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They knew that human qualities, such as intellectual skills, could be cultivated.
What are the consequences of thinking that your intelligence or personality is something you can develop, as opposed to something that is a fixed, deep-seated trait?
Alfred Binet, the inventor of the IQ test.
designed this test to identify children who were not profiting from the Paris public schools,
he believed that education and practice could bring about fundamental changes in intelligence.
one of his major books, Modern Ideas About Children,
A few modern philosophers…assert that an individual’s intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism….With practice, training, and above all, method, we manage to increase our attention, our memory, our judgment and literally to become more intelligent than we were before.
Alfred Binet, inventor of IQ test, quote
it’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.
the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life.
This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts, your strategies, and help from others. Although people may differ in every which way—in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments—everyone can change and grow through application and experience.
Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better?
Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow?
TWO MINDSETS
Fixed vs. growth
risk and effort are two things that might reveal your inadequacies and show that you were not up to the task.
This sounds familiar. Too familiar.
studies show that people are terrible at estimating their abilities.
But it was those with the fixed mindset who accounted for almost all the inaccuracy. The people with the growth mindset were amazingly accurate.
Put yourself in a fixed mindset. Your ability is on the line. Can you feel everyone’s eyes on you? Can you see the instructor’s face evaluating you? Feel the tension, feel your ego bristle and waver. What else are you thinking and feeling? Now put yourself in a growth mindset. You’re a novice—that’s why you’re here. You’re here to learn. The teacher is a resource for learning. Feel the tension leave you; feel your mind open up. The message is: You can change your mindset.
Mindsets are just beliefs. They’re powerful beliefs, but they’re just something in your mind, and you can change your mind.
divide the world into the learners and nonlearners.”
Those who lean toward a growth mindset agree that: “You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.”
Only people with a growth mindset paid close attention to information that could stretch their knowledge. Only for them was learning a priority.
CEO disease.
They can choose short-term strategies that boost the company’s stock and make themselves look like heroes. Or they can work for long-term improvement—
When do people with the fixed mindset thrive? When things are safely within their grasp. If things get too challenging—when they’re not feeling smart or talented—they lose interest.
When] I work on something a long time and I start to figure it out.”
“Becoming is better than being.” The fixed mindset does not allow people the luxury of becoming. They have to already be.
People with the growth mindset know that it takes time for potential to flower.
An assessment at one point in time has little value for understanding someone’s ability, let alone their potential to succeed in the future.
failure has been transformed from an action (I failed) to an identity (I am a failure). This is especially true in the fixed mindset.
Even in the growth mindset, failure can be a painful experience. But it doesn’t define you. It’s a problem to be faced, dealt with, and learned from.
Those with the growth mindset, no big surprise, said they would study harder for the next test. But those with the fixed mindset said they would study less for the next test.
College students, after doing poorly on a test, were given a chance to look at tests of other students. Those in the growth mindset looked at the tests of people who had done far better than they had. As usual, they wanted to correct their deficiency. But students in the fixed mindset chose to look at the tests of people who had done really poorly.
John Wooden, the legendary basketball coach, says you aren’t a failure until you start to blame. What he means is that you can still be in the process of learning from your mistakes until you deny them.
depression. It runs wild on college campuses, especially in February and March.
The more depressed people with the growth mindset felt (short of severe depression), the more they took action to confront their problems, the more they made sure to keep up with their schoolwork, and the more they kept up with their lives.
did any of us ever want to be the tortoise? No, we just wanted to be a less foolish hare.
From the point of view of the fixed mindset, effort is only for people with deficiencies.
