Mindset
Based on Wikipedia: Mindset
The Invisible Force Shaping Everything You Do
Here's something that might unsettle you: the way you think about your own abilities—whether you believe they're carved in stone or can be sculpted through effort—fundamentally changes what you're capable of achieving. Not your talent. Not your intelligence. Your belief about those things.
This is the core insight behind mindset research, a field that has quietly revolutionized education, workplace psychology, and our understanding of human potential over the past few decades. But the concept itself is far older and stranger than the popular self-help version you've probably encountered.
What Exactly Is a Mindset?
A mindset is the collection of attitudes, beliefs, and assumptions you carry around in your head about how the world works. Think of it as the operating system running beneath your conscious thoughts—the thing that shapes how you interpret feedback, respond to failure, and decide what's worth attempting in the first place.
But here's where it gets interesting: mindsets aren't just individual. They're collective. They spread through organizations, cultures, and even nations like invisible architecture.
Consider the Cold War mindset that gripped the United States and the Soviet Union for nearly half a century. Both nations operated under a shared assumption: any gain in power for one side represented an equivalent loss for the other. This wasn't just a diplomatic position. It was a way of seeing the world that made certain behaviors seem obviously necessary—the arms race, the proxy wars, the hair-trigger nuclear postures—while making other options nearly unthinkable.
The Cold War mindset also embedded certain beliefs as unquestionable: game theory accurately modeled international relations, a clear chain of command controlled nuclear weapons, and mutually assured destruction would prevent either side from launching first. Whether this mindset prevented nuclear war or nearly caused it remains hotly debated among historians. The point is that millions of people made life-and-death decisions through the lens of assumptions they never consciously examined.
The Research Begins
Scholars have been studying mindsets explicitly since at least the 1910s, though the term wasn't always used. Early researchers like Thaddeus Lincoln Bolton, Edward Thorndike, and William Heard Kilpatrick explored how fixed patterns of thinking affected education and learning. But the field remained fragmented across academic disciplines—psychology, education, sociology, organizational behavior—each developing its own vocabulary and frameworks.
The 1980s and 1990s brought an explosion of mindset research into new domains. Ellen Langer explored mindfulness as a way to break out of automatic thinking patterns. Peter Gollwitzer mapped how different "action phases"—deliberating versus acting—trigger distinct mental modes. Donella Meadows, better known for her work on systems thinking, identified mindset shifts as the most powerful lever for changing complex systems. Stephen Rhinesmith studied what made some executives effective across cultures while others floundered.
But no researcher has shaped popular understanding of mindsets more than Carol Dweck.
Fixed Versus Growth: The Dweck Revolution
In 2006, Dweck published Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, and it changed everything. Her core insight was elegantly simple: people tend to fall somewhere on a spectrum between two views of their own abilities.
At one end sits the fixed mindset. People with a fixed mindset believe that intelligence, talent, and ability are essentially static traits—you're either smart or you're not, artistic or you're not, good at math or you're not. Under this view, effort is almost embarrassing. If you have to try hard, it means you lack natural ability. Feedback feels like a verdict on your fundamental worth. And failure? Failure is terrifying because it suggests you've hit an immovable ceiling.
At the other end sits the growth mindset. People with a growth mindset believe that abilities can be developed through dedication and hard work. Intelligence is not fixed at birth but expandable through learning. Under this view, effort is not shameful but necessary. Feedback is information about how to improve. And failure is not evidence of limitation but an opportunity to develop new skills.
The differences in behavior that flow from these mindsets are profound.
Fixed-mindset people tend to avoid challenges—why risk exposing your limitations? They give up easily when obstacles appear. They see effort as pointless if you don't have the underlying talent. They ignore useful criticism because it feels like an attack. And they feel threatened by others' success because it implies their own inadequacy.
Growth-mindset people embrace challenges as opportunities to stretch. They persist through setbacks because difficulty is just part of the learning process. They see effort as the path to mastery. They learn from criticism and use it to improve. And they find inspiration in others' success because it shows what's possible.
The Classroom Laboratory
Dweck's research landed with particular force in education, where it offered a new explanation for why some students thrive while others wilt.
Consider two students who both fail a math test. The fixed-mindset student thinks, "I'm bad at math. I've always been bad at math. Why even try?" The growth-mindset student thinks, "I didn't understand this material yet. What do I need to do differently to learn it?"
