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Carol S. Dweck

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success Paperback – December 26, 2007

by Carol S. Dweck (Author)

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From the renowned psychologist who introduced the world to “growth mindset” comes this updated edition of the million-copy bestseller—featuring transformative insights into redefining success, building lifelong resilience, and supercharging self-improvement.

“Through clever research studies and engaging writing, Dweck illuminates how our beliefs about our capabilities exert tremendous influence on how we learn and which paths we take in life.”—Bill Gates, GatesNotes

“It’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.”

After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abilities can be developed. Mindset reveals how great parents, teachers, managers, and athletes can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment.

In this edition, Dweck offers new insights into her now famous and broadly embraced concept. She introduces a phenomenon she calls false growth mindset and guides people toward adopting a deeper, truer growth mindset. She also expands the mindset concept beyond the individual, applying it to the cultures of groups and organizations. With the right mindset, you can motivate those you lead, teach, and love—to transform their lives and your own.

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December 26, 2007
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Popular Highlights in this book

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Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better?
Highlighted by 15,659 Kindle readers
Believing that your qualities are carved in stone—the fixed mindset—creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over.
Highlighted by 13,624 Kindle readers
People with the growth mindset know that it takes time for potential to flower.
Highlighted by 11,787 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

From the renowned psychologist who introduced the world to “growth mindset”

Bill Gates says, “Dweck illuminates how our beliefs about our capabilities exerts influence.”

Editorial Reviews

Review

“A good book is one whose advice you believe. A great book is one whose advice you follow. This is a book that can change your life, as its ideas have changed mine.”—Robert J. Sternberg, co-author of Teaching for Wisdom, Intelligence, Creativity, and Success

“An essential read for parents, teachers [and] coaches . . . as well as for those who would like to increase their own feelings of success and fulfillment.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“Everyone should read this book.”—Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick

“One of the most influential books ever about motivation.”—Po Bronson, author of NurtureShock

“If you manage people or are a parent (which is a form of managing people), drop everything and read Mindset.”—Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start 2.0

About the Author

Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading researchers in the fields of personality, social psychology, and developmental psychology. She is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, and has won nine lifetime achievement awards for her research. She addressed the United Nations on the eve of their new global development plan and has advised governments on educational and economic policies. Her work has been featured in almost every major national publication, and she has appeared on Today, Good Morning America, and 20/20. She lives with her husband in Palo Alto, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

THE MINDSETS

As 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 through effort. 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. It may surprise you to know that a big champion of this view was Alfred Binet, the inventor of the IQ test. Wasn’t the IQ test meant to summarize children’s unchangeable intelligence? In fact, no. Binet, a Frenchman working in Paris in the early twentieth century, designed this test to identify children who were not profiting from the Paris public schools, so that new educational programs could be designed to get them back on track. Without denying individual differences in children’s intellects, he believed that education and practice could bring about fundamental changes in intelligence. Here is a quote from one of his major books, Modern Ideas About Children, in which he summarizes his work with hundreds of children with learning difficulties:

A few modern philosophers . . . assert that an individual’s intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism. . . . With practice, training, and above all, method, we manage to increase our attention, our memory, our judgment and literally to become more intelligent than we were before.

Who’s right? Today most experts agree that it’s not either–or. It’s not nature or nurture, genes or environment. From conception on, there’s a constant give and take between the two. In fact, as Gilbert Gottlieb, an eminent neuroscientist, put it, not only do genes and environment cooperate as we develop, but genes require input from the environment to work properly.

At the same time, scientists are learning that people have more capacity for lifelong learning and brain development than they ever thought. Of course, each person has a unique genetic endowment. People may start with different temperaments and different aptitudes, but it is clear that experience, training, and personal effort take them the rest of the way. Robert Sternberg, the present-day guru of intelligence, writes that the major factor in whether people achieve expertise “is not some fixed prior ability, but purposeful engagement.” Or, as his forerunner Binet recognized, it’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN FOR YOU? THE TWO MINDSETS

It’s one thing to have pundits spouting their opinions about scientific issues. It’s another thing to understand how these views apply to you. For twenty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value. How does this happen? How can a simple belief have the power to transform your psychology and, as a result, your life?

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. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.

