students were offered a strategy to solve a specific kind of mathematical problem. Thanks to a change in a single word, children told that this was just “one way to solve this equation” performed better than those told it was “the way to solve this equation”—they were about 50 percent more likely to get the correct answer. They also showed a deeper understanding of the underlying concept and were better able to determine when the strategy would and wouldn’t work.17 The same applies for the humanities and social sciences. Geography students told that “this may be the cause of the evolution of
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Different ways
