Limitless Mind: Learn, Lead, and Live Without Barriers

by Jo Boaler

I will highlight some incredible new work that the mindset team has been conducting on people’s ability to move out of conflict and become more peaceful. I first met David Yeager when he was a doctoral student at Stanford; he is now a psychologist at the University of Texas at Austin. He and Carol Dweck have conducted important research on mindsets and conflict. They found that people with fixed mindsets (individuals who believe that their abilities and qualities are static and can’t be changed) have a heightened drive for aggressive retaliation during conflicts. Yet when they are given information that causes them to change their mindset, these aggressive tendencies fade away.9 The researchers point out that people with a fixed mindset are more likely to be aggressive, since they believe that people—including themselves—cannot change and that any failure they have experienced themselves is an indication of their own weakness. This causes them to harbor more negative feelings about themselves. Those with a fixed mindset feel more shame, view their adversaries as bad people, and express hatred toward them.