Some of us are trained in this mindset from an early age. Even as a child, I was focused on being smart, but the fixed mindset was really stamped in by Mrs. Wilson, my sixth-grade teacher. Unlike Alfred Binet, she believed that people’s IQ scores told the whole story of who they were. We were seated around the room in IQ order, and only the highest-IQ students could be trusted to carry the flag, clap the erasers, or take a note to the principal. Aside from the daily stomachaches she provoked with her judgmental stance, she was creating a mindset in which everyone in the class had one consuming goal—look smart, don’t look dumb. Who cared about or enjoyed learning when our whole being was at stake every time she gave us a test or called on us in class?

I’ve seen so many people with this one consuming goal of proving themselves—in the classroom, in their careers, and in their relationships. Every situation calls for a confirmation of their intelligence, personality, or character. Every situation is evaluated: Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I feel like a winner or a loser?

But doesn’t our society value intelligence, personality, and character? Isn’t it normal to want these traits? Yes, but . . .

There’s another mindset in which these traits are not simply a hand you’re dealt and have to live with, always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you’re secretly worried it’s a pair of tens. In this mindset, the hand you’re dealt is just the starting point for development. This 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.

Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.

Did you know that Darwin and Tolstoy were considered ordinary children? That Ben Hogan, one of the greatest golfers of all time, was completely uncoordinated and graceless as a child? That the photographer Cindy Sherman, who has been on virtually every list of the most important artists of the twentieth century, failed her first photography course? That Geraldine Page, one of our greatest actresses, was advised to give it up for lack of talent?

You can see how the belief that cherished qualities can be developed creates a passion for learning. Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.

A VIEW FROM THE TWO MINDSETS

To give you a better sense of how the two mindsets work, imagine—as vividly as you can—that you are a young adult having a really bad day:

One day, you go to a class that is really important to you and that you like a lot. The professor returns the midterm papers to the class. You got a C+. You’re very disappointed. That evening on the way back to your home, you find that you’ve gotten a parking ticket. Being really frustrated, you call your best friend to share your experience but are sort of brushed off.

What would you think? What would you feel? What would you do?

When I asked people with the fixed mindset, this is what they said: “I’d feel like a reject.” “I’m a total failure.” “I’m an idiot.” “I’m a loser.” “I’d feel worthless and dumb—everyone’s better than me.” “I’m slime.” In other words, they’d see what happened as a direct measure of their competence and worth.

This is what they’d think about their lives: “My life is pitiful.” “I have no life.” “Somebody upstairs doesn’t like me.” “The world is out to get me.” “Someone is out to destroy me.” “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me.” “Life is unfair and all efforts are useless.” “Life stinks. I’m stupid. Nothing good ever happens to me.” “I’m the most unlucky person on this earth.”

Excuse me, was there death and destruction, or just a grade, a ticket, and a bad phone call?

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.

So how would they cope? “I wouldn’t bother to put so much time and effort into doing well in anything.” (In other words, don’t let anyone measure you again.) “Do nothing.” “Stay in bed.” “Get drunk.” “Eat.” “Yell at someone if I get a chance to.” “Eat chocolate.” “Listen to music and pout.” “Go into my closet and sit there.” “Pick a fight with somebody.” “Cry.” “Break something.” “What is there to do?”

What is there to do! You know, when I wrote the vignette, I intentionally made the grade a C+, not an F. It was a midterm rather than a final. It was a parking ticket, not a car wreck. They were “sort of brushed off,” not rejected outright. Nothing catastrophic or irreversible happened. Yet from this raw material the fixed mindset created the feeling of utter failure and paralysis.

When I gave people with the growth mindset the same vignette, here’s what they said. They’d think:

“I need to try harder in class, be more careful when parking the car, and wonder if my friend had a bad day.”

“The C+ would tell me that I’d have to work a lot harder in the class, but I have the rest of the semester to pull up my grade.”

There were many, many more like this, but I think you get the idea. Now, how would they cope? Directly.

“I’d start thinking about studying harder (or studying in a different way) for my next test in that class, I’d pay the ticket, and I’d work things out with my best friend the next time we speak.”

“I’d look at what was wrong on my exam, resolve to do better, pay my parking ticket, and call my friend to tell her I was upset the day before.”

“Work hard on my next paper, speak to the teacher, be more careful where I park or contest the ticket, and find out what’s wrong with my friend.”

You don’t have to have one mindset or the other to be upset. Who wouldn’t be? Things like a poor grade or a rebuff from a friend or loved one—these are not fun events. No one was smacking their lips with relish. Yet those people with the growth mindset were not labeling themselves and throwing up their hands. Even though they felt distressed, they were ready to take the risks, confront the challenges, and keep working at them.

