356 lines
20 KiB
Markdown
356 lines
20 KiB
Markdown
---
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created_at: '2014-11-19T13:38:02.000Z'
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title: The Effort Effect (2007)
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url: https://alumni.stanford.edu/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=32124
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author: jcr
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points: 68
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story_text: ''
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comment_text:
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num_comments: 7
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story_id:
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story_title:
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story_url:
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parent_id:
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created_at_i: 1416404282
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_tags:
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- story
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- author_jcr
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- story_8629895
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objectID: '8629895'
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---
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According to a Stanford psychologist, you’ll reach new heights if you
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learn to embrace the occasional tumble.
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By Marina Krakovsky
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One day last November, psychology professor Carol Dweck welcomed a pair
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of visitors from the Blackburn Rovers, a soccer team in the United
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Kingdom’s Premier League. The Rovers’ training academy is ranked in
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England’s top three, yet performance director Tony Faulkner had long
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suspected that many promising players weren’t reaching their potential.
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Ignoring the team’s century-old motto—arte et labore, or “skill and hard
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work”—the most talented individuals disdained serious training.
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On some level, Faulkner knew the source of the trouble: British soccer
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culture held that star players are born, not made. If you buy into that
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view, and are told you’ve got immense talent, what’s the point of
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practice? If anything, training hard would tell you and others that
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you’re merely good, not great. Faulkner had identified the problem;
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but to fix it, he needed Dweck’s help.
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A 60-year-old academic psychologist might seem an unlikely sports
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motivation guru. But Dweck’s expertise—and her recent book, Mindset: The
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New Psychology of Success—bear directly on the sort of problem facing
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the Rovers. Through more than three decades of systematic research, she
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has been figuring out answers to why some people achieve their potential
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while equally talented others don’t—why some become Muhammad Ali and
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others Mike Tyson. The key, she found, isn’t ability; it’s whether you
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look at ability as something inherent that needs to be demonstrated or
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as something that can be developed.
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What’s more, Dweck has shown that people can learn to adopt the latter
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belief and make dramatic strides in performance. These days, she’s
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sought out wherever motivation and achievement matter, from education
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and parenting to business management and personal development.
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As a graduate student at Yale, Dweck started off studying animal
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motivation. In the late 1960s, a hot topic in animal research was
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“learned helplessness”: lab animals sometimes didn’t do what they were
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capable of because they’d given up from repeat failures. Dweck wondered
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how humans coped with that. “I asked, ‘What makes a really capable child
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give up in the face of failure, where other children may be motivated by
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the failure?’” she recalls.
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At the time, the suggested cure for learned helplessness was a long
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string of successes. Dweck posited that the difference between the
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helpless response and its opposite—the determination to master new
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things and surmount challenges—lay in people’s beliefs about why they
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had failed. People who attributed their failures to lack of ability,
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Dweck thought, would become discouraged even in areas where they were
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capable. Those who thought they simply hadn’t tried hard enough, on the
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other hand, would be fueled by setbacks. This became the topic of her
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PhD dissertation.
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Dweck and her assistants ran an experiment on elementary school children
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whom school personnel had identified as helpless. These kids fit the
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definition perfectly: if they came across a few math problems they
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couldn’t solve, for example, they no longer could do problems they had
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solved before—and some didn’t recover that ability for days.
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Through a series of exercises, the experimenters trained half the
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students to chalk up their errors to insufficient effort, and encouraged
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them to keep going. Those children learned to persist in the face of
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failure—and to succeed. The control group showed no improvement at all,
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continuing to fall apart quickly and to recover slowly. These findings,
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says Dweck, “really supported the idea that the attributions were a key
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ingredient driving the helpless and mastery-oriented patterns.” Her 1975
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article on the topic has become one of the most widely cited in
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contemporary psychology.
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Attribution theory, concerned with people’s judgments about the causes
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of events and behavior, already was an active area of psychological
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research. But the focus at the time was on how we make attributions,
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explains Stanford psychology professor Lee Ross, who coined the term
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“fundamental attribution error” for our tendency to explain other
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people’s actions by their character traits, overlooking the power of
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circumstances. Dweck, he says, helped “shift the emphasis from
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attributional errors and biases to the consequences of attributions—why
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it matters what attributions people make.” Dweck had put attribution
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theory to practical use.
