［家教］The Problem with Telling Children They’re Better Than Others

D8

总拿孩子作比较，后果会怎样？

科学美国人

When parents ask, “What grade did you get?” there is a common follow-up question: “So who got the highest grade?” Most social comparisons are so common in daily life that they are usually glossed over.

Social comparisons are well intentioned: we want to make children feel proud and motivate them to achieve. Yet social comparisons can backfire: children can learn to always compare themselves with those around them and become trapped in a vicious cycle of competition.

One well-known strategy to eliminate social comparisons is to provide children with participation trophies. Such awards, however, may not abolish social comparisons: despite receiving the same trophy, children are sensitive to even minor differences in performance between themselves and others. High-performing children who receive the same prize as low-performing ones may feel unjustly treated and look down on the latter group. More generally, those who receive unwarranted rewards may come to believe that they are entitled to recognition and admiration. Indeed, lavishing children with praise can, in some cases, cultivate narcissism, research shows.

How, then, can we make children feel proud of themselves and motivate them without the unwanted side effects? We believe a better approach is to use temporal comparisons— encouraging children to compare themselves with their past self rather than with others, such as by assessing how much they have learned or improved themselves. When children compare themselves with their past self, they don’t compete with others.

What, then, can parents and teachers do with this knowledge? For one, parents and teachers can praise children’s improvement over time to let them know they are making progress and heading in the right direction. Also, teachers can create learning contexts that track children’s own progress over time, such as report cards that display their changes in learning and performance. By doing so, adults teach children that outperforming oneself is more important than outperforming others and that even small victories may be celebrated.