Dweck talked with the children to find out how they were making sense of things and concluded that the ones who gave up quicker thought along these lines: The first puzzles showed I was smart. These new ones are making me look (and feel) dumb. In contrast, the kids who persisted thought this: These new harder puzzles are helping me get better at doing puzzles. This is fun! The reason some kids kept trying had nothing to do with their interest in or aptitude for puzzles. It came from each child’s mindset. The kids who stopped assumed their puzzle-solving skill was a fixed trait. They had a
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