A growing body of research over three decades shows that easy, unearned praise does not help students but instead interferes with significant learning opportunities. As schools ratchet up academic standards for all students, new buzzwords are “persistence,” “risk-taking” and “resilience” — each implying more sweat and strain than fuzzy, warm feelings.

“We used to think we could hand children self-esteem on a platter,” Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck said. “That has backfired.”

Dweck’s studies, embraced in Montgomery schools and elsewhere, have found that praising children for intelligence — “You’re so clever!” — also backfires. In study after study, children rewarded for being smart become more likely to shy away from hard assignments that might tarnish their star reputations.

But children praised for trying hard or taking risks tend to enjoy challenges and find greater success. Children also perform better in the long term when they believe that their intellect is not a birthright but something that grows and develops as they learn new things.

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(Image credit: Sarah L. Voisin/The Washington Post)

Talking heads proclaim that the public is due an explanation, and that the story simply isn’t going to go away without a public accounting of who (Tiger) had done what (or whom, as it were implied).

No, this post isn’t about Tiger, his accident, alleged affair, or whatnot. I don’t care about that – but what is interesting to me is why people care about such matters. If you follow this kind of news, let me ask you: what is it about celebrities that capture your fancy? What is so interesting about Jon and Kate, or Brad and Angelina or whomever.

Jaye L. Derrick and Shira Gabriel of the Department of Psychology, University at Buffalo, SUNY, published a study that "connections" to celebrities or parasocial relationships, allow people with low self-esteem to view themselves more positively:

The current research demonstrates that parasocial relationships can have self-enhancing benefits for low self-esteem people that they do not receive in real relationships. These parasocial relationships, which have very low risk of rejection, offer low self-esteem people an opportunity to reduce their self-discrepancies and feel closer to their ideal selves.

“Even ‘fake’ relationships with celebrities, relationships without any actual contact, can have benefits for the self,” the authors conclude. “We found that parasocial relationships can sometimes have benefits for people with low-self esteem that ‘real’ relationships do not.”

Or is it genetics? Duke University Medical Center neurobiologist Michael Platt found that adult rhesus macaque monkeys would pay (by giving up their favorite drink, Juicy Juice cheery juice) to look at images of dominant "celebrity" monkey of their pack.

So here’s my question to you again: What’s so captivating about celebrities?

(Photo: Jim Epler [Flickr])

The researchers, from the University of Waterloo and the University of New Brunswick, asked people with high and low self-esteem to say "I am a lovable person."

They then measured the participants’ moods and their feelings about themselves. In the low self-esteem group, those who repeated the mantra felt worse afterwards compared with others who did not. However people with high self-esteem felt better after repeating the positive self-statement – but only slightly.

The psychologists then asked the study participants to list negative and positive thoughts about themselves. They found that, paradoxically, those with low self-esteem were in a better mood when they were allowed to have negative thoughts than when they were asked to focus exclusively on affirmative thoughts.

Writing in the journal, the researchers suggest that, like overly positive praise, unreasonably positive self-statements, such as "I accept myself completely," can provoke contradictory thoughts in individuals with low self-esteem. Such negative thoughts can overwhelm the positive thoughts.

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