Development Studies-Gunderson's Theory Flashcards
Background of Gundersons study
Reasearch has shown that the way parents praise their young children impacts a childs later ideas about reasons for behaviour and beliefs. For example, it is found that praising childrens effort rather than their ability leads to the idea that working hard can change achievements. Gunderson et al’s study sets out to see whether parents praising children in the home would change how they approach situations
Person and process praise
Parents can praise their children personally (person praise) or they can praise the childs effort and behaviour(process praise)
Person praise seems to lead children to the idea that they are born with or without an ability. This leads to a fixed theory known as entity theory and the result of this is the child not trying as hard on tasks they think they’re not good at
Process praise appears to lead children to see a link between effort and success. They are likely to see ability as changeable and are more likely to keep trying to do better. This change theory is known as incremental theory
Praise and gender
Previous studies have shown that boys tend to think of ability and behaviour as changeable (incremental theory) suggesting that they recieve more process praise.
Praise for girls is more likely to lead to entity theory, suggesting that girls recieve more person praise.
Aims of Gundersons study
The researchers wanted to know whether:
Children are affected by the type of parental praise recieved in a natural situation
Parents give less process praise to girls and more to boys
If the type of parental praise given to younger children affects them 5 years later
Method of Gundersons study
The study followed a group of children over a long period of time. They looked at parents use of praise at home when their children were 14,26 and 38 months. 5 years later, the childrens ideas about behaviour were measured and related to the type of praise they had recieved. Researchers looked at a childs gender and influences of the type of praise on later ideas.
Participants in the study
29 boys and 24 girls 64% were white 17% were African -American 11% were Hispanic 8% were from Multiracial backgrounds
Conclusions of Gundersons studies
A clear relationship was found between parents use of process praise and a childs later use of incremental motivational framework (ability being changeable), however the study found that person praise did not lead to entity motivational framework (ability is fixed). They found that boys recieved more process praise that girls meaning that there are gender differences in the way each gender is praised.
Strengths of Gundersons study
One strength of Gundersons study is that it had ecological validity as it was done in a natural setting
Another strength is that bias was avoided because the reasearchers who videotaped the data didnt know the objective while gathering data
Weaknesses of Gundersons study
One weakness is that the ethics could be questioned as the participants were lied to about the objective. If there was a debrief , it may be seen as ethically acceptable.
Another weakness is that it may not be natural or valid because the parents may have changed the way they praise their children because they were being observed
