I want to raise a successful daughter. I do not believe that this study says what it says it studies.

(1) The sample size is even smaller than you'd be led to believe.

This is not 400 kids being asked a bunch of questions. This is 96 kids being asked two questions, 144 other kids being asked three other questions, 64 other kids being asked questions that have nothing to do with the result of the study

"Sixty-four children aged 6 and 7 (half boys, half girls) were introduced to two novel games, one said to be for “children who are really, really smart” and the other for“children who try really, really hard” (counterbalanced; see the supplementary materials). Children were then asked four questions to measure their interest in these games (e.g., “Do you like this game, or do you not like it?”)"

and then 96 kids were asked one question. None of these kids were asked all the questions, and there was no longitudinal study of shifting attitudes at all.

2) Sure, it's peer-reviewed, but it's a grad student study. Peers are easy and they don't necessarily know any more than you do.

3) The p-values aren't great. I mean, I suhuuucked at statistics. But half of their conclusions are supported by P of .046, .056.

It's super hawt right now to talk about not calling kids "smart" and instead calling them "motivated" but this is literally a study of 5, 6 and 7 year olds being asked to evaluate "smarts" by how people in pictures are dressed, and it gathered less data than a PoliticsUSA weekend straw poll.

The recommendation not to praise intelligence but work is a good one. I remember hearing about some other research awhile back that found that kids who were told about how smart certain scientists (like Newton or Einstein) were then did worse in science in math classes compared to those that were told how hard those same people worked.

I can say for my own part that this makes sense. I never valued work; I never had to work especially hard in school, so didn't really know how to study (even when I got to college). This meant i tended towards subjects that I was already good at, and means it was a lot harder to make myself well-rounded. It also meant that I was turned off of pursuing science as a career by a single worthless AP chemistry teacher in high school.