When a young child did a magnificent drawing, would you say “you are such a good drawer” or “you did a good job drawing”? Previous studies found that these two kinds of praises lead to differences in children’s reactions toward setbacks. After they encountered failures in drawing, children that heard the categorical praise (‘good drawer’) had lower self-evaluations and decreased persistence on the task compared to children that heard the behavioral description (‘good job drawing’). Foster‐Hanson et al.’s (2020) study extends the previous research by investigating whether asking children to “be helpers” instead of “to help” affects children’s beliefs and prosocial behaviors once they experience actual failures in helping. 

Foster‐Hanson et al. (2020) randomly assigned 75 children between the ages of 4 and 5 to one of the two experimental conditions: the “To Help” condition or the “Helper” condition. A researcher read an introduction to children that guide them to either help or be a helper. Then, another researcher engaged each child with a coloring activity and conducted three helping tasks. These tasks were designed to evoke failure experiences in helping among children. For instance, in the first task, the researcher asked the child to help put away a box full of ping pong balls. But the box had a loose bottom, so the bottom would fall out and the balls would fall out onto the floor when the child attempted to pick the box up and put it away. The tasks also varied in the amount of effort to help and the benefits to the helper. The researchers coded whether children helped on each of the 3 tasks and assessed children’s attitudes and beliefs about helping after they finished all of the tasks. The results showed that children in both conditions were more likely to help in the least effortful helping task. There was also a significant interaction between condition and task. Children in the “To Help” condition helped more in the two effortful helping tasks than those in the “Helper” condition. When the helping task required little effort, children in the “Helper” condition were more likely to help. Moreover, children in the “Helper” condition were less likely to help on the first effortful task than the last easy task while children in the “To Help” condition were as likely to help on the effortful and easy tasks. These findings suggest that asking children to “be helpers” instead of “to help” may discourage children from helping on difficult tasks once they experience failures. 

One of the most important take-aways of Foster‐Hanson et al.’s (2020) study is that phrasing requests or praises in terms of behavioral descriptions instead of category labels may encourage children to view failures as opportunities to learn rather than something detrimental to their identities. Perhaps labeling young children as “helpers” imposes extra pressure on them. Children may hesitate to engage in difficult helping tasks because they are afraid of failures. Children who hear behavioral descriptions of their prosocial behaviors may not feel the pressure. They may value their actions of helping more than the outcome of their actions. 

The study also sheds light on EPIC’s future research on behavioral responses to failure experiences and the potential causal link between behavioral responses and people’s beliefs of failure and setbacks. For instance, future research can investigate whether the use of categorical language in educational practices (e.g. calling students “scholars”) influences students’ attitudes and beliefs about learning. Those labels may also affect students’ learning behaviors when they encounter inevitable failures. 

For more information about Foster‐Hanson et al.’s (2020) study, check out the link below for the journal article: 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6424657/

Reference:

Foster‐Hanson, E., Cimpian, A., Leshin, R. A., & Rhodes, M. (2020). Asking children to “be helpers” can backfire after setbacks. Child Development, 91(1), 236-248. doi:10.1111/cdev.13147