The word "yet" turns out to be surprisingly powerful. Dweck advocates that when teachers hear students say "I can't do this" or "I'm not good at this," they should add those three letters: "not yet." It's a small linguistic intervention that reframes current inability as a temporary state rather than a permanent verdict.
But changing student mindsets requires more than vocabulary tweaks. Dweck found that the type of praise teachers give matters enormously. Praising students for being "smart" or "talented" when they succeed actually pushes them toward a fixed mindset—they start protecting their smart-kid identity by avoiding anything that might make them look dumb. Praising the process—the effort applied, the strategies used, the persistence displayed—builds a growth mindset by focusing attention on the controllable factors that lead to success.
Teachers also need to reframe challenges. Rather than treating difficult problems as obstacles to overcome, effective teachers present them as exciting opportunities to grow. Easy tasks, meanwhile, should be portrayed as boring and less useful for brain development. This inverts the common intuition that we should make learning as easy as possible.
When Growth Mindset Gets Weaponized
As Dweck's ideas spread through schools and workplaces, something troubling happened. People started using "growth mindset" in ways that had little to do with her research.
The most common distortion: praising effort regardless of results. Some educators took the message about process praise and concluded that effort alone deserves celebration. But Dweck never said that. If a student works hard using ineffective strategies and gets nowhere, praising their effort is hollow encouragement. The goal is to praise productive effort that leads to learning, while helping students find better approaches when their current strategies aren't working.
Dweck eventually acknowledged a phenomenon she called the "false growth mindset"—people who say they believe in growth but don't actually behave as if abilities can change. It's easy to endorse growth mindset as an abstract philosophy while still feeling devastated by failure or threatened by others' success. Intellectual agreement isn't the same as deep belief.
"Nobody has a growth mindset in everything all the time," Dweck clarified in later work. Mindset isn't a fixed personality trait you either have or don't. It's contextual. You might have a growth mindset about your cooking skills but a fixed mindset about your mathematical ability. You might feel growthy and open when things are going well, then snap into fixed thinking the moment you face a serious setback.
The Critics Weigh In
As mindset interventions spread through schools, researchers naturally tried to replicate Dweck's findings. The results have been mixed.
A major 2019 study by the Education Endowment Foundation in the United Kingdom—a large randomized controlled trial of growth mindset training—found no significant improvements in students' numeracy or literacy. A 2024 study confirmed that Dweck's growth mindset scales measure what they claim to measure (psychometric comparability), but found no connection between scoring high on growth mindset and actually achieving goals.
Critics like David Moreau and colleagues have argued that overemphasizing the malleability of abilities can have negative consequences. If you tell people they can achieve anything through effort, what happens when they encounter genuine limits? They may blame themselves for what are actually structural barriers or natural variation in aptitude. The relentless positivity of growth-mindset messaging can shade into toxic positivity—the denial of legitimate difficulty.
There's also the question of what growth mindset interventions actually change. Some research suggests they shift students' self-reported beliefs without changing their actual behavior or outcomes. Saying you believe intelligence can grow is not the same as actually persisting through frustration.
None of this means mindset research is worthless. Several studies have found real effects, particularly for at-risk students. Research by L. S. Blackwell found that minority students with growth mindsets had stronger learning goals and more positive attitudes toward effort. Studies have shown growth mindset interventions can increase motivation in special education students and even reduce the cognitive effects of substance use in adolescents.
The picture that emerges is complicated. Mindset matters, but it's not magic. It interacts with other factors—socioeconomic status, teacher quality, structural barriers, individual psychology—in ways we're still trying to understand.
Grit: The Cousin Concept
Related to growth mindset is the concept of grit, popularized by psychologist Angela Duckworth. Grit combines two qualities: perseverance (sticking with a goal despite obstacles) and passion (maintaining interest over long time periods). It's not just about working hard but about working hard on the same thing for years.
Growth mindset and grit are distinct but related. You can have a growth mindset without grit—believing you can improve while still bouncing between goals. You can have grit without a fully developed growth mindset—persisting through sheer stubbornness without necessarily believing in your own development. But the two concepts reinforce each other. If you believe effort leads to improvement, you're more likely to sustain effort. If you sustain effort, you're more likely to see improvement that confirms your growth beliefs.
Research by Keown and Bourke found an interesting intersection: people from lower economic backgrounds had a greater chance of success if they possessed both a growth mindset and grit. The combination seemed especially powerful for overcoming structural disadvantages.
