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daenerys comments on Talking to Children: A Pre-Holiday Guide - Less Wrong
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I do not understand how you reached this conclusion. My earlier comment said that when people complement you (an adult), that you should accept their compliment. This post says that when you complement children, that you should do so in a way that is most beneficial to their development.
Can you explain how you reached the conclusion that these are opposite statements?
I specifically mention that this information is based on anecdotal evidence, personal experience, and general knowledge. I agree that I would like more evidence. If you know of any, please share!
I do not think that it is inconsistent to say that society teaches young girls that their appearances are of prime importance, so THEN girls take action to increase those complements. It is a cause and effect.
Think of it this way; if instead girls (and boys) grew up getting complements on their work-ethic, or on their <insert positive attribute here>, THEN they will still take action to increase those complements, but now those actions focus on <insert positive attribute>, and not on looks.
I am downvoting your comment (I dislike random downvotes, so I try to "claim" mine), because I can't make any rational sense of it. But if you clarify so that I can understand your argument, I will upvote!
Your earlier comment said to act normally. This post says not to act normally. Maybe the girls will notice your failure to provide expected praise and be hurt. Actually, you give two logically independent suggestions here: 1. not to talk about girls' looks and 2. to talk about something else. It is only the first that is at odds with the previous comment.
Sure, in isolation the claim about praise of looks makes sense, but it is opposite to the claim about praise of intelligence. Why does praising children's intelligence cause them to give up, while praising girls' looks causes them to put effort into the looks?
I interpreted most of what you wrote as reflexive contrarianism with relatively little insight until I got to this part at the very end. Once you restated the claim in a very generic form "Praising X will induce more X, but praising Y will induce less Y" it called attention to the internal features of X and Y as being necessary to predict what will actually happen.
Once I understood the dichotomy here, I realized that I had no coherent theory about which trait-like surface features could be dropped in for X or Y to be suppressed or promoted by praise. My guess is that there's something that's actually pretty complicated going on here with cached selves, behaviorist conditioning, the fundamental attribution error, folk theories of human performance, and probably other stuff as well. I imagine I could have a somewhat evidence based working hypothesis for an answer 18 months from now if I keep my eyes and mind open but it seems clear to me that I don't have an answer of that quality right now.
Thank you for pushing forward in the face of downvoting. It was educational to discover a new puzzle in such a common situation :-)
is not isomorphic to "praising x will cause less x and praising y will cause more y". Praising intelligence causes kids to emphasize intelligence and de-emphasize competing explanations, e.g. hard work. Praising looks causes kids to emphasize looks and de-emphasize competing (for time) qualities, e.g. knowledge. In both cases praising x causes more x, and also less other stuff because of opportunity cost.
Thanks, but I'm pretty sure it was an error, both on LW and in real life. Moreover, responding to comments on LW is generally a bad idea because people will read them without reading the context.
There's a lot of contested meaning in the word "normal." Girls hardly need compliments on their looks in order to grow into well adjusted women.
There's substantial debate about whether to praise children's characteristics or effort. The OP is a brief discussion with anecdotes about that topic.
It's awfully hard to learn to be smarter. If you teach a kid that their success or failure is determined by how intelligent they are, then (according to Carol Dweck, whose research is linked elsewhere in this thread,) when they have difficulty completing a task, they will tend to conclude that they aren't smart enough, which they are unlikely to be able to do anything about. If they're conditioned to believe that success or failure is primarily dependent on effort, then if they encounter a task that they have difficulty with, they will be more inclined to believe that they aren't trying hard enough.
Given that there are multibillion dollar industries focused on presentation and modification of personal appearance, there is no shortage of ways for a person to put effort into their appearance. Avenues for intelligence modification are pretty minimal by comparison.