
Let your kids lose: Success inhibits preschoolers’ selective trust - chriskanan
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/12/161206125158.htm
======
joaorico
One solution strategy that works very well from my experience is to ask them
upfront whether they want to play "for real" or to play to learn. [edit: A
third mode is "for (silly) fun" where everything is allowed.]

This works for all ages... and for boardgames and physical games. It's their
choice which mode they want to play in, and they trust and respect you more
when given the choice. You treat them as a peer. You can beat them
mercilessly, or you can join their side and practice the game together. And
the thrill and confidence they get when they beat you playing 'for real' is
just priceless.

~~~
foobarian
How did you get your kids started with board-game type games? I have a 3yro
and we just have "silly fun" with dice but I'm trying to figure out how to
show him the "move N places forward" mechanic where N is the number on the
die.

~~~
kosma
Isn't 3yo a bit too early? I mean, at three years old a child is legally smart
enough not to swallow the dice... but I thought knowing how to interpret
numbers and apply them is a bit more advanced than knowing not to eat the
numbery thing. ;)

~~~
foobarian
Yeah fair enough, I was just wondering about the future. How did you build up
to a full board game with your kid? What were the phases? 1. Succeed in not
eating the dice 2. ??? 3. Play a game of Sorry! within the rules.

~~~
secabeen
The intermediate step here is what Candyland does.

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jonex
Ok, I must have read something wrong, but what they are saying is that
children put more trust in people giving them useful clues than people giving
them not useful clues. Something that seems quite reasonable.

Which makes me confused by this quote: "... it suggests that children may not
be as savvy as previous research has suggested."

Obviously a "helpful" clue that doesn't improve your chance of success (they
always succeed) isn't really helpful. Isn't it quite savvy to recognise that?

If someone has gotten a better understanding of what they are actually trying
to say I'd like to hear it.

There might be an interesting result in it somewhere, as it could be
interpreted to imply that only slightly challenging kids in an educational
context could lead them to believe that their learning efforts has no use if
the challenges are adjusted to never let them fail. But I don't see how the
results could be interpreted to mean what the title says.

~~~
zaroth
One experimenter gave accurate clues; the other gave inaccurate ones.... But
for half of the children the game was rigged so that ultimately they would
find the hidden objects.

So one adult was always giving bad advice and one was always giving good
advice. But in half the games it was rigged so the child always found the toy
even if they looked in the wrong places. The advice from the adults was still
always bad and good advice for the rigged games.

Afterwards they asked the kids who they thought were more helpful. Even though
one adult was giving bad advice always and one adult was giving good advice
always the 4-5 years olds only discerned this if they actually lost the game
when they didn't follow the good advice, even though the adult giving bad
advice was always still giving bad advice.

I think the key is they must have rigged the game to ensure the bad advice
adult was always still giving bad advice. If the bad advice turned into good
advice in the rigged version then it wouldn't work, just like you said.

~~~
jonex
But how can advice for winning a game be either bad or good if you will win
whatever you do? That's the part I don't understand.

~~~
dragonwolf
I think the point they were trying to make was that even though the kids had
benefitted in earlier games from helpful advice and received no benefit when
given unhelpful advice that by being allowed to then succeed in the rigged
game the kids failed to acknowledge the value of the earlier advice. This
shown by the kids not having a preference for the more helpful person. Though
I think the conclusion they are drawing would really depend on the sample size
of games a kid was given in order for the kid to be able to distinguish good &
bad advice from the game simply being pure chance all along.

~~~
stractract
I still don't see it. How on earth would a kid recognize unhelpful advice if
it still resulted in finding the object? The kid does not know the game is
rigged. I think it is more likely the article has not fully explained the
experiment. It would make me sad to think this was actually published.

~~~
bzbarsky
Say the advice is "look behind the couch in the living room" and the object is
later found on the kitchen counter. And the rigging consists of the
experimenter asking the kid to get something unrelated from the kitchen, for
example.

But yes, it's hard to determine whether this is how the experiment worked from
the article. Unfortunately the actual paper at
[http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022096516...](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022096516301035)
is paywalled in the usual way.

~~~
jonex
I used my student super powers on that and now have the answer!

There was actually 4 similar studies described in the article. But the first
one is the most important.

The setup was that the kid would watch a video where a toy was hidden in one
of two cups. The helpful person would point out to the kid in which cup the
toy was hidden. The unhelpful person would not give any hints at all but
rather just explain which toy was hidden. The kid would of course follow the
helpful persons advice, but would have to guess in void of any advice.

The kid would then get to guess in which cup the toy was hidden, whereafter
the answer was revealed in the video. However, in the successful condition,
the answer was modified so the kid would guess right no matter what.

