Mindset

Author: Carol Dweck

THE MINDSETS

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Believing that your qualities are carved in stone—the fixed mindset—creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character—well, then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. (5.02092%)

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growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way—in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments—everyone can change and grow through application and experience. (5.43933%)

• Comments: Your limits are unknowable, so we don't get hung up on them.

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trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you’re secretly worried it’s a pair of tens. (5.43933%)

• Comments: With a fixed mindset, you don't know your limits, so you stretch them as far as possible to look as goodas possible.

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Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? (5.43933%)

• Comments: This is a valuation to live by.

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Are these just people with low self-esteem? Or card-carrying pessimists? No. When they aren’t coping with failure, they feel just as worthy and optimistic—and bright and attractive—as people with the growth mindset. (5.85774%)

• Comments: So, this is the difference between pessimism and fixed mindset: the capacity to be optimistic. The problem is just that their optimism is tied to their current abilities and circumstances.

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if you’re oriented toward learning, as they are, you need accurate information about your current abilities in order to learn effectively. However, if everything is either good news or bad news about your precious traits—as it is with fixed-mindset people—distortion almost inevitably enters the picture. Some outcomes are magnified, others are explained away, and before you know it you don’t know yourself at all. (7.11297%)

• Comments: I guess the rationale is that if you can't actually improve, then your only means of stretching your abilities is with deceit.

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In one world, failure is about having a setback. Getting a bad grade. Losing a tournament. Getting fired. Getting rejected. It means you’re not smart or talented. In the other world, failure is about not growing. Not reaching for the things you value. It means you’re not fulfilling your potential. (8.36820%)

INSIDE THE MINDSETS

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in the fixed mindset it’s not enough just to succeed. It’s not enough just to look smart and talented. You have to be pretty much flawless. And you have to be flawless right away. We asked people, ranging from grade schoolers to young adults, “When do you feel smart?” The differences were striking. People with the fixed mindset said: “It’s when I don’t make any mistakes.” “When I finish something fast and it’s perfect.” “When something is easy for me, but other people can’t do it.” (11.29710%)

• Comments: I think I'm guilty of this. I derive value from how I do compared to others.

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people with the fixed mindset expect ability to show up on its own, before any learning takes place. After all, if you have it you have it, and if you don’t you don’t. (11.29710%)

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Let’s take a closer look at why, in the fixed mindset, it’s so crucial to be perfect right now. It’s because one test—or one evaluation—can measure you forever. (11.71550%)

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There was a saying in the 1960s that went: “Becoming is better than being.” The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be. (11.71550%)

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To find out, we showed fifth graders a closed cardboard box and told them it had a test inside. This test, we said, measured an important school ability. We told them nothing more. Then we asked them questions about the test. First, we wanted to make sure that they’d accepted our description, so we asked them: How much do you think this test measures an important school ability? All of them had taken our word for it. Next we asked: Do you think this test measures how smart you are? And: Do you think this test measures how smart you’ll be when you grow up? (12.13390%)

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the students with the fixed mindset didn’t simply believe the test could measure an important ability. They also believed—just as strongly—that it could measure how smart they were. And how smart they’d be when they grew up. They granted one test the power to measure their most basic intelligence now and forever. They gave this test the power to define them. That’s why every success is so important. (12.13390%)

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Performance cannot be based on one assessment. You cannot determine the slope of a line given only one point, as there is no line to begin with. A single point in time does not show trends, improvement, lack of effort, or mathematical ability. (12.55230%)

• Comments: This is a nice, data-centric way of seeing the limitation of any evaluation or measurement of a person.

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I, too, thought of myself as more talented than others, maybe even more worthy than others because of my endowments. The scariest thought, which I rarely entertained, was the possibility of being ordinary. This kind of thinking led me to need constant validation. Every comment, every look was meaningful—it registered on my intelligence scorecard, my attractiveness scorecard, my likability scorecard. If a day went well, I could bask in my high numbers. (12.97070%)

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When we asked them, “When do you feel smart?” so many of them talked about times they felt like a special person, someone who was different from and better than other people. (12.97070%)

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They may feel a sense of superiority, since success means that their fixed traits are better than other people’s. However, lurking behind that self-esteem of the fixed mindset is a simple question: If you’re somebody when you’re successful, what are you when you’re unsuccessful? (14.22590%)

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Even in the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from. (14.22590%)

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It’s striking what counts as failure in the fixed mindset. (14.64440%)

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In the fixed mindset, however, the loss of one’s self to failure can be a permanent, haunting trauma. (14.64440%)

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If failure means you lack competence or potential—that you are a failure—where do you go from there? (15.06280%)