The Teachers' Mindsets Matter Too
Most mindset research focuses on students. But what about the adults shaping their experience?
Educational researcher John Hattie has noted that teachers' mindsets play a significant role in shaping their expectations, teaching practices, and how students perceive their own potential. A teacher who secretly believes some students simply lack ability will communicate that belief in a thousand subtle ways—which students get called on, which mistakes are tolerated, which accomplishments are celebrated.
When researchers Patrick and Joshi interviewed 150 teachers about mindset concepts, they found something concerning. Many teachers oversimplified Dweck's framework, treating growth mindset as simply "positive" and fixed mindset as simply "negative." This misses the nuance. A fixed mindset isn't wrong about everything—some abilities really are harder to develop than others, and genetic factors really do influence outcomes. The problem with fixed mindset isn't that it's factually incorrect but that it causes people to give up prematurely and avoid challenges that might help them grow.
The good news: teacher mindsets appear malleable. A 2018 study by Fiona Seaton found that just six training sessions could shift teachers' mindsets, with effects sustained three months later. If we want to change student mindsets, training their teachers might be the most effective intervention point.
Beyond Fixed and Growth: The Benefit Mindset
In 2015, researchers Ash Buchanan and Margaret Kern proposed an evolution of Dweck's framework: the benefit mindset.
Their argument: growth mindset answers the question "Can I develop my abilities?" But it doesn't address "For what purpose?" You can have a growth mindset oriented entirely toward personal success—becoming better at manipulating people, say, or accumulating wealth regardless of social impact.
A benefit mindset combines growth orientation with a focus on contribution. It asks not just "How can I grow?" but "How can I grow in ways that benefit others?" It's the difference between a brilliant executive developing their skills to maximize shareholder returns versus developing their skills to transform their industry or solve social problems.
Whether benefit mindset constitutes a genuinely new category or just growth mindset plus prosocial values remains debated. But it points toward an important limitation in the original framework: mindset research has focused heavily on individual achievement while paying less attention to collective purpose.
Collective Mindsets and Organizational Culture
Mindsets don't just exist in individual heads. They crystallize into organizational cultures, professional norms, and even national characteristics.
Cognitive scientist Edwin Hutchins studied this phenomenon by analyzing the navigation team on a Navy ship. Rather than treating the crew as separate individuals, he examined them as a single cognitive system—a collective mind processing information through established procedures, shared assumptions, and distributed knowledge. The mindset wasn't just in any one sailor's head but in the relationships between them, the routines they followed, and the artifacts they used.
Organizational theorist Maximilian Senges applied similar ideas to universities, exploring how collective mindsets shape institutional strategy. A university with an entrepreneurial collective mindset values uncertainty, continuously seeks opportunities, and fosters innovation at every level. This isn't about having entrepreneurial individuals but about having entrepreneurial assumptions woven into the institution's fabric.
Researcher Michael Hitt identified five dimensions of entrepreneurial mindset: autonomy (freedom to pursue opportunities), innovativeness (willingness to try new approaches), risk-taking (tolerance for uncertainty), proactiveness (anticipating future needs), and competitive aggressiveness (willingness to challenge competitors). An organization strong in all five dimensions thinks differently than one that emphasizes security, tradition, and consensus.
Global Mindset: Thinking Across Cultures
As corporations became multinational in the 1980s, executives noticed a puzzling pattern. Leaders who were extraordinarily effective in their home countries often stumbled when working across cultures. Technical competence transferred. Cultural competence didn't.
This observation birthed research into what scholars call "global mindset"—the ability to function effectively regardless of cultural context. It's not just knowledge about different cultures, though that helps. It's a way of thinking that remains curious and adaptive when encountering unfamiliar situations rather than defaulting to home-country assumptions.
Research on Chinese small and medium enterprises found that managers with strong global mindsets tended to favor shared-control or integrated approaches to partnerships, rather than trying to dominate or remain completely independent. Their mindset shaped their strategic preferences, which in turn affected their companies' international success.
What exactly constitutes global mindset remains contested among scholars, but most agree it involves intellectual curiosity about other cultures, psychological comfort with ambiguity, and social flexibility in adapting behavior to different contexts. Unlike fixed traits, it appears developable through international experience, diversity exposure, and targeted training.
The Anthropologist's View
Psychoanalyst Erik Erikson studied how collective identities shape what he called "life plans"—the implicit frameworks people use to understand what a good life looks like and how to achieve it.