This was repeated eight times, after which the kid got to choose which person
would give them advice for four more trials.

It was in this situation it showed that the kids who had always been
successful did not seem to value the better advice they would expect to get
from the helpful person while the kids who had failed due to lack of advice
chose the helpful person.

In the article they discuss this being due to the kid trusting their own
ability to guess, not needing any help.

I'd say that the results are academically interesting as they increase our
understanding of children's decision making. But I don't think they should be
taken out of context and be applied as a some kind of answer on how to do
parenting and teaching.

------
imagist
This something I've realized about my own impostor syndrome: the people who
are most likely to knock me down a peg when I'm being overconfident are the
only ones I trust when they compliment me. If you only ever hear positive
things from someone, you can't trust that what they say is true.

~~~
smallnamespace
> If you only ever hear positive things from someone

That rule seems overly strict perhaps? Like if someone only says positive
things, but only occasionally, then there is still a signal there.

~~~
shiven
This. What happened to if you have nothing positive to say then keep shut?

Positive praise, if rare, with neutral (or no) feedback otherwise, can have a
similar effect.

~~~
neurotech1
Elon Musk is known for soliciting negative feedback, from friends.

------
SeanDav
I was taught chess at age 6 by a national level player. While I have no doubt
he never had to try hard to beat me, he never let me win. I was a far better
player as a result.

While I never won, I was never discouraged, because he would always point out
where I had made good plays and where I could have done better, in a very
interactive manner.

This has got to be one of the best ways to learn.

~~~
cheald
My dad, while never a national level player, taught me chess, and likewise
never let me win. The day that I beat him for the first time was an enormous
triumph for me, and I'm happily imparting that to my own kids now. My 8 year
old hadn't beat me yet, but his game has developed rapidly and that first win
isn't very far off now. I'll offer him advice and help him understand why a
given move was good or bad, but his moves are his and his alone.

When he wins, it'll be because he earned it, and I know from experience what a
triumph that win will be.

~~~
user837387
I do not understand how can he beat you if you started playing as a kid.
Granted, I don't know what I'm talking about but unless you are going senile I
don't see how he can beat you while he's still a kid.

~~~
aklemm
Winning one game against someone is different than being able to beat someone
consistently.

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ldjb
The article doesn't explain the experiment very well, which has caused
confusion for myself and other commenters here. Having read the actual
research paper, I'll try to outline how the experiment works, as I understand
it:

Children were shown a video on a laptop featuring two containers. There would
either be a helpful person or an unhelpful person who secretly puts a toy in
one of the containers. The helpful person would then indicate which container
they had put the toy into (either by pointing to the container or by lifting
the containers to reveal the toy). Contrary to what the article says, the
unhelpful person simply did not offer any sort of hint. The child would then
be asked to select the container the toy was in.

I hope that clears things up.

------
glaberficken
Confessing I didn't read the article, but from my parenting experience -
Beating your kids at games teaches them one very important thing about real
life: to learn a skill you have to practice repeatedly. This inevitably
involves frustration and persistence which any human being should be prepared
to deal with in life.

~~~
aswanson
The earlier this lesson is learned, the better the life lived.

------
saycheese
RELATED: School with "No Rules" Playground
[https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r1Y0cuufVGI](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=r1Y0cuufVGI)

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mac01021
Without knowing about the "game" from the study and the "rigging" process in
greater detail than the article provides it's hard to see how (or whether) the
outcome is meaningful.

------
peterbonney
Very interesting research. Unfortunately we all should have learned by now
that it pays to be skeptical of all provocative social science findings until
replicated...

------
gojomo
I suspect "children" here may be a distraction: under the same artificial
constraints, adult players might show the exact same behavior.

From the article (and abstract), it's hard to imagine a game where the 'bad'
advice is really 'bad' if (1) the player always trusts it; and (2) they then
always succeed. In such a case, the forced-success may retroactively make the
bad-advice 'good'. (At best, maybe the bad advice forced a slower completion?
But that requires assuming some more complicated game.)

From playing the game of interpreting this article, I have concluded that
neither the article author nor the researchers (via their original abstract)
can be trusted to summarize such research in sufficient detail for unambiguous
interpretation.

------
semi-extrinsic
Solution: play something that has essentially zero strategy, where who wins is
close to random. Like Ludo or Yahtzee.

My daughter often wins at Ludo, but it's not because I let her. She also often
loses.

