Author: vaughanbell

Highlighting the striking parallels between our least understood and most exalted states of mind, Nietzsche commented that “there is always some madness in love”.

Perhaps the reason love has such a good reputation when compared to other forms of madness, is its effect on mood.

Euphoria, arousal, elation, talkativeness and flights of fancy can fill the mind in the most pleasurable way and it’s interesting that these are also core symptoms of mania – one end of the manic-depressive spectrum.

The defining feature of madness is delusion, however, where the affected person holds a fixed, unrealistic belief despite persuasive contrary evidence.

People in love are notorious for their unusual beliefs and, indeed, research has shown that we tend to hold unlikely and overly positive beliefs about our lovers.

Romance doesn’t even need a willing partner in some cases, as people who are diagnosed with de Clerambault’s syndrome hold the delusional belief that another person is in love with them, even if they’ve never met.

The original subject of de Clerambault’s seminal case study was a 53 year old woman who believed that King George V was in love with her and signalled his desires by moving the curtains of Buckingham Palace.

It seems madness and love are, in many ways, soul mates, and perhaps we should be grateful for their shared history.

Indeed, madness is at its most spectacular when shared, and the prospect of falling sanely in love with someone surely seems to miss the point.

There’s a fascinating article in The New York Magazine about the dramatic effects of different types of praise on a child’s success when tackling new challenges.

A team of researchers led by Prof Carole Dweck asked children to complete a series of short tests, and randomly divided into groups. Each child was given a single line of praise.

One group was praised for their intelligence (“You must be smart at this”), while the others were praised for their effort (“You must have worked really hard”). This simple difference had a startling effect.

Children who were praised for their effort were more likely to choose a harder test when given a choice, were less likely to become disheartened when given a test they were guaranteed to fail, and when finally given the original tests again, their marks improved.

In contrast, the children praised for their intelligence tended to choose an easier test if asked, were distressed by failure, and actually had worse marks after re-taking the original tests.

Dweck had suspected that praise could backfire, but even she was surprised by the magnitude of the effect. “Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control,” she explains. “They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child’s control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.”

In follow-up interviews, Dweck discovered that those who think that innate intelligence is the key to success begin to discount the importance of effort. I am smart, the kids’ reasoning goes; I don’t need to put out effort. Expending effort becomes stigmatized‚Äîit’s public proof that you can’t cut it on your natural gifts.

Repeating her experiments, Dweck found this effect of praise on performance held true for students of every socioeconomic class. It hit both boys and girls—the very brightest girls especially (they collapsed the most following failure).

The article is fascinating, although it seems the writer has somewhat overused the phrase ‘the inverse power of praise’ and might lead some people to think that praise itself has an ‘inverse effect’.

Praising children is incredibly important. Countless psychological studies have shown that excessive critical comments have a damaging effect on mental health.

This research just suggests that in terms of encouraging children to tackle challenges effectively, praising their effort seems more effective than praising their intelligence.

The article is a thorough look at the issues raised by this research, and how it is being applied in education.

Link to The New York Magazine article.