SO, WHAT’S NEW?

Is this such a novel idea? We have lots of sayings that stress the importance of risk and the power of persistence, such as “Nothing ventured, nothing gained” and “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” or “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” (By the way, I was delighted to learn that the Italians have the same expression.) What is truly amazing is that people with the fixed mindset would not agree. For them, it’s “Nothing ventured, nothing lost.” “If at first you don’t succeed, you probably don’t have the ability.” “If Rome wasn’t built in a day, maybe it wasn’t meant to be.” In other words, risk and effort are two things that might reveal your inadequacies and show that you were not up to the task. In fact, it’s startling to see the degree to which people with the fixed mindset do not believe in effort.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Ballantine Books; Updated Edition (December 26, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0345472322
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345472328
Reading age ‏ : ‎ 13+ years, from customers
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.2 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.2 x 0.65 x 7.9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #190 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #6 in Personal Finance (Books)
- #18 in Psychology & Counseling
- #71 in Self-Help (Books)

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Carol S. Dweck

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Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., 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, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Boston Globe, and she has appeared on Today and 20/20. She lives with her husband in Palo Alto, California.

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Nicholas

Life-changing

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on May 30, 2015

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Mindset is another book in the seemingly endless production line of self help Psychology books available. Amazon recommended it to me based on my past purchases, and I decided to give it a try. I can honestly say that this book was eye opening for me. It’s based on the premise that there are two mindsets present in all human beings: The Fixed Mindset and The Growth Mindset. People with the fixed mindset, according to the author, are people who would rather not challenge themselves because it may reveal to them any inadequacy or weakness in their skill level or knowledge base. Conversely, people who possess the growth mindset are people who, regardless if they fail, crave the opportunity to better themselves even if it means admitting that they do not know as much as they thought they did in a particular subject or discipline. The author also dispels the myth of intelligence and natural talent, bringing to light the evidence-based realization that intelligence can be nurtured and cultivated through study and constant, unremitting learning. One’s learning ability, or intelligence, much like the brain itself, is indeed malleable. Fascinating stuff. By the way, another book in the same vein as this one is “Talent is Overrated” by Geoff Colvin. I may have reviewed it a year or two ago – I will have to check the archives of my blog.

Halfway through the book I realized that I possessed traits and elements from both the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. I’m a lifelong learner, there’s no question about that. I’m ridiculed by most of my peers and friends for always reading and trying to learn more, but it’s who I am and who I've always been, unbeknownst to some. That being said, however, I can remember many times in my life when I was afraid to challenge myself because I felt like it would reveal weaknesses in my knowledge or skill. When I was younger, I used to abhor criticism; I felt like if someone criticized me it was a direct attack on who I was, so I’d respond by becoming defensive. Granted, most people will criticize you just to make themselves feel better or to put you down because they see you’re actually trying to do something; but if someone is more skilled than you are in something and he or she offers some constructive criticism, you should pay attention because that’s an invaluable tool for growth. I've learned that over the years without question. When I first started studying Karate (I was probably 11 or 12 years old), I was so full of passion for it. I used to go to my classes with a zest and zeal that rivaled the most enthusiastic of students, but I quickly realized, even though I thought I was a natural, that I had a lot of work to do before I could even consider myself a real student of the martial arts. At first I refused to accept that I wasn't as strong or as fast as I thought I was. I was stuck in the fixed mindset. I knew I was good at throwing kicks and punches because I taught myself how to fight. I didn't want to hear anything anyone else had to say. Eventually I learned the hard way that I would have to acquiesce to the instruction of my teachers, but the fixed mindset plagued me for many more years. It wasn't until I met my Jujitsu instructor about 5-6 years ago that I finally broke the fixed mindset outlook when it came to the martial arts. I was put on my back, painfully, over and over again by my instructor and learned, seemingly for the first time, about “emptying my cup” as the saying goes. I had to unlearn about 15 years of martial arts training and absorb, as a beginner, the teachings of my Jujitsu instructor. Let’s just say ice became my best friend.