He documented a striking example among Native Americans who were subjected to reeducation programs designed to instill a "modern" life plan centered on permanent housing and wealth accumulation. The problem was that these goals were nearly unintelligible to people whose collective identity had formed around fundamentally different values—the mobility, skill, and spiritual practices of buffalo hunting.
The clash wasn't really about housing versus hunting. It was about two entirely different frameworks for making meaning, setting goals, and evaluating success. When mindsets diverge that profoundly, even basic communication about life plans becomes difficult. Each side literally cannot understand why the other wants what they want.
This points toward something important about mindset change: it's not just about adopting new beliefs but about revising the deep structures through which you make sense of the world. That's not easy work. It may not always be possible. And it's not always desirable—sometimes the existing mindset is fine, and the pressure to change comes from those with power rather than those with wisdom.
The Mindscape Beneath the Mindset
Researcher Magoroh Maruyama proposed the concept of "mindscape"—the deeper cultural and social orientations that generate particular mindsets. He identified several fundamental dimensions along which mindscapes vary:
Hierarchical versus egalitarian: Does the mindscape assume natural rankings between people, or fundamental equality?
Individualist versus collectivist: Does it prioritize individual achievement and autonomy, or group harmony and shared identity?
These dimensions combine to create different types: hierarchical individualism (competitive meritocracy), egalitarian individualism (libertarian autonomy), hierarchical collectivism (traditional authority structures), egalitarian collectivism (communal cooperation), and various synergistic and populist variants.
Understanding someone's mindscape helps predict how they'll respond to different situations. A hierarchical individualist sees competition as natural and fair; an egalitarian collectivist sees it as corrosive to community. Neither is objectively correct. They're different starting assumptions that generate different mindsets about effort, success, and failure.
Can Mindsets Change?
The most important question in mindset research is also the most obvious: can mindsets actually be shifted?
Dweck and her colleagues have documented several approaches that work, at least in controlled studies:
Process praise—acknowledging the strategies, effort, and choices that led to success rather than attributing it to fixed traits.
Scientific persuasion—having people read compelling research articles about brain plasticity and the development of abilities.
Neuroscience education—teaching students that every time they learn something new, their brain forms new neural connections, physically changing its structure.
But these interventions face a durability problem. It's one thing to shift someone's mindset temporarily in a workshop or study. It's another to change the deep assumptions they carry through daily life, especially when their environment reinforces the old beliefs.
Personality factors also matter. Some people are more sensitive to mistakes and setbacks—they feel failure more acutely, which can trigger fixed-mindset thinking regardless of what they intellectually believe. Changing mindset may require not just new ideas but new emotional patterns, which are notoriously difficult to alter.
Perhaps the most honest summary: mindsets are malleable but sticky. They can change, but they tend to revert without sustained environmental support. The teacher who attends a growth-mindset workshop but returns to a school culture that sorts kids into "smart" and "not smart" will likely drift back toward fixed thinking. The individual who reads Dweck's book but lives in a society obsessed with natural talent will struggle to maintain growth beliefs.
Mindset change, in other words, is not just a personal project. It's a collective one.
What This Means for You
If you've read this far, you probably have a growth mindset—at least about understanding mindsets. But knowing about growth mindset is not the same as having one.
The real test comes when you face difficulty. When you fail publicly. When someone criticizes your work. When you encounter a skill that doesn't come naturally. When you see someone else succeed at something you're struggling with.
In those moments, watch what your mind does. Does it reach for explanations that emphasize fixed traits? "I'm just not a math person." "Some people are natural leaders." "Either you get it or you don't." That's fixed-mindset thinking, and it's completely normal—everyone does it sometimes.
The growth-mindset response asks different questions. "What can I learn from this failure?" "What strategy might work better?" "Who can I learn from?" "What would it take to develop this ability?"
Neither response is always right. Sometimes you really are facing a genuine limit. Sometimes the growth-mindset advice to keep trying is bad advice, and you should redirect your energy toward something more suited to your particular strengths. Wisdom lies in knowing which situation you're in.
But most of the time, most of us give up too soon. We interpret early difficulty as evidence of fundamental incapacity. We avoid challenges that might make us look incompetent. We stop learning once we've achieved basic competence. A growth mindset is the antidote to this very human tendency toward premature resignation.
The mind is not fixed. Neither is the mindset.