The experiment that changed how praise should work

Mueller and Dweck’s 1998 research across six studies with fifth-grade children produced findings that are both counterintuitive and commercially significant. After completing an initial set of problems, children received one of three types of feedback: intelligence praise, effort praise, or neutral outcome feedback. The subsequent differences in behaviour were consistent across every study.

Children praised for intelligence chose easier problems in subsequent choice tasks, showed less persistence after failure, enjoyed the tasks less, and performed worse. Children praised for effort showed the opposite pattern on every measure. The specific numbers are striking: 92% of effort-praised children chose the more challenging puzzles when given a choice, while only 33% of intelligence-praised children did. That gap — between children who seek challenge and children who avoid it — is the gap between a team that develops and one that stagnates.

The most troubling finding was about honesty. Children who received intelligence praise more often lied about their score than those who received effort praise. Talent praise does not just reduce future performance — it creates pressure to protect the image of being talented, which means concealing failure and misreporting results. This has a direct organisational implication that most leaders do not anticipate.

This research was conducted with children, and one replication attempt with vocational education students did not find the same effect. The praise-type effect is most robustly evidenced in educational settings and under conditions of challenge and setback. Transfer to adult professional environments is well-supported in principle but should not be treated as automatic.

What a single sentence of praise actually installs

Dweck’s broader research distinguishes between two implicit theories of intelligence. Entity theory holds that intelligence is fixed — you either have it or you don’t. Incremental theory holds that intelligence is malleable and develops through effort and learning. The Mueller and Dweck research demonstrated that praise operates as a socialisation tool that installs one of these theories: a single sentence of talent praise after a success is sufficient to shift children toward entity theory, with measurable downstream consequences.

Students praised for intelligence agreed significantly more with statements like “Your intelligence is something basic about you that you can’t really change.” When asked to define intelligence, they made more references to innate, fixed capacity. Students praised for effort made more references to skills, knowledge, and areas they could develop.

A leader who consistently praises talent, natural skill, or innate ability is installing entity theory in their team. Entity theory produces performance goals — proving ability — rather than learning goals — developing ability. Performance goals produce challenge avoidance, because the person who believes their capability is fixed has everything to lose from a challenge they might fail and nothing to gain from its learning value.

Why effort praise preserves agency after failure

Weiner’s attribution theory provides the mechanism. Effort is an internal, controllable, unstable attribution — the person can increase it, it varies across situations, and failure attributed to effort carries a motivational corrective pathway. Ability is an internal, uncontrollable, stable attribution — the person cannot change it, and failure attributed to ability produces helplessness.

When a leader praises talent and the team member subsequently fails, the failure-attribution that follows is “I don’t have enough talent” — stable, uncontrollable, leading nowhere. When a leader praises effort and the team member fails, the available attribution is “I didn’t put in enough effort” or “I used the wrong strategy” — controllable, unstable, motivating correction.

People who believe that having ability means you should not need effort — that talent should bring success automatically — are the most likely to reduce effort and disengage when facing setbacks. Effort praise prevents this belief from forming.

The lying problem and psychological safety

The finding about dishonesty is the one with the most direct organisational consequences. A culture that praises talent and natural ability creates systemic pressure to appear talented — which means systemic pressure to conceal failure, hide uncertainty, and misreport performance. The talent-praise culture does not just reduce future performance. It produces an information environment in which honest feedback is structurally impossible.

The team that has been told it is talented will not tell you when something is going wrong, because going wrong threatens the talent-identity your praise installed. The psychological safety research established earlier in this conversation identifies honest disclosure of failure as the primary mechanism through which teams learn and perform. Talent-praise culture is structurally incompatible with that disclosure. Effort-praise culture enables it.

If the patterns described here — teams that conceal failure, avoid challenge, or disengage after setbacks — feel familiar rather than theoretical, that is worth examining. Speaking with a leadership coach or psychologist can help identify whether praise culture is a contributing factor. UK: Samaritans (116 123, free, 24/7). Mind (0300 123 3393). International: iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres.

What the longitudinal evidence shows

Blackwell, Trzesniewski and Dweck’s 2007 longitudinal study followed students through the transition from primary to secondary school — a period reliably associated with performance decline. Students holding an incremental theory showed a continuing upward trajectory in mathematics grades; students holding an entity theory showed the characteristic decline. The divergence was entirely explained by the mindset difference, not by initial ability.

An intervention component of the same study found that a brief explanation — essentially two sentences explaining that the brain grows stronger through challenging use — was sufficient to reverse the performance decline trajectory. Changing how success and effort are explained to team members, without changing anything structural about their work, produces measurable changes in performance trajectory. The most cost-effective leadership intervention available may be reviewing how you give praise.

A book worth reading alongside this

Grit by Angela Duckworth is the most compelling adult-performance counterpart to Dweck’s childhood praise research. Where Dweck’s work shows that praise type determines how children respond to challenge, Duckworth’s longitudinal research with West Point cadets, National Spelling Bee competitors, and sales teams shows that effort and persistence explain achievement variance in adults that talent measures consistently fail to predict. Her argument — that the combination of passion and perseverance outperforms raw ability across every high-achievement domain studied — is both the empirical case for effort-based culture and the most persuasive available reframe of what it means to build a high-performing team. For any entrepreneur who wants to understand what they are actually selecting for when they hire, and what they are actually building when they give feedback, this book provides the most direct available answer.

Have questions about this article?

If any part of this article raised questions you want to explore further, courbot.co is built for exactly that. It is courben.co’s AI assistant, designed around the psychology of entrepreneurship. Ask it anything from this article.

If the dynamics described in this article — disengagement, failure-concealment, or challenge-avoidance in your team or yourself — are significantly affecting your wellbeing, speaking with a psychologist is the right next step. UK: Samaritans (116 123, free, 24/7). Mind (0300 123 3393). BACP therapist finder: bacp.co.uk/search/Therapists. International: iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres. Crisis Text Line — text HOME to 741741.

This article is for educational and informational purposes only. Sources: Mueller, C.M. & Dweck, C.S. (1998), Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 33–52. Dweck, C.S. (2007), Educational Leadership, 65(2), 34–39. Blackwell, L.S., Trzesniewski, K.H. & Dweck, C.S. (2007), Child Development, 78(1), 246–263. Weiner, B. (1985), Psychological Review, 92(4), 548–573.