My fixed mindset even found its way into my guitar studies. I was always a decent guitar player, I guess, but I didn't start growing as a guitarist until I met someone who shattered my view of my skill level while working at my last job. This guy was the most skilled guitarist I had ever met, and I was humbled by his expertise. I’m still no way near his level of guitar playing, but because of the little time I spent with him I am a much better guitarist than before I met him. It was after meeting this person that I decided to start playing with people who were substantially better than I was. I sought out guitarists all over the place and asked to learn from them. I’d walk around Union Square in the city listening to the other musicians; I'd pay real attention to what they were playing and how they were playing it. I’d walk up to a few guitarists who I thought played beautifully and pick their brains. Some were eager to teach and some didn't want to be bothered. All in all, I became good friends with two of the guitarists I met. They still reach out to me and teach me technique and theory, and, when I can, I continue my own independent music study. Growth mindset in action.

I've been sending a lot of my short fiction to professional, established writer friends of mine so that they can criticize and guide me in the hopes that I can be a better writer. A few weeks ago I sent one of my short stories to a writer I work with, and I asked him to be brutal. He read my story and sent me some feedback. I felt like when I was a little kid in school and one of my teachers gave me back one of my writing assignments adorned with her red markings. "Redundant!" "Comma here!" "Be more concise!" "Verb-subject agreement!" Good times. Anyway, my colleague gave me some useful advice and I immediately incorporated his suggestions into some of the stories I've already written. Consequently, I have also asked my uncle, who is an award-winning apologetics writer, to advise me and critique my writing. He’s been generous with his time and constructive with his advice. I will keep badgering him with grammar and syntax questions until he disowns me. It’s a price I’m willing to pay.

So, back to the book. There is a lot of truth in this book, and I’m probably going to read it again soon. At the end of the book there is a chart that outlines the fixed mindset pathway of thinking versus the growth mindset pathway of thinking. It briefly outlines what someone with each mindset would do, or how they would think, given a circumstance. I have printed this chart out and I keep it hanging on my wall in my room so that I can look at it every day. I still have some fixed mindset elements that seem to permeate my thinking, but I’m more cognizant about them now. I’m working toward becoming a fully growth mindset focused person. I’m a work in progress, like most people, so bear with me.

There are a lot of case studies of some great people in this book – Famous athletes, Actors, Politicians, Musicians, Teachers, Coaches – and each case study lends more credence to the author’s message: The Growth Mindset will help you achieve whatever it is you want to achieve. It’s a great book, and I recommend it to anyone struggling with honing his or her skills in anything. The author discusses how the fixed mindset and growth mindset is evident in every facet of life. Whether it is in parenting – how some parents instill a belief in their children that they are geniuses, and these children refuse to grow because they think there is no more growing to be done – or in our professional lives - how to learn from and adapt to unethical and dishonest colleagues (something I live with).

106 people found this helpful

Helpful

smf

Changes the way you think about growth

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 24, 2022

Verified Purchase

I have always considered myself an open-minded person, fully able to embrace challenges and subsequent growth. That is, until I read this book. It made me realize that I have more of a fixed mindset than I thought. It was eye-opening, and I learned a lot about myself while reading this book.

I'm a fitness coach, and I work with all different personality types. I will gift this book to my clients in an effort to help them see where they are stuck in a fixed mindset, which is ultimately what prevents them from achieving their goals. I call books like this "project books." You can't just blow through it quickly, you need to take notes, talk about what you're learning with others and apply the information immediately. That's how you make real changes in your life.

I dropped a star because it went on too long about raising kids and how teachers can better educate their students. That was simply a personal issue with the book. Obviously a teacher or a parent will greatly benefit from that information. I wish there was more of an emphasis put on other types of growth, but this is a wonderful book and most definitely worth your time.

9 people found this helpful

Helpful

Michael Fletcher, Ph.D.

Dweck's 3 Key Distinctions

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on December 8, 2008

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Carol Dweck's work Self-Theories. She has written another book, written for a more general, less academic readership called Mindsets, in which she applies the entity/incremental construct to a broad range of domains: business, interpersonal relationships, etc. I've read both. In Self-Theories Dweck's target are academic or educational contexts in which she argues that the difference in academic performance can plausibly be explained by distinguishing between two conceptions of ability, the entity theory and the incremental theory. According to the incremental spin, the abilities you possess are of a certain quantity which is FIXED (for all time) and therefore unalterable; which is to say your abilities cannot really be altered or changed; they are not really responsive to EFFORT. On the incremental view, abilities you possess are not FIXED and ARE RESPONSIVE TO EFFORT over time. One huge payoff, which Dweck points out frequently, is that in voluntarily adopting an incremental view of ability, you put yourself in a position to be FAR less vulnerable to self-blame, helplessness patterns, and self-despair in the event of failure, which can futher undermine your ability to execute your abilities. People of a more perfectionistic turn of mind have MUCH to gain by adopting a incremental spin on ability for the reasons just mentioned. "An ability is only as good as its execution"--Bandura.

