With 103 children of 5th-grade students as subjects, the study explored the psychological effects of post-failure of praise for ability or praise for effort on children. The results were: (a) Praise for ability led children to display a maladaptive helpless response pattern after failure, the levels of self-evaluation, task enjoyment, task evaluation, self-efficacy and task persistence of children praised for ability were lower than those praise for effort and the conditional children; (b) Children praised for ability showed a greater tendency to use defensive attribution strategy, while the level of low-ability attribution of children received praise for ability was more than children received praise for effort; (c) Praise for ability led children to display a tendency of self-handicapping, they would report more test anxiety, and reduced the time spent on the Standard Progressive Matrices, eventually led low scores.