The research behind Growth Mindset
Growth mindset has become one of the most recognizable ideas in modern psychology. The popular version is simple: believe you can improve, work hard and you will get better.
The actual research is more specific than that.
Psychologist Carol Dweck and her colleagues became interested in why people could respond very differently to the same experience of difficulty or failure. Some treated poor performance as information about what they needed to learn. Others appeared to interpret it as information about what they were capable of learning at all.
This eventually developed into research on implicit theories of intelligence, more commonly known as fixed and growth mindsets. A fixed mindset describes the belief that an ability such as intelligence is relatively stable. A growth mindset describes the belief that the ability can be developed.
The interesting question isn't whether believing in yourself magically improves performance. It is whether beliefs about the changeability of ability affect what people do when improvement becomes difficult.
THE RESEARCH
One influential series of experiments was conducted by Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck and published in 1998.
The researchers worked with fifth-grade students who were given a set of problems from a nonverbal intelligence test. After completing the first set successfully, the children received different kinds of praise.
Some were praised for their intelligence. They were essentially told that their performance indicated they were smart.
Others were praised for their effort.
The distinction might seem minor. Both groups had succeeded and both received positive feedback. But the researchers were interested in what each form of praise implied about the reason for that success.
If success is evidence that you are smart, then performance becomes information about an underlying personal characteristic. If success reflects how you approached the task, there is more room to interpret performance in terms of something that can change.
The children were subsequently given opportunities to choose what kind of problems they wanted to work on. Those praised for intelligence were more likely to favor tasks that would allow them to continue demonstrating their ability. Children praised for effort were more likely to choose tasks that offered an opportunity to learn something new.
The researchers then introduced failure.
Students attempted a much more difficult set of problems and performed poorly. After experiencing this setback, children who had been praised for intelligence showed less persistence and enjoyment than children praised for effort. Their performance also deteriorated when they later returned to solvable problems.
The intelligence-praised children were also more likely to misrepresent their scores when asked to report their performance anonymously to another student.
A compliment that sounded entirely positive had changed the meaning of subsequent difficulty.
THE FINDING
Mueller and Dweck argued that praising intelligence could encourage children to become more concerned with demonstrating ability than developing it.
If doing well means I am smart, then doing badly introduces a threatening possibility: perhaps I am not.
This can change the function of a difficult task. Instead of being an opportunity to learn, it can become a test of whether the positive label still applies.
Effort praise produced a different pattern in these experiments because it directed attention towards something more controllable. Poor performance did not necessarily require the conclusion that ability was absent. It could indicate that a different approach or more work was needed.
This fits with Dweck's broader research on implicit theories. People who view intelligence as more malleable tend to interpret challenges differently from people who see it as largely fixed. When ability is considered developable, difficulty can contain useful information about the learning process rather than serving only as a judgment of the person.
The distinction is subtle but consequential.
I couldn't do this and I cannot do this describe the same unsuccessful attempt very differently.
THE THEORY
Growth Mindset Theory is commonly described as the belief that intelligence and abilities can grow through effort.
That definition is incomplete.
Development can involve practice, effective strategies, instruction, feedback, support and time. Simply applying more effort to an ineffective method does not guarantee improvement.
The theory is better understood as a belief about malleability. Is the ability in question something that can meaningfully develop or is your current level a relatively fixed indication of what you are capable of?
That belief can influence behavior because learning requires exposure to situations in which current ability is insufficient.
If you need to appear competent at all times, difficult tasks are risky. Asking a basic question can expose what you don't know. Trying something unfamiliar can make you look inexperienced. Receiving critical feedback can feel like evidence that you aren't naturally good at something.
If ability can develop, those same experiences have a different meaning. They may still be uncomfortable, but they are compatible with becoming better.
This does not mean someone with a growth mindset enjoys failing. It means failure does not necessarily settle the question of what they will eventually be capable of doing.
NOT THE SAME THING
Growth mindset is not positive thinking
This is where the popular interpretation has moved considerably beyond the research.
A growth mindset does not mean believing that anyone can become anything they want through sufficient effort. People differ in abilities, circumstances, resources, opportunities and countless other characteristics that influence performance.
Nor does believing that intelligence is malleable eliminate those constraints.
More recent research has also complicated some of the larger claims made about growth-mindset interventions. Meta-analyses and large-scale studies have generally found that interventions designed to increase growth mindset can have small average effects on academic achievement, with results varying across students and contexts.
That does not make the underlying theory meaningless. It makes the magnitude and conditions of the effect important.
Changing a student's beliefs about intelligence cannot compensate for poor teaching, inadequate resources, hunger, an unsafe environment or a lack of opportunities to practice. Telling someone to adopt a growth mindset is not a substitute for giving them the conditions necessary to improve.
There is another important problem with reducing the theory to effort.
If someone keeps trying the same ineffective strategy and continues to fail, telling them to work harder is not particularly useful. Improvement often requires changing the strategy, asking for feedback, receiving instruction or developing prerequisite skills.
Effort matters.
Effective effort matters more.
WHY IT MATTERS
The most useful part of Growth Mindset Theory may be what it reveals about the conclusions we draw from difficulty.
People routinely convert current performance into statements about identity.
I'm terrible with money.
I'm not athletic.
I'm bad at languages.
I'm not creative.
I'm just not a math person.
Sometimes these descriptions are reasonable summaries of current ability. The problem is that they can quietly become predictions.
If "I'm bad at languages" means my French is currently weak, the statement describes the present. If it means I am fundamentally someone who cannot learn languages, it makes a much larger claim.
That second conclusion can affect what happens next. You may practice less because practice seems unlikely to change anything. You may avoid situations that expose your weakness. You may interpret slow progress as confirmation that the original judgment was correct.
The result can become self-reinforcing.
Growth mindset does not require pretending that you are good at something when you aren't. In fact, accurate assessment of current ability is necessary for improvement.
The useful distinction is between current ability and potential for development.
You can be genuinely bad at something today without having enough information to know how good you could become with better instruction, more practice or a different strategy.
TRY THIS
Think of something you routinely describe as something you are "bad at."
Instead of immediately replacing that thought with a positive statement, examine the evidence behind it.
How much deliberate practice have you actually had? Have you received good instruction? Have you tried more than one strategy? How long have you been learning? Are you comparing yourself with other beginners or with people who have been doing it for years?
Then separate two questions:
How good am I at this right now?
What evidence do I have about how much I could improve?
You may decide that you have little interest in developing the skill further. That is completely different from deciding that development is impossible.
Growth mindset does not require believing that you have unlimited potential.
It asks for something narrower and more defensible: don't treat today's level of ability as evidence of tomorrow's limit before you have enough information to know where that limit actually is.
References
Blackwell, L. S., Trzesniewski, K. H., & Dweck, C. S. (2007). Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: A longitudinal study and an intervention. Child Development, 78(1), 246-263.
Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 33-52.
Sisk, V. F., Burgoyne, A. P., Sun, J., Butler, J. L., & Macnamara, B. N. (2018). To what extent and under which circumstances are growth mind-sets important to academic achievement? Two meta-analyses. Psychological Science, 29(4), 549-571.
Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., Murray, J. S., Crosnoe, R., Muller, C., ... & Dweck, C. S. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature, 573, 364-369.