Complimenting students for hard work reinforces their belief that they have control over themselves and their surroundings. The other half of the students were also informed they had scored well, and then told, “You must be really smart at these problems.” Complimenting students on their intelligence activates an external locus of control. Most fifth graders don’t believe they can choose how smart they are. In general, young kids think that intelligence is an innate capacity, so telling young people they are smart reinforces their belief that success or failure is based on factors outside of
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When we can contextualize the source of our success, deserved or not, the location from which that is sourced alters our perception of what the driving force behind it. Either way, this is invoking a teleological understanding of the source of gratification in light of success. As we get older, the desire to derive success, failure, change, etc., from a natural source that is also intrinsic to our being poor ego, however this is not always the case. Autistics are far more likely to invoke natural causes for events and phenomena even in childhood.
