Mindset

Two mindsets

Carol Dweck is a psychologist at Stanford. Early in her career, she gave hard puzzles to children to see how they coped with failure. Some children were upset. Others were delighted. One boy rubbed his hands together and said he loved a challenge. These children did not think they were failing. They thought they were learning.

That moment led to the idea at the center of the book. People hold different beliefs about the nature of ability, and those beliefs shape how they act.

• In the fixed mindset, you believe your qualities are carved in stone. You have a certain amount of intelligence, talent or personality, and that is that. Every situation becomes a test of how much you have.
• In the growth mindset, you believe your basic qualities can be developed through effort, good strategies and help from others. People differ in their starting points, but everyone can grow.

Dweck stresses what the growth mindset does not claim. It does not say that anyone can become anything, or that talent does not exist. It says that a person's true potential is unknown and cannot be known in advance.

Inside the mindsets

The two mindsets create two different worlds. In the fixed world, success means proving you are smart or talented. Failure is a verdict on who you are. In the growth world, success means stretching yourself to learn something new. Failure is information.

This shows up in how people handle challenge, effort and setbacks:

• Challenge. People in a fixed mindset avoid tasks that might expose their limits. People in a growth mindset seek them out.
• Effort. In the fixed mindset, effort is a sign of low ability: if you were really good, it would come easily. In the growth mindset, effort is what makes you good.
• Setbacks. The fixed mindset tends to respond to failure by hiding, blaming others or giving up. The growth mindset responds by trying a new strategy.
• Feedback. In a brain-wave study at Columbia, students with a fixed mindset paid close attention to whether their answers were right, but lost interest when shown the correct answers. Students with a growth mindset paid attention to the information that would help them learn.

Dweck also argues that the fixed mindset distorts self-knowledge. People who believe ability is fixed are worse at judging their own performance. They overrate themselves or rely on comparisons that make them look good.

Mindset also changes how people cope with low moods. Dweck describes research with college students who tracked their feelings and actions over several weeks. Students with a fixed mindset who felt down tended to let their work slide and to dwell on their problems. Students with a growth mindset who felt equally down were more likely to keep up with their work and take steps to fix what was wrong. Feeling bad did not stop them from acting.

The fixed mindset also creates a quiet trap for people who succeed early. If you are labeled gifted, every later struggle threatens the label. Some people stop trying hard things altogether, so that they never have to find out whether they are as able as everyone said. Dweck sees this pattern in students, athletes and executives alike.

Ability and accomplishment

The third chapter challenges the myth of natural genius. Dweck notes that many people later seen as geniuses, such as Charles Darwin and Thomas Edison, worked for long years with many collaborators. Their achievements came from sustained work, not from a single burst of inspiration.

She describes teachers who produced remarkable results with students that others had written off. Marva Collins taught inner-city Chicago children who had been labeled as failures, and they went on to read advanced literature. Jaime Escalante taught calculus to students in East Los Angeles who then passed the Advanced Placement exam in large numbers. Dweck uses these cases to argue that expectations and teaching shape ability.

She also discusses group stereotypes. When people believe that ability is fixed, negative stereotypes about their group can hurt their performance more, because a single failure seems to confirm the label.

Sports, business and relationships

In sports, Dweck contrasts athletes she sees as fixed and growth examples. She describes John McEnroe as a gifted player who blamed outside factors for losses and did not like to work on his weaknesses. Michael Jordan, by contrast, was cut from his high school varsity team, worked relentlessly, and kept improving his game. She also discusses Muhammad Ali, who was dismissed by experts as lacking the build of a champion, and Babe Didrikson, who excelled across many sports.

Dweck argues that what sports fans call character (the ability to dig deep when a game turns against you) grows from the growth mindset. The growth-minded athlete defines success as doing their best and learning. They find setbacks motivating, and they take charge of the process that leads to success.

In business, Dweck uses Enron as a cautionary tale. She says the company built a culture that worshiped natural talent, which pushed people to look brilliant and to hide problems. She contrasts leaders such as Lee Iacocca, whom she presents as caring more about his image than his company, with growth-minded leaders like Lou Gerstner at IBM and Anne Mulcahy at Xerox, who listened to criticism, built teams and focused on learning.

She ties this to groupthink. In fixed-mindset organizations, people stop disagreeing with leaders who see themselves as geniuses. Growth-minded leaders welcome bad news and build cultures where people can speak up.

The mindsets also apply to love and friendship. In the fixed mindset, people believe that a good relationship should be easy. If you have to work at it, it is not meant to be. They see partners and themselves as having fixed traits, so conflict becomes a matter of blame: someone has a bad character.

In the growth mindset, people expect relationships to need effort and communication. They see problems as things to work through together. Dweck also discusses bullying and rejection. Children in a fixed mindset tend to take rejection as proof that they are unlovable, and some want revenge. Children in a growth mindset are more likely to want to understand what happened and to fix it.

Parents, teachers and coaches

The seventh chapter asks where mindsets come from. Dweck's answer: from the messages that adults send, especially through praise.

In a well-known set of studies, Dweck and her colleagues gave children a set of problems. Some were praised for their intelligence ("You must be smart at this"). Others were praised for their effort ("You must have worked hard"). The children praised for intelligence later avoided harder tasks, enjoyed the problems less and did worse after a setback. Many of them also exaggerated their scores when reporting to other children. The children praised for effort chose harder tasks and kept their enjoyment and performance.

The lesson is to praise the process: effort, strategies, focus, persistence and improvement. Praise for talent teaches children that they must keep looking smart. Criticism should also focus on process: what could you do differently next time?

Dweck describes great teachers and coaches who combine high standards with a nurturing belief that students can reach them. She discusses Dorothy DeLay, the famous violin teacher at Juilliard, and John Wooden, the UCLA basketball coach, who defined success as giving your full effort to becoming your best. She contrasts Wooden with Bobby Knight, whom she presents as a coach who used humiliation.

Changing mindsets

The final chapter is about change. Dweck describes a workshop study with junior high school students in New York. All students learned study skills. Half also learned that the brain is like a muscle that grows stronger with use. The students who learned about the growing brain improved their math grades compared with the group that learned only study skills. Dweck's team later turned this lesson into Brainology, a computer-based program for schools.

She suggests steps for adults who want to change:

• Notice the fixed-mindset "voice" that tells you not to try, or that you failed.
• Recognize that you have a choice in how to interpret the challenge or setback.
• Talk back to that voice with a growth-mindset response.
• Take the growth-mindset action.

In the updated edition, Dweck warns against a false growth mindset. This includes praising effort that is not working, saying "everyone has a growth mindset," or treating it as a label for being open-minded. Everyone is a mixture of both mindsets. Each person has triggers, such as criticism or meeting someone better at something, that push them into fixed thinking. The goal is to learn your triggers and to keep moving toward growth.

What the critics say

Mindset research has faced replication problems at scale. Large meta-analyses and national studies have found that growth-mindset interventions in schools produce small average effects on grades, with larger benefits mostly for lower-achieving or at-risk students. Some critics also note that the popular version of the idea, as applied in schools, often reduces it to slogans, which Dweck herself warns against in the updated edition.

Who should read it

Read it if you are a parent, teacher, coach or manager who gives feedback to others. It is also useful if you avoid challenges because you fear failure. Read it alongside the research critiques to keep the claims in proportion.