Mindset: The Psychology of Learning and Achievement

Adapted from materials from the Centre for Confidence and Well-being

There are several main messages proposed by Carol Dweck in her book Mindset. The first is that there are two mindsets which people adopt. These mindsets affect the goals people pursue; the responses they have to difficulties; and how they do in school, work and life. The second message is that people can change, and other individuals can aid this process by the feedback they give and the stories they tell.

Another part of this message is that the brain can change overtime. Teaching people about the brain’s plasticity can help them to change their mindset and thus how they respond to challenges and feedback.

‘Two Mindsets’

What follows is a brief explanation of the two mindsets described by Dweck, e.g. people have one of two beliefs about their intelligence. There are those who believe intelligence is FIXED or“carved in stone”, and there are those who believe that intelligence is changeable, i.e. they adopt a GROWTH mindset. You can enhance your understanding by thinking of examples of role models who, despite the odds, have achieved great things (Einstein, Churchill, Michael Jordan, etc.). Role models inspire people to look at their own mindset in a positive way and help facilitate a change in thinking from fixed to growth viewpoints. There is also research on mindsets. Several studies have shown that despite entering high school or university with equal IQ scores, people with a growth mindset do better in their test scores over time when compared to those with a fixed mindset. This has been shown in maths and other subjects. Longitudinal studies in America show that the self-esteem of people adopting a growth mindset does not decline over time; people with a fixed mindset do show a downward trend in self-esteem.

Motivational Framework Supporting the Two Mindsets

So why is it that people with a growth mindset seem to do better than those who endorse a fixed mindset? The answer to this question is that people who have a growth mindset create different goals, display a different response when they fail, have different beliefs about effort, and use different strategiesthan people endorsing a fixed mindset.

These four components make up the motivational framework which supports the two mindsets:

GoalsResponsesEffortStrategies

Goals

Research shows that people endorsing a fixed mindset tend to create ‘performance’ goals. Because people with a fixed mindset believe that potential and ability can be measured, they tend to create goals about proving their ability, e.g. they believe that an ‘A’ will show people that they are smart because they believe that intelligent people get high marks. People endorsing a growth mindset tend to create learning goals. This is because they believe that intelligence is malleable and can be improved. These people set goals which are about mastery, e.g. how well have they learned the subject. An ‘A’ for them means that they understand and have learned the subject. Interestingly, several studies by researchers at StirlingUniversity in Scotland have shown that over theirtime in university, people change their goals from learning to performance. This means that there is something about the system which leads people to adopt more of a fixed approach. People adopting performance goals value looking good while people with learning goals value learning. It is important to note that both performance and learning goals are normal and, in an ideal world, people would endorse both. However, when a person focuses entirely on performance goals, it can undermine learning, success and enjoyment.

Responses

Carol Dweck and other researchers have shown that people adopting a fixed mindset tend to respond to failure with a helpless response while people with a growth mindset tend to respond to failure with a mastery response. If a person believes that intelligence is fixed (something unchangeable which you have a certain amount of and there is not much you can do to change that) and if this person also believes that intelligence can be measured, then failure means that they are unintelligent. This results in feelings of helplessness because the person explains the cause of failure as a resultofsomething deficient in them, i.e. lack of intellect. Studies have shown that the result of this response is

  • a lack of effort
  • thinking ‘what’s the point?’
  • over representing past failures and under representing successes
  • decreased enjoyment
  • decreased motivation
  • increased anxiety.

Neuroimaging studies show that people adopting a fixed mindset do not pay attention to learning information when they fail. Those adopting a growth mindset seem to show an opposite response. Because people with a growth mindset believe that intelligence is malleable and that people can improve with hard work and effort, they find failure challenging because this is part of the learning process. People displaying a mastery response don’t show declines in self esteem or mood and will persevere in the face of the challenge.

Beliefs about effort

People endorsing different mindsets will hold different beliefs about effort.

Carol Dweck asked students to fill in the equation.