Dwecke's an exceptionally lucid writer, and even her more academic work, "Self-Theories" is not written in academese but in language so clear and informal, you almost begin to wonder whether this is a professor in psychology at Columbia University. She's that good, at least I think so. (Bandura's prose is also clear, and conceptually rigorous, but his prose bears an elegant conciseness or compactness of insight, which would not incline me to describe as informal. But I digress. Long story short, the answer to your question is, I think, 'yes', Dweck's work is closely related to Bandura's.

I'm not sure if Dweck's work should be seen as "derived" from Bandura's, however. Dweck draws three key distinctions:

a) between learning goals and performance goals,
b) between helplessness pattern and task-orientedness
c) between incremental and entity theory of ability

Dweck's claim is this: People who hold an entity view of their abilities TEND to also to be people who adopt performance goals over learning goals. A performance goals is one which is more concerned about "looking or appearing smart" than in taking steps to insure greater informedness at the cost of looking stupid or uninformed. Thus, adopting a performance goal is AT CROSS PURPOSES with a learning goal. Second, entitiy theorists, when persuaded of their own failure, have MUCH REASON TO DESPAIR over their failed performances because performance failure (for them) JUST IS a demonstration of the fact that they do not possess (and what's more NEVER can possess) the capacities required to succeed; for they believe that their abilities are FIXED structures inhering in them which are not alterable by effort. Knowing this, you'd expect that, prior to performance, entity theorists SHOULD FEEL GREAT anxiety about their future performances and ABOUT THE THREAT OF FAILURE AND WHAT IT IS DIAGNOSTIC OF. Failure is a PERMANENT DIAGNOSIS for which NATURE HOLDS NO APPELLATE COURT. If you fail at math once, twice. You're a math idiot. If you fail at a relationship; you're no good at love and romance. Period. The awareness of these prospects can't help intrude on one's performances, and keep on from doing anything which could be contrued (in your eyes) as failure, even if that means that, in the short term, you have to admit incompetence or admit nonknowledge in a subject matter, or nonunderstanding. And this is self-defeating. The situation is according to Dweck much different for those people who hold an incremental theory about ability. For these people, failure is not diagnostic of something - a wanted capability to produce desired effects in a cared-about domain of human life - which they can't EVER possess; no, failure doesn't MEAN (for them) that whatever it is in people taht allows them to produce exceptional EFFECTS in the world, in any cared-about domain of performance--that thing, call it an "ability"--is something whose possess and "size" or quantiy or magnitude is something over which you can exercise some control over and the way you can do this is through EFFORT. The entity theorist does not see personal exertion as diagnostic of LOW ability; she sees it as the MEANS to ACQUIRE greater capabilities, a means to enhance her personal causation. By contrast, the entity theorist views exertion as diagnistic of Low ability; like a doctor who sees a patient and says "Those spots mean measles," the entity theorist views exceptional effort to mean "low ability."

Bandura's view (in SE) is, similar to Dwecks, in that he thinks that it is functionally optimal to view abilities as developmentally responsive to effort. Abilities ARE things one possesses - powers one can personally exericise to produce desired effects in the environment - but for learners it is self-limiting to think of abilities as innate or in-born capabilities rather than as things which can be obtained though "acquireable means" and guided mastery. Bandura's general approach to learning seems to be that complex or difficult performances can be decomposed into simpler tasks; learners can learn and gain competence at the simpler tasks (increasing perceived self-efficacy incrementally as they go), then, once actually in possesion of those simpler skills, move on to tackle more difficult tasks, and so on until they actually possess the skills to perform the complex performances. This is what goes on in med schools, trade schools, most all graduate schools. On B's view, abilities are entities you possess, but the trick is to incrementalize your ACQUISITION OF THEM, using your skills acquired at lower and medium levels to boot youself up to higher levels. But of course, this means your conception of your ability has to be adequate to get you to the highest level of performance, or you have to locate the means and strategies which will elevate your performances to higher levels, and once these are identified you have to acquire them. And acquiring competency in the simpler tasks, lower skills, are, so far as I can tell from SE, the means to acquiring the skills to perform at higher levels; which is as much to say they are the means to acquiring greater abilities.