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instead of trying to learn from and repair their failures, people with the fixed mindset may simply try to repair their self-esteem. For example, they may go looking for people who are even worse off than they are. (15.06280%)

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Another way people with the fixed mindset try to repair their self-esteem after a failure is by assigning blame or making excuses. (15.48120%)

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The more depressed people with the growth mindset felt, the more they took action to confront their problems, the more they made sure to keep up with their schoolwork, and the more they kept up with their lives. (15.89960%)

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From the point of view of the fixed mindset, effort is only for people with deficiencies. And when people already know they’re deficient, they have nothing to lose by trying. But if your claim to fame is not having any deficiencies—if you’re considered a genius, a talent, or a natural—then you have a lot to lose. Effort can reduce you. (17.15480%)

• Comments: There is very little incentive to put effort in this picture.

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People with the growth mindset, however, believe something very different. For them, even geniuses have to work hard for their achievements. And what’s so heroic, they would say, about having a gift? They may appreciate endowment, but they admire effort, for no matter what your ability is, effort is what ignites that ability and turns it into accomplishment. (17.15480%)

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The idea of trying and still failing—of leaving yourself without excuses—is the worst fear within the fixed mindset, (17.57320%)

• Comments: I think it is proof that you are not good enough, which is a permanent stain in the fixed mindset.

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Why is effort so terrifying? There are two reasons. One is that in the fixed mindset, great geniuses are not supposed to need it. So just needing it casts a shadow on your ability. The second is that, as Nadja suggests, it robs you of all your excuses. Without effort, you can always say, “I could have been [fill in the blank].” But once you try, you can’t say that anymore. (17.57320%)

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In the fixed mindset, everything is about the outcome. If you fail—or if you’re not the best—it’s all been wasted. The growth mindset allows people to value what they’re doing regardless of the outcome. They’re tackling problems, charting new courses, working on important issues. Maybe they haven’t found the cure for cancer, but the search was deeply meaningful. (19.66530%)

• Comments: Sounds like the growth mindset helps you appreciate the journey and the process, which makes perfect sense.

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The growth mindset is the belief that abilities can be cultivated. But it doesn’t tell you how much change is possible or how long change will take. And it doesn’t mean that everything, like preferences or values, can be changed. (20.08370%)

• Comments: This is helpful. Not everything is worth changing, but the idea is that it's possible. You don't have to do it just because it's possible.

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A remarkable thing I’ve learned from my research is that in the growth mindset, you don’t always need confidence. What I mean is that even when you think you’re not good at something, you can still plunge into it wholeheartedly and stick to it. (20.92050%)

• Comments: This is a nice sentiment. Don't let sucking stop you from trying.

THE TRUTH ABOUT ABILITY AND ACCOMPLISHMENT

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Just because some people can do something with little or no training, it doesn’t mean that others can’t do it (and sometimes do it even better) with training. (26.35980%)

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What about the students’ enjoyment of the problems? After the success, everyone loved the problems, but after the difficult problems, the ability students said it wasn’t fun anymore. It can’t be fun when your claim to fame, your special talent, is in jeopardy. Here’s Adam Guettel: “I wish I could just have fun and relax and not have the responsibility of that potential to be some kind of great man.” (27.19670%)

• Comments: I suppose when you have a fixed mindset, it makes everything a measuring contest, and those constant stakes can suck the joy out of an activity.

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Would you believe that almost 40 percent of the ability-praised students lied about their scores? And always in one direction. In the fixed mindset, imperfections are shameful—especially if you’re talented—so they lied them away. What’s so alarming is that we took ordinary children and made them into liars, simply by telling them they were smart. (28.03350%)

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So telling children they’re smart, in the end, made them feel dumber and act dumber, but claim they were smarter. I don’t think this is what we’re aiming for when we put positive labels—“gifted,” “talented,” “brilliant”—on people. We don’t mean to rob them of their zest for challenge and their recipes for success. But that’s the danger. (28.03350%)

• Comments: So, positive praise for ability can make your performance worse. Wow.

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So in the fixed mindset, both positive and negative labels can mess with your mind. When you’re given a positive label, you’re afraid of losing it, and when you’re hit with a negative label, you’re afraid of deserving it. (28.45190%)

CHANGING MINDSETS

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Every lapse doesn’t spell doom. It’s like anything else in the growth mindset. It’s a reminder that you’re an unfinished human being and a clue to how to do it better next time. (87.86610%)

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When people—couples, coaches and athletes, managers and workers, parents and children, teachers and students—change to a growth mindset, they change from a judge-and-be-judged framework to a learn-and-help-learn framework. (88.28452%)