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She continued to do so as an assistant professor at the University of
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Illinois, collaborating with then-graduate student Carol Diener to have
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children “think out loud” as they faced problem-solving tasks, some too
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difficult for them. The big surprise: some of the children who put forth
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lots of effort didn’t make attributions at all. These children didn’t
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think they were failing. Diener puts it this way: “Failure is
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information—we label it failure, but it’s more like, ‘This didn’t work,
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I’m a problem solver, and I’ll try something else.’” During one
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unforgettable moment, one boy—something of a poster child for the
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mastery-oriented type—faced his first stumper by pulling up his chair,
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rubbing his hands together, smacking his lips and announcing, “I love a
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challenge.”
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Such zest for challenge helped explain why other capable students
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thought they lacked ability just because they’d hit a setback. Common
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sense suggests that ability inspires self-confidence. And it does for a
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while—so long as the going is easy. But setbacks change everything.
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Dweck realized—and, with colleague Elaine Elliott soon demonstrated—that
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the difference lay in the kids’ goals. “The mastery-oriented children
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are really hell-bent on learning something,” Dweck says, and “learning
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goals” inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviors than
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“performance goals.”
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Students for whom performance is paramount want to look smart even if it
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means not learning a thing in the process. For them, each task is a
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challenge to their self-image, and each setback becomes a personal
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threat. So they pursue only activities at which they’re sure to
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shine—and avoid the sorts of experiences necessary to grow and
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flourish in any endeavor. Students with learning goals, on the other
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hand, take necessary risks and don’t worry about failure because each
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mistake becomes a chance to learn. Dweck’s insight launched a new field
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of educational psychology—achievement goal theory.
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Dweck’s next question: what makes students focus on different goals in
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the first place? During a sabbatical at Harvard, she was discussing this
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with doctoral student Mary Bandura (daughter of legendary Stanford
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psychologist Albert Bandura), and the answer hit them: if some students
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want to show off their ability, while others want to increase their
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ability, “ability” means different things to the two groups. “If you
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want to demonstrate something over and over, it feels like something
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static that lives inside of you—whereas if you want to increase your
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ability, it feels dynamic and malleable,” Dweck explains. People with
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performance goals, she reasoned, think intelligence is fixed from birth.
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People with learning goals have a growth mind-set about intelligence,
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believing it can be developed. (Among themselves, psychologists call the
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growth mind-set an “incremental theory,” and use the term “entity
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theory” for the fixed mind-set.) The model was nearly complete
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(see[diagram](/content/magazine/artfiles/dweck_2007_2.pdf "dweck pdf")).
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Growing up in Brooklyn in the ’50s, Dweck did well in elementary school,
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earning a spot in a sixth-grade class of other high achievers. Not just
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any spot, it turned out. Their teacher, Mrs. Wilson, seated the students
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in IQ order and even used IQ scores to dole out classroom
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responsibilities. Whether Mrs. Wilson meant to or not, she was conveying
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her belief in fixed intelligence. Dweck, who was in row 1, seat 1,
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believes Mrs. Wilson’s intentions were good. The experience didn’t scar
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her—Dweck says she already had some of the growth mind-set—but she has
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shown that many students pegged as bright, especially girls, don’t fare
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as well.
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Tests, Dweck notes, are notoriously poor at measuring potential. Take a
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group of adults and ask them to draw a self-portrait. Most Americans
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think of drawing as a gift they don’t have, and their portraits look no
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better than a child’s scribbles. But put them in a well-designed
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class—as Betty Edwards, the author of Drawing on the Right Side of the
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Brain, has—and the resulting portraits look so skilled it’s hard to
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believe they’re the work of the same “talentless” individuals. The
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belief that you can’t improve stunts achievement.
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Culture can play a large role in shaping our beliefs, Dweck says. A
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college physics teacher recently wrote to Dweck that in India, where she
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was educated, there was no notion that you had to be a genius or even
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particularly smart to learn physics. “The assumption was that everyone
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could do it, and, for the most part, they did.” But what if you’re
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raised with a fixed mind-set about physics—or foreign languages or
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music? Not to worry: Dweck has shown that you can change the mind-set
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itself.
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The most dramatic proof comes from a recent study by Dweck and Lisa
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Sorich Blackwell of low-achieving seventh graders. All students
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participated in sessions on study skills, the brain and the like; in
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addition, one group attended a neutral session on memory while the other
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learned that intelligence, like a muscle, grows stronger through
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exercise. Training students to adopt a growth mind-set about
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intelligence had a catalytic effect on motivation and math grades;
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students in the control group showed no improvement despite all the
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other interventions.