~~~
johnloeber
Ludo's fundamental, underlying lesson is that your actions don't matter at
all. (The player has literally no agency in the game, it could be equivalently
played by a RNG.) That doesn't seem like a good parenting lesson. A board game
should be an opportunity to develop strategic thinking skills, rather than
teaching the child that they're irrelevant.

~~~
throwaway729
_> That doesn't seem like a good parenting lesson_

Lots of things in life (good and bad) are pure luck. Handling things you
"do/don't deserve" with appropriate emotional responses is a valuable life
skill.

~~~
johnloeber
To be clear: the bad parenting lesson is that the child learns that their
actions don't matter. Rolling the dice gives the _illusion of agency_ , but of
course the child does not actually get to make any decisions. Their actions do
not map to any recognizable outcomes; they may as well act completely
randomly. This strikes me as a bad thing to learn.

> Lots of things in life (good and bad) are pure luck. Handling things you
> "do/don't deserve" with appropriate emotional responses is a valuable life
> skill.

That is also true.

------
alexandercrohde
I have no idea how this made front-page.

The title is inconsistent with the article title, and even the article title
seems inflated to what it describes.

As I understand it, the experimental group played a game they couldn't lose
(rigged) and adults gave them "hints." The kids [correctly] identified that
they weren't dependent on the adults' help in that group.

However, there doesn't even seem to be a link to the actual study anywhere, so
I can't even check what this research actually is.

~~~
dang
If you or anyone can suggest a better (i.e. more accurate and neutral title),
we can change it. The HN guidelines call for changing titles when they are
either linkbait or misleading (and that's not an xor).

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
throwaway729
Both the subtitle of the linked article and the published journal article's
main title are: "Success inhibits preschoolers’ ability to _establish
selective trust_ ".

The "establish selective trust" phrase is much more accurate than just "trust"
\-- in fact, the current title on HN in strictly _incorrect_. The preschoolers
don't have problems trusting. Rather, you could argue that they're more
trustworthy when they never lose. It's the "selective" part that's important.
(That said, this feels a bit pedantic to me, and it seems as if no one is
confused by the difference in wording.)

The "Let your kids lose:" prefix on the SD headline (and not in the peer
reviewed publication) could cut either way -- it might be link bait, but it's
also not inconsistent with the researchers' advice.

~~~
dang
Ok, we put 'selective' in the title. Thanks!

------
andersonmvd
In summary the takeaway would be "you only understand the importance of
something when you lose it" thus those kids who won the game despite receiving
good advice thought that it was normal somehow to the point of not
acknowledging the help they've got as they succeed anyways, but those who lost
recognize that good advice would have helped them. I hope I understood it
correctly.

------
stractract
Call me crazy but why should the kids that got good results from both adults
differentiate between either adult. Obviously the kids that received
information that did not pan out from one adult would prefer the adult that
gave them information that did. The results seem perfectly obvious to me. The
kids are not stupid or am I missing something here?

------
avaid1996
i feel like it's important to win a couple of times while learning to give the
human brain some short term reward to keep going. I'd surely try this first on
something low stakes if a kid gives up. You don't want to give a kid a
mindblock from something `important`

------
Dowwie
What if your child loses more often than anticipated and learns hopelessness?

~~~
marsrover
I think that's called learning 'life'.

------
gregorymichael
One of my favorite approaches in chess: play straight up, but allow your
opponent to switch sides with you once (e.g., let them play the endgame from a
winning position).

------
smnc
Blocked by security rules?
[https://i.imgur.com/l2sOlRw.png](https://i.imgur.com/l2sOlRw.png)

~~~
shakna
That's the local proxy you're accessing through. Talk to IT.

~~~
soft_dev_person
Imgur allowed but Science Daily is blocked. I'd like to know the rationale
behind that one =)

~~~
TeMPOraL

      rule: .*daily.* deny -- to stop people wasting time...
      rule: imgur.com/.* allow -- kitten pictures allowed
                               -- (we don't want to have a revolution at our hands)

------
marmaduke
Idk seems like common sense.

~~~
marmaduke
whoa, downboats!

I meant, why does it require a scientific study to understand that lying to
small children deforms their worldview?

~~~
kazagistar
Every time there is a scientific study, someone responds saying it has
confirmed their worldview, and is therefore pointless, betraying a deep
misunderstanding of the purpose of scientific studies.

~~~
marmaduke
amusing, I'm a scientist and a parent and yet I don't get it?

~~~
kazagistar
\- Its important to validate the obvious, because sometimes its not so
obvious.

\- Having a flippant, dismissive, repetitive comment provides no value to the
conversation and wastes the time of anyone reading.

------
known
Encourage kids to celebrate their failures

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sjreese
You mean the Superman suit I got from Amazon isn't working. Grow, Grow oh ohhh
:-)

