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The cover of Mindset

Mindset

Carol S. Dweck, 2006

See how believing your abilities are fixed or can grow shapes the way you handle challenge, effort, failure and praise, and why a real growth mindset takes more than effort.

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11 parts, about 24 minutes to read.

Why read it

  • Splits beliefs about ability into a fixed mindset that must prove itself and a growth mindset that learns, and shows how each handles failure
  • Shows why praising intelligence backfires, in experiments where students praised for ability rejected challenges, lost enjoyment and often lied about their scores
  • Applies the idea to companies, love and parenting, and warns against a false growth mindset that praises effort without learning

Who it is for

  • Parents and teachers deciding how to praise children
  • Managers building a culture that rewards learning over talent
  • Readers who avoid challenges for fear of looking dumb

What the summary covers

  1. Two Beliefs About Ability2 min
  2. Proving Versus Learning2 min
  3. What Failure and Effort Mean2 min
  4. Mixtures, Limits and Fragile Confidence2 min
  5. How Ability Grows2 min
  6. The Danger of Praise and Labels3 min
  7. Talent Cultures and Learning Leaders2 min
  8. Love, Blame and Forgiveness2 min
  9. The Messages Adults Send2 min
  10. False Growth Mindset2 min
  11. Changing a Mindset3 min

Recommended by

  • Bill GatesCofounder of Microsoft
    Through clever research studies and engaging writing, Dweck illuminates how our beliefs about our capabilities exert tremendous influence on how we learn and which paths we take in life.
  • Robert J. SternbergCoauthor of Teaching for Wisdom, Intelligence, Creativity, and Success
    A good book is one whose advice you believe. A great book is one whose advice you follow. This is a book that can change your life, as its ideas have changed mine.
  • Chip Heath and Dan HeathAuthors of Made to Stick
    Everyone should read this book.
  • Po BronsonAuthor of NurtureShock
    One of the most influential books ever about motivation.
  • Guy KawasakiAuthor of The Art of the Start 2.0
    If you manage people or are a parent (which is a form of managing people), drop everything and read Mindset
  • Ned HallowellBest selling author
    What a wonderfully elegant idea, beautifully and usefully explicated.. It is a great book

About the author

  • Carol S. DweckStanford psychology professor known for her work on motivation and mindset
    • Earned a B.A. in psychology from Barnard College in 1967 and a Ph.D. in psychology from Yale University in 1972.
    • Was on the faculty at the University of Illinois, Harvard and Columbia before joining Stanford in 2004.
    • Her research examines the self conceptions people use to structure the self and guide their behavior.
    • In her sixth grade class at P.S. 153 in Brooklyn, students were seated in order of IQ, and she later described growing afraid to risk her reputation as one of the most intelligent children in the class.
    • Introduced the concept of implicit theories of intelligence and personality in a 1988 paper.
    • Popularized the concept in her 2006 book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
    • Was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2002, received the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 2011 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2012.
    • Her scholarly book on self theories received a 2004 Book Award from the World Education Federation, an organization of the United Nations and UNICEF.

Read it alongside

  • Puts it into practiceHidden Potential

    Carol Dweck argues that abilities can grow through effort, strategies and help from others. Adam Grant spells out some forms of that help: support that is timely, tailored and temporary, and advice filtered by whether the adviser cares, is credible and knows you.

  • Goes deeperPeak

    Carol Dweck holds that basic qualities can be cultivated through effort, strategies and help from others. Anders Ericsson shows the mechanism underneath: intense, sustained training grows and changes the brain regions a skill uses, as London taxi trainees who earned their licences grew larger hippocampi.

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