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“Study skills and learning skills are inert until they’re powered by an
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active ingredient,” Dweck explains. Students may know how to study, but
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won’t want to if they believe their efforts are futile. “If you target
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that belief, you can see more benefit than you have any reason to hope
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for.”
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The classroom workshop isn’t feasible on a large scale; for one thing,
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it’s too costly. So Dweck and Blackwell have designed a computer-based
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training module to simulate the live intervention. Their hip multimedia
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software, called Brainology, is still in development, but thanks to
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early buzz from a Time magazine article and Dweck’s recent book,
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teachers have begun clamoring for it, one even asking to become a
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distributor.
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Unlike much that passes for wisdom about education and performance,
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Dweck’s conclusions are grounded in solid research. She’s no rah-rah
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motivational coach proclaiming the sky’s the limit and attitude is
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everything; that’s too facile. But the evidence shows that if we hold a
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fixed mind-set, we’re bound not to reach as high as we might.
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Although much of Dweck’s research on mind-sets has taken place in school
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settings, it’s applicable to sports, business, interpersonal
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relationships and so on. “Lots and lots of people are interested in her
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work; it touches on so many different areas of psychology and areas
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outside of psychology,” says Stanford psychology professor Mark Lepper,
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’66, who as department chair in 2004 lured Dweck away from Columbia,
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where she’d been for 15 years. “The social psychologists like to say
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she’s a social psychologist; the personality psychologists say she’s a
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personality psychologist; and the developmental psychologists say she’s
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a developmental psychologist,” Lepper adds.
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By all rights, her appeal should transcend academia, says New Yorker
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writer Malcolm Gladwell, who is well known for making psychological
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research accessible to the general public. “One of the most popular
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pieces I ever did relied very heavily on work done by Carol Dweck,” he
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said in a December interview in the Journal of Management Inquiry.
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“Carol Dweck deserves a big audience. It is criminal if she does not
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get that audience.” Perhaps Mindset will help; it was written for lay
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readers.
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It certainly cemented Tony Faulkner’s belief that Dweck could help the
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Blackburn Rovers soccer team. Unlike the disadvantaged kids in Dweck’s
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middle-school study, the Rovers didn’t think they lacked what it took to
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succeed. Quite the opposite: they thought their talent should take them
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all the way. Yet both groups’ fixed mind-set about ability explains
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their aversion to effort.
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But aren’t there plenty of people who believe in innate ability and in
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the notion that nothing comes without effort? Logically, the two ideas
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are compatible. But psychologically, explains Dweck, many people who
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believe in fixed intelligence also think you shouldn’t need hard work to
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do well. This belief isn’t entirely irrational, she says. A student who
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finishes a problem set in 10 minutes is indeed better at math than
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someone who takes four hours to solve the problems. And a soccer player
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who scores effortlessly probably is more talented than someone who’s
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always practicing. “The fallacy comes when people generalize it to the
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belief that effort on any task, even very hard ones, implies low
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ability,” Dweck says.
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Her advice for the Rovers rings true for anyone stuck in a fixed
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mind-set. “Changing mind-sets is not like surgery,” she says. “You can’t
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simply remove the fixed mind-set and replace it with the growth
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mind-set.” The Rovers are starting their workshops with recent
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recruits—their youngest, most malleable players. (Faulkner realizes
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that players who’ve already earned millions from being “naturals” have
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little incentive to reshape their brains.) The team’s talent scouts will
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be asking about new players’ views on talent and training—not to screen
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out those with a fixed mind-set, but to target them for special
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training.
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In his 2002 essay that relied on Dweck’s work, Gladwell cited one of her
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best-known experiments to argue that Enron may have collapsed precisely
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because of the company’s talent-obsessed culture, not despite it.
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Dweck’s study showed that praising children for intelligence, rather
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than for effort, sapped their motivation ([see
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sidebar](/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=33289)). But more
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disturbingly, 40 percent of those whose intelligence was praised
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overstated their scores to peers. “We took ordinary children and made
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them into liars,” Dweck says. Similarly, Enron executives who’d been
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celebrated for their innate talent would sooner lie than fess up to
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problems and work to fix them.
