For as long as I can remember, my parents have praised me for being smart.
“Look how clever you are!”
“You’re such an early reader; I’m so proud.”
My teachers have praised me for being smart.
“You have the natural brainpower for this stuff.”
My peers have praised me for being smart.
“An A on that paper? Of course! This stuff is easy for someone as smart as you.”
Let me be clear: I am not, nor was I ever, tremendously intelligent. My parents say they emphasized the intelligence I do have because, like most parents, they want me to be both confident in and proud of myself. I suppose teachers do it largely for the same reasons. And as someone guilty of praising a peer’s intelligence, I think peers do it to make one another feel more secure. But, when our means for instilling self-esteem focus on a singular natural ability, are we really helping?
Scientific American identifies compliments about natural intelligence as “empty praise,” because their research shows parents’ use of this kind of praise to be futile and even damaging. When we praise someone, we’re telling them what about them we think gives them worth. The more someone receives compliments about their appearance, for example, the more likely their self-esteem will grow to rely on their looks. When this person starts to age, or even sees people they deem more attractive, their self-esteem may suffer. The same thing can happen with unlearned intelligence.
As I got older and school got more challenging, I often couldn’t find my sense of self. I was supposed to be smart. This was supposed to be easy for me. I was supposed to be good at everything academic. When I came to my parents moping about not being good at fifth grade math, or having trouble understanding what my science teacher was trying to explain, my parents always said something along the lines of, “Well, you are lucky to have been born very smart, so it won’t be a problem for you to put your mind to it and get good grades.”
Their good intentions just made me feel worse. If I were so naturally bright, why did I need to put in all this extra effort many of my peers did not? I knew that despite their encouragement, I had not been born as apt as some of my peers. If I didn’t have that raw talent, I wasn’t as important as the other kids. And their insistence that I was in fact smart only highlighted the graveness of my shortcoming. The way I saw it, they wouldn’t have been complimenting my innate intelligence so much if innate intelligence were not crucial to my adequacy.
Knowing that my parents expected me to get good grades, I pushed through my middle school math and science classes despite what felt like my dearth of basic brain cells. It never mattered how much effort I put into an assignment, or how hard I studied for a test; only the grades could make me feel good. A good grade could let me pretend I was as smart as my friends were. A good grade could let my parents believe I was as naturally gifted as they said I was.
It wasn’t until high school that I realized the effort I put into schoolwork wasn’t something to be ashamed of. I remember meeting outside of class with a math teacher about some new concepts I was having trouble with. At the end of our meeting she said to me, “This doesn’t come easy to you, but you try harder than anyone in this class. That will take you far.” That stuck with me. She saw what I had always thought of as overcompensation for being intellectually inferior as an asset.
Over time, my self-perception began to change.
I now see the merit in the fact that at I do not get good grades because I am naturally smart: I am smart because I put in the effort to get good grades.
Telling someone who’s feeling down on themselves that, no, they really are smart can set them up to feel even more down on themselves. It says, “No, don’t feel badly about yourself; you’re awesome and important to me specifically because you were born with high levels of intelligence.” Then, when something stretches their cognitive ability and really challenges them, they can easily feel like a failure because they have to try. Suddenly, the need to try signifies lack of intelligence. You told them they were special because they were so mentally agile, but now they’re not smart enough and feeling worse about themselves than before you told them they were smart. Avoid “empty praise,” and give something sustainable. An honest, “You studied so hard for that test; you’re so dedicated,” or, “You have been such a kind and caring friend to me,” can carry self-esteem steadily through all challenges, intellectual or otherwise.