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Stephen Courtney

necessary

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 9, 2023

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Great information that everyone needs to know and be able to act on - which the book also helps with by outlining step to get your growth mindset on. I used to think I was al growth mindset but realized there are areas where I get into a fixed mindset. Once I have gotten my head around it all and managed to implement it for myself, I’ll be introducing this book in my seminars to help the participants realize greater growth.

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Gil George

US Sports Centred Narrative Learning

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 15, 2019

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Useful effort allows for learning and growth. Making effort useful requires a willingness to look at process and change what isn't working. Failure is a way of understanding that the effort wasn't useful and a tool to speed future progress.

This book has salient information for everyone but the delivery is so laboured, it's easy to miss. You can get the gist by reading the summary at the end of each chapter and speeding through the final chapter (8), skipping around 75%.

Definitely buy this book if:
* you like your information delivered slowly in a narrative form and repeated
* you have a big interest in US sports
* you find social proof persuasive or motivating.

"How to Fail at Everything and Still Win Big" by Scott Adams would be a suitable replacement and is a much better investment of time.

107 people found this helpful

Joshua de Vries

Very repetitive and concept could be summed up in a paragraph

Reviewed in Canada 🇨🇦 on July 4, 2020

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Repetitive to the point of exhaustion.

Felt more like an attempt at brainwash than anything really interesting.

I will save you all the money and tell you the final conclusion:

People can continue to learn and get smarter.
IQ is not a fixed thing and can constantly be improved by anyone.
Anyone who believes otherwise or that they are special are in a "fixed mindset".
Anyone who believes they can improve their intelligence/skills/knowledge is in a "growth mindset".

Growth mindset is better than fixed mindset.

96 people found this helpful

Miss

Helped me find peace with how others treat me

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on March 11, 2019

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Not only did it help me transform how I approach thinking about problems in a transformatively more positive way, it's also enabled me to clearly identify how significant others throughout my life (parents, teachers, bosses, colleagues, friends) think (fixed or growth mindset), which has helped me find peace with the way they judge(d) me. This has helped me shift out of feeling responsible for the way I've been judged and I've already shed lots of negative beliefs I held about myself either as a result of the way others spoke to me, or the way in which I spoke to myself with negative self-talk. It's repetitive, which annoys some people, but get this book and read it anyway. You can always take a break from it and dive back in later, you won't be sorry.

50 people found this helpful

@Timothy_Hughes

Game Changer!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on December 17, 2018

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Every now and again you come across a book that is not just interesting, informative, insightful or educational, and not just changes the way you think, but changes the way you see the world. Mindset takes you through a journey of the differences between a "growth mindeset" and "fixed mindeset" what that means and how you can make a difference.
Or try and make a difference. In your work life, your personal life, how you deal with colleagues, your friends, family and your children. This book is not a "tickbox" or a "top ten things you need to do" and the reason for this, is that the change has to come from within you. This book purley is a catalyst to empower you to make that change. I've purchased a copy for all my friends for Christmas.

51 people found this helpful

Mash

Does not live up to the hype.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 28, 2020

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A trusted friend told me this book changed her life, so I was excited about reading it. What powerful advice did the author have for me? Turns out, not much.

The central premise of the book is a statement of the obvious: You can get better at anything you like; it just requires effort, effective strategies and learning from setbacks. People who do this often out-perform people who have greater innate ability but do not apply effort, go through the motions and blame setbacks on others.

That’s it. The rest of the book is endless US-centric sporting anecdotes, written in the glib style of a 300-page LinkedIn post. Some parts really made me cringe: “The growth mindset gave me a mother”; “Parents who send fixed-mindset messages are like France, and parents who send growth-mindset messages are like Italy”; “If we do not learn and work hard, we will take an Icarian flight to nowhere” (the latter supposedly uttered by a four-year-old boy with a STRONG growth mindset).

My recommendation would be to read a one-page summary of this book online, then spend the time you would have spent reading the book studying “Learning to Learn” on Coursera, which provides much more insightful and practical advice about getting better at things in (dare I say it?) a growth-minded way.

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My 3 favorite books as a pro #soccer player!

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Incredible book, I recommend it to a lot of friends

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