Carol Dweck is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading researchers in the fields of personality, social psychology and developmental psychology. She has been the William B. Ransford Professor of Psychology at Columbia University and is now the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her scholarly book Self-Theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality and Development was named Book of the Year by the World Education Fellowship.
Her work has been featured in such publications as the New Yorker, Time, New York Times, Washington Post and Boston Globe. She lives with her husband in Palo Alto, California. ROBINSON First published in the US in 2006 by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York Published in hardcover in the US by Ballantine, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House Inc., New York, 2007 First published in Great Britain in 2012 by Robinson, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd This revised edition published in 2017 by Robinson, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd Copyright © Carol S., 2017 The moral right of the author has been asserted. Grateful acknowledgment is made to Jeremy P.
Tarcher, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), for permission to reprint four illustrations from pp. 18–19 of The New Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain Workbook by Betty Edwards, copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission of Jeremy P. Tarcher, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA).
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN: 978-1-47213-996-2 Robinson An imprint of Little, Brown Book Group Carmelite House 50 Victoria Embankment London EC4Y 0DZ An Hachette UK Company www.uk CONTENTS Introduction 1.
THE MINDSETS Why Do People Differ? What Does All This Mean for You? The Two Mindsets A View from the Two Mindsets So, What’s New? Self-Insight: Who Has Accurate Views of Their Assets and Limitations? What’s in Store 2. INSIDE THE MINDSETS Is Success About Learning—Or Proving You’re Smart? Mindsets Change the Meaning of Failure Mindsets Change the Meaning of Effort Questions and Answers 3. THE TRUTH ABOUT ABILITY AND ACCOMPLISHMENT Mindset and School Achievement Is Artistic Ability a Gift? The Danger of Praise and Positive Labels Negative Labels and How They Work 4. SPORTS: THE MINDSET OF A CHAMPION The Idea of the Natural “Character” What Is Success? What Is Failure? Taking Charge of Success What Does It Mean to Be a Star? Hearing the Mindsets 5.
BUSINESS: MINDSET AND LEADERSHIP Enron and the Talent Mindset Organizations That Grow A Study of Mindset and Management Decisions Leadership and the Fixed Mindset Fixed-Mindset Leaders in Action Growth-Mindset Leaders in Action A Study of Group Processes Groupthink Versus We Think The Praised Generation Hits the Workforce Are Negotiators Born or Made? Corporate Training: Are Managers Born or Made? Are Leaders Born or Made? Organizational Mindsets 6. RELATIONSHIPS: MINDSETS IN LOVE (OR NOT) Relationships Are Different Mindsets Falling in Love The Partner as Enemy Competition: Who’s the Greatest? Developing in Relationships Friendship Shyness Bullies and Victims: Revenge Revisited 7. PARENTS, TEACHERS, AND COACHES: WHERE DO MINDSETS COME FROM? Parents (and Teachers): Messages About Success and Failure Teachers (and Parents): What Makes a Great Teacher (or Parent)? Coaches: Winning Through Mindset False Growth Mindset Our Legacy 8. CHANGING MINDSETS The Nature of Change The Mindset Lectures A Mindset Workshop Brainology More About Change Opening Yourself Up to Growth People Who Don’t Want to Change Changing Your Child’s Mindset Mindset and Willpower Maintaining Change The Journey to a (True) Growth Mindset Learn and Help Learn The Road Ahead Notes Recommended Books Index INTRODUCTION One day, my students sat me down and ordered me to write this book.
They wanted people to be able to use our work to make their lives better. It was something I’d wanted to do for a long time, but it became my number one priority. My work is part of a tradition in psychology that shows the power of people’s beliefs. These may be beliefs we’re aware of or unaware of, but they strongly affect what we want and whether we succeed in getting it.
This tradition also shows how changing people’s beliefs—even the simplest beliefs—can have profound effects. In this book, you’ll learn how a simple belief about yourself—a belief we discovered in our research—guides a large part of your life. In fact, it permeates every part of your life. Much of what you think of as your personality actually grows out of this “mindset.” Much of what may be preventing you from fulfilling your potential grows out of it.
No book has ever explained this mindset and shown people how to make use of it in their lives. You’ll suddenly understand the greats—in the sciences and arts, in sports, and in business—and the would-have-beens. You’ll understand your mate, your boss, your friends, your kids. You’ll see how to unleash your potential—and your children’s.