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Business School professor Jeffrey Pfeffer says Dweck’s research has
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implications for the more workaday problem of performance management. He
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faults businesses for spending too much time in rank-and-yank mode,
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grading and evaluating people instead of developing their skills. “It’s
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like the Santa Claus theory of management: who’s naughty and who’s
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nice.”
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Leaders, too, can benefit from Dweck’s work, says Robert Sternberg, PhD
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’75, Tufts University’s dean of the School of Arts and Sciences.
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Sternberg, a past president of the American Psychological Association,
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says that excessive concern with looking smart keeps you from making
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bold, visionary moves. “If you’re afraid of making mistakes, you’ll
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never learn on the job, and your whole approach becomes defensive: ‘I
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have to make sure I don’t screw up.’”
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Social psychologist Peter Salovey, ’80, MA ’80, dean of Yale College and
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a pioneer in the field of emotional intelligence, says Dweck’s ideas
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have helped him think through a controversy in his field. Echoing an
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older debate about the malleability of general intelligence, some
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scholars say emotional intelligence is largely inborn, while others,
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like Salovey, see it as a set of skills that can be taught and learned.
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“People say to me all the time, ‘I’m not a people person,’ or ‘I’m not
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good at managing my emotions,’” unaware that they’re expressing a fixed
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mind-set, Salovey says.
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Stanford psychology professor James Gross has begun extending Dweck’s
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work to emotions. In a recent study, Gross and his colleagues followed a
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group of Stanford undergrads as they made the transition to college
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life. Those with a fixed mind-set about emotions were less able to
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manage theirs, and by the end of freshman year, they’d shown poorer
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social and emotional adjustment than their growth-minded counterparts.
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As she approaches the end of her third year at Stanford, Dweck has
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embraced the challenge of cross-country culture shock in a manner
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consistent with the growth mind-set. Nearby San Francisco provides her
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with the benefits of a great city, she says, including a dining scene
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that rivals New York’s; and the University supplies a more cozy sense of
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community. She’s also brought a bit of the New York theater scene with
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her in the form of her husband, critic and director David Goldman. He
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founded and directs the National Center for New Plays at Stanford.
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At the Association for Psychological Science convention in May, Dweck
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will give the keynote address. The topic: “Can Personality Be Changed?”
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Her short answer, of course, is yes. Moreover, holding a growth mind-set
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bodes well for one’s relationships. In a recent study, Dweck found that
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people who believe personality can change were more likely than others
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to bring up concerns and deal with problems in a constructive way. Dweck
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thinks a fixed mind-set fosters a categorical, all-or-nothing view of
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people’s qualities; this view tends to make you ignore festering
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problems or, at the other extreme, give up on a relationship at the
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first sign of trouble. (The growth mind-set, though, can be taken too
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far if someone stays in an abusive relationship hoping her partner will
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change; as always, the person has to want to change.)
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These days, Dweck is applying her model to kids’ moral development.
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Young children may not always have beliefs about ability, but they do
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have ideas about goodness. Many kids believe they’re invariably good or
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bad; other kids think they can get better at being good. Dweck has
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already found that preschoolers with this growth mind-set feel okay
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about themselves after they’ve messed up and are less judgmental of
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others; they’re also more likely than kids with a fixed view of goodness
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to try to set things right and to learn from their mistakes. They
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understand that spilling juice or throwing toys, for example, doesn’t
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damn a kid as bad, so long as the child cleans up and resolves to do
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better next time. Now Dweck and graduate student Allison Master are
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running experiments at Bing Nursery School to see if teaching kids the
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growth mind-set improves their coping skills. They’ve designed a
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storybook with the message that preschoolers can go from “bad” one year
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to better the next. Can hearing such stories help a 4-year-old handle a
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sandbox setback?
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Dweck’s students from over the years describe her as a generous,
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nurturing mentor. She’d surely attribute these traits not to an innate
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gift, but to a highly developed mind-set. “Just being aware of the
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growth mind-set, and studying it and writing about it, I feel compelled
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to live it and to benefit from it,” says Dweck, who took up piano as an
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adult and learned to speak Italian in her 50s. “These are things that
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adults are not supposed to be good at learning.”
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Read a January 2010
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[update](/get/page/magazine/article/?article_id=29609#dweck) on this
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story.
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MARINA KRAKOVSKY, ’92, is a writer in San Mateo.
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