NurtureShock Read Online Free

societal effects.
    By 1984, the California legislature had created an official self-esteem task force, believing that improving citizens’ self-esteem
     would do everything from lower dependence on welfare to decrease teen pregnancy. Such arguments turned self-esteem into an
     unstoppable train, particularly when it came to children. Anything potentially damaging to kids’ self-esteem was axed. Competitions
     were frowned upon. Soccer coaches stopped counting goals and handed out trophies to everyone. Teachers threw out their red
     pencils. Criticism was replaced with ubiquitous, even undeserved, praise. (There’s even a school district in Massachusetts
     that has kids in gym class “jumping rope” without a rope—lest they suffer the embarrassment of tripping.)
    Dweck and Blackwell’s work is part of a larger academic challenge to one of the self-esteem movement’s key tenets: that praise,
     self-esteem, and performance rise and fall together. From 1970 to 2000, there were over 15,000 scholarly articles written
     on self-esteem and its relationship to everything—from sex to career advancement. But the results were often contradictory
     or inconclusive. So in 2003 the Association for Psychological Science asked Dr. Roy Baumeister, then a leading proponent of
     self-esteem, to review this literature. His team concluded that self-esteem research was polluted with flawed science. Most
     of those 15,000 studies asked people to rate their self-esteem and then asked them to rate their own intelligence, career
     success, relationship skills, etc. These self-reports were extremely unreliable, since people with high self-esteem have an
     inflated perception of their abilities. Only 200 of the studies employed a scientifically-sound way to measure self-esteem
     and its outcomes.
    After reviewing those 200 studies, Baumeister concluded that having high self-esteem didn’t improve grades or career achievement.
     It didn’t even reduce alcohol usage. And it especially did not lower violence of any sort. (Highly aggressive, violent people
     happen to think very highly of themselves, debunking the theory that people are aggressive to make up for low self-esteem.)
    At the time, Baumeister was quoted as saying that his findings were “the biggest disappointment of my career.”
    Now he’s on Dweck’s side of the argument, and his work is going in a similar direction. He recently published an article showing
     that for college students on the verge of failing in class, esteem-building praise causes their grades to sink further. Baumeister
     has come to believe the continued appeal of self-esteem is largely tied to parents’ pride in their children’s achievements:
     it’s so strong that “when they praise their kids, it’s not that far from praising themselves.”

    By and large, the literature on praise shows that it can be effective—a positive, motivating force. In one study, University
     of Notre Dame researchers tested praise’s efficacy on a losing college hockey team. The experiment worked: the team got into
     the playoffs. But all praise is not equal—and, as Dweck demonstrated, the effects of praise can vary significantly, depending
     on the praise given. To be effective, researchers have found, praise needs to be specific. (The hockey players were specifically
     complimented on the number of times they checked an opponent.)
    Sincerity of praise is also crucial. According to Dweck, the biggest mistake parents make is assuming students aren’t sophisticated
     enough to see and feel our true intentions. Just as we can sniff out the true meaning of a backhanded compliment or a disingenuous
     apology, children, too, scrutinize praise for hidden agendas. Only young children—under the age of seven—take praise at face
     value: older children are just as suspicious of it as adults.
    Psychologist Wulf-Uwe Meyer, a pioneer in the field, conducted a series of studies during which children watched other students