It is my privilege to share my findings with you. Besides accounts of people from my research, I’ve filled each chapter with stories both ripped from the headlines and based on my own life and experience, so you can see the mindsets in action. (In most cases, names and personal information have been changed to preserve anonymity; in some cases, several people have been condensed into one to make a clearer point. A number of the exchanges are re-created from memory, and I have rendered them to the best of my ability.) At the end of each chapter and throughout the last chapter, I show you ways to apply the lessons—ways to recognize the mindset that is guiding your life, to understand how it works, and to change it if you wish.
A little note about grammar. I know it and I love it, but I haven’t always followed it in this book. I start sentences with ands and buts. I end sentences with prepositions.
I use the plural they in contexts that require the singular he or she. I’ve done this for informality and immediacy, and I hope that the sticklers will forgive me. A little note on this updated edition. I felt it was important to add new information to some of the chapters.
I added our new study on organizational mindsets to chapter 5 (Business). Yes, a whole organization can have a mindset! I added a new section on “false growth mindset” to chapter 7 (Parents, Teachers, and Coaches) after I learned about the many creative ways people were interpreting and implementing the growth mindset, not always accurately. And I added “The Journey to a (True) Growth Mindset” to chapter 8 (Changing Mindsets) because many people have asked for more information on how to take that journey. I hope these updates are helpful.
I’d like to take this chance to thank all of the people who made my research and this book possible. My students have made my research career a complete joy. I hope they’ve learned as much from me as I’ve learned from them. I’d also like to thank the organizations that supported our research: the William T.
Grant Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Education, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the Spencer Foundation, and the Raikes Foundation. The people at Random House have been the most encouraging team I could wish for: Webster Younce, Daniel Menaker, Tom Perry, and, most of all, Caroline Sutton and Jennifer Hershey, my editors. Your excitement about my book and your great suggestions have made all the difference. I thank my superb agent, Giles Anderson, as well as Heidi Grant for putting me in touch with him.
Thanks to all the people who gave me input and feedback, but special thanks to Polly Shulman, Richard Dweck, and Maryann Peshkin for their extensive and insightful comments. Finally, I thank my husband, David, for the love and enthusiasm that give my life an extra dimension. His support throughout this project was extraordinary. My work has been about growth, and it has helped foster my own growth.
It is my wish that it will do the same for you. Chapter 1 THE MINDSETS When I was a young researcher, just starting out, something happened that changed my life. I was obsessed with understanding how people cope with failures, and I decided to study it by watching how students grapple with hard problems. So I brought children one at a time to a room in their school, made them comfortable, and then gave them a series of puzzles to solve.
The first ones were fairly easy, but the next ones were hard. As the students grunted, perspired, and toiled, I watched their strategies and probed what they were thinking and feeling. I expected differences among children in how they coped with the difficulty, but I saw something I never expected. Confronted with the hard puzzles, one ten-year-old boy pulled up his chair, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips, and cried out, “I love a challenge!” Another, sweating away on these puzzles, looked up with a pleased expression and said with authority, “You know, I was hoping this would be informative!” What’s wrong with them? I wondered.
I always thought you coped with failure or you didn’t cope with failure. I never thought anyone loved failure. Were these alien children or were they on to something? Everyone has a role model, someone who pointed the way at a critical moment in their lives. These children were my role models.
They obviously knew something I didn’t and I was determined to figure it out—to understand the kind of mindset that could turn a failure into a gift. What did they know? They knew that human qualities, such as intellectual skills, could be cultivated. And that’s what they were doing— getting smarter. Not only weren’t they discouraged by failure, they didn’t even think they were failing.
They thought they were learning. I, on the other hand, thought human qualities were carved in stone. You were smart or you weren’t, and failure meant you weren’t. It was that simple.
If you could arrange successes and avoid failures (at all costs), you could stay smart. Struggles, mistakes, perseverance were just not part of this picture. Whether human qualities are things that can be cultivated or things that are carved in stone is an old issue. What these beliefs mean for you is a new one: What are the consequences of thinking that your intelligence or personality is something you can develop, as opposed to something that is a fixed, deep-seated trait? Let’s first look in on the age-old, fiercely waged debate about human nature and then return to the question of what these beliefs mean for you.
WHY DO PEOPLE DIFFER? Since the dawn of time, people have thought differently, acted differently, and fared differently from each other. It was guaranteed that someone would ask the question of why people differed—why some people are smarter or more moral—and whether there was something that made them permanently different. Experts lined up on both sides. Some claimed that there was a strong physical basis for these differences, making them unavoidable and unalterable.
Through the ages, these alleged physical differences have included bumps on the skull (phrenology), the size and shape of the skull (craniology), and, today, genes. Others pointed to the strong differences in people’s backgrounds, experiences, training, or ways of learning.