ATtribution Theory

Was led to this via the "Boing Boing" site, a biased but fascinating collection of spewage ... it's at http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/marapr/features/dweck.html (I tripped over it from a link to how to jimmy bicycle locks.)

"Dweck and her assistants ran an experiment on elementary school children whom school personnel had identified as helpless. These kids fit the definition perfectly: if they came across a few math problems they couldn’t solve, for example, they no longer could do problems they had solved before—and some didn’t recover that ability for days."

Seems they trained some of these students to attribute failure to insufficient effort (Can you imagine the manipulation that went on to accomplish that?) and those students developed more resiliency. Their theory is that if you approach a task with the goal of learning from it instead of receiving approval for how you perform on it, you'll wrestle longer with it.

It reminds me a bit of the research on IQ tests - where students did better if they thought it was "some puzzles" than if they thought it was a "test of ability."

More conclusions: "Students for whom performance is paramount want to look smart even if it means not learning a thing in the process. For them, each task is a challenge to their self-image, and each setback becomes a personal threat. So they pursue only activities at which they’re sure to shine—and avoid the sorts of experiences necessary to grow and flourish in any endeavor. Students with learning goals, on the other hand, take necessary risks and don’t worry about failure because each mistake becomes a chance to learn."

Question: which of these does the Stanford culture encourage?