Intelligence=______% ability and ______%effort

People with a growth mindset put 35 in for ability and 65 in for effort. People endorsing a fixed mindset put the exact opposite in the blank spaces. This shows that these groups of people have different values about effort. As we have seen, people adopting a fixed mindset believe that intelligence is a fixed entity, like a table or chair. This means that learning should come naturally - people either get it or they don’t. So, when a person endorsing a fixed mindset hits a challenge, they believe that their ability, not effort, should help them overcome the setback. People with a fixed mindset can coast along on their talentsbut, when they meet harder tasks, they tend to crumble in the face of failure because they do not value effort as much as someone with a growth mindset.

Beliefs about strategies

As we have discussed, people with a fixed mindset tend to blame their intellect when they meet failure. They don’t pay attention to learning information and get helpless. Carol Dweck has shown that people with a fixed mindset keep trying to answer hard questions with the same wrong answer rather than trying new ways to do things. They give up and give very elementary explanations for why they failed. People endorsing a growth mindset tend to find new ways to do things and think “outside the box” because they believe there are other ways to get to their goal.

Praise

Both a person’s mindset and their motivational framework can be changed through feedback and praise. People are sensitive to the messages they receive about themselves, and the type of praise we give people can change the mindset they adopt. Carol Dweck found that 85% of parents thought that praising young people’s ability is a good thing. This finding is worrying because praising young people for ability fosters a fixed mindset. Young people and adults who are given feedback which suggests that they succeeded because of a fixed trait, like intelligence, tend to adopt a fixed mindset. Carol Dweck’s research has shown that praising someone for the process s/he uses or the effort s/he puts in, fosters a growth mindset. Focusing on effort also has an impact on people’s motivational framework. They create learning goals, display mastery responses, endorse positive beliefs about the effectiveness of effort, and adopt helpful strategies.

The Brain

Carol Dweck has stressed that we need to teach people about the brain and its huge potential because learning about the brain challenges the false assumption that the brain becomes ‘fixed’ at an early age. The evidence from neuroscience shows that peoples’ brains make new connections until the day they die. The brain rewires itself after damage (e.g. people learn to speak again after a stroke). It gets denser when we use it (e.g. musicians have certain areas of the brain which get bigger through practice). There are four lobes: frontal (planning), parietal, occipital (vision) and temporal (hearing). The brain is made up of billions of cells called neurones. Neurones send chemical messages back and forth through small gapscalled synapses. Each time we learn something the brain makes new connections. The more we use it, the stronger the connections become. Understanding that each area of the brain carries out a specific function illustrates the point that by using these areas, people can make them more connected. So, practicing things not only makes you better at them but also causes changes in the brain. There are many studies that illustrate this point. Here are a few:

  • Rats of various ages were put in two separate cages, 1 had lots of stimulation while the other didn’t. The rats were given an intelligence test (finding and remembering their way around a maze) before and after.They found that the rats in the rich environment got more ‘intelligent’ and had 10 per cent heavier brains than the rats in the boring environment.
  • Another study looked at the brains of taxi drivers and non taxi driversin London. The researchers looked at the hippocampus, the area of the brain which deals with three dimensional space, and found that taxi drivers had bigger hippocampuses.
  • A study of the area of the brain that deals with processing sound and the area of the brain which represents fingers were both biggerin musicians than in non-musicians.

Lasting change and summary

Lasting change can be made by weaving the following four points into people’s experiences.

  1. Research shows that teaching young people and adults about the brain and its huge potential helps to change people’s beliefs from a fixed to a growth mindset.
  1. As mentioned in the section on praise, praising for strategies and processes, rather than intelligence or ability, helps to foster a growth mindset.
  1. Positive stories, using role models, are a great way to create change and motivate people.

A good strategy (taken from social psychology) which creates lasting changes in attitudes is to convince others of your point of view by way of persuasion. One study had university students write to underachieving young people about how they ‘made it’, convincing them of a growth mindset. The researchers taught these university students to incorporate their own experiences of setting learning goals, mastery responses and so on, into a letter. They taught them about the brain and asked them to write about this in their letters to these young people. The act of convincing others of your viewpoint is known as ‘writing is believing’. People asked to argue a case are more likely to believe the message. This has been shown to cause lasting change in the convincer’s beliefs. The study mentioned above saw an increase in the university students’ scores and motivation after participating in this study. Arguing for and convincing others of a growth mindset ended up convincing the university students of a growth mindset.