuroplasticity and how the brain learns, that indeed the brain can learn and that intelligence 
is not fixed. However, in 1998 when these studies were done, most people were of the core belief that 
intelligence is fixed, that it cannot be improved upon, and these results really drive home the 
fact that the type of feedback we get about our performance, even when our performance is good, 
can undermine our future performance. Or if we receive feedback of the effort praise type, the you 
tried so hard, you're so persistent type, that our

abilities can indeed improve, and when you look at 
any intelligence test, if you look at a standard IQ test, or you know, go way out onto the other 
end of the Continuum in terms of intelligence testing, you look at emotional intelligence, it is 
very clear that anyone and everyone can improve their scores on those exams, and in fact, can 
improve the various aspects of intelligence, because in fact, there are many different forms of 
intelligence. Through dedicated effort, I know many of you are listening to this with an eye toward 
the tools, meaning you want to know what the tools are that you can implement. Well, earlier I 
had you ask some questions: what are you good at? What have you been told you're good at, and how 
did you arrive at being good at those things? I also encourage you to think about what you've 
been told you're bad at or less good at, and what you tell yourself you're bad at and less good at, 
and how you arrived at that conclusion right now.

I'd like you to ask yourself, what is your typical 
narrative when you are engaging in things that you believe you are good at, and what is your typical 
narrative, meaning your internal dialogue in your head, when you're engaging in things that you are 
not good at, or if you're not engaging in those things when you think about engaging in those 
things. And the tool that's very effective to apply, even just in your own mind, is to start shifting 
your narrative from those performance narratives towards effort-related narratives. If you attach 
effort verbs to why you got good at something, as well as why you are not good at something, 
well, then there's only room for improvement. Thank you for joining for this special episode of 
After Skool. If you'd like to learn more tools for mental health, physical health, and performance, 
check out the Huberman Lab podcast, which is available on all platforms: YouTube, Apple, 
Spotify, anywhere podcasts are found. Also

check out Huberman Lab on both Instagram and Twitter. There, I cover science and science-based tools, some of which overlaps with the content of the Huberman Lab podcast, but much of which is distinct from the content of the Huberman Lab podcast. We are also hubermanlab.com. That's our website, and there you can find links to all of our social media and all of our podcast episodes.

How Feedback Affects Performance - Andrew Huberman - Growth Mindset

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