Dweck’s two implicit theories of ability, what they predict about response to difficulty — and why this one needs handling with care.
What the evidence says
- Two implicit theories of ability: entity theory (the fixed mindset — ability is innate and static) and incremental theory (the growth mindset — ability is malleable and developable through effort)[1]
- The fixed-mindset pattern in the face of difficulty: avoid challenges, give up early, treat effort as pointless or as evidence of low ability, discount negative feedback, and feel threatened by others’ success[1]
- The growth-mindset pattern: engage challenges, persist through setbacks, treat effort as the route to mastery, use criticism as information, and find others’ success instructive rather than diminishing[1]
- Mindset is a continuum, not a binary. People are not “a fixed-mindset person” — the same person holds different theories about different abilities, and can hold both at once[1]
- Praise shapes which theory a person adopts: children praised for intelligence after success subsequently chose easier tasks and misreported their scores more often, while children praised for effort chose harder tasks[2]
- In a two-year study of seventh-graders (n = 373), those holding a growth mindset showed an upward grade trajectory across junior high while fixed-mindset students’ grades stayed flat[3]
- A growth-mindset workshop intervention improved grades relative to control in the same programme (Study 2 — 48 intervention, 43 control)[3]
- The counterweight, at its own scope. Two meta-analyses of growth-mindset work — k = 273 (N = 365,915) on the mindset–achievement association, and k = 43 (N = 57,155) on interventions — report that “overall effects were weak for both meta-analyses”, with the surviving qualification that low-SES or academically at-risk students might benefit[4]
- The 2016 edition added ”false growth mindset” — adopting the language of growth without the underlying belief change. Saying “I love a challenge” while still avoiding challenges is the failure mode the concept was coined to name[1]