Growth mindset

Growth mindset is the belief that abilities such as intelligence and talent can be developed over time through effort, effective strategies, and feedback, in contrast to a fixed mindset, the belief that such abilities are largely static traits a person either has or lacks.

Carol Dweck’s research

Psychologist Carol Dweck developed the concept through decades of research on how students respond to challenge and failure, popularizing it for a general audience in her 2006 book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Dweck’s studies found that students who held a growth mindset tended to respond to setbacks by increasing effort and trying new strategies, while students who held a fixed mindset were more likely to avoid challenges altogether, out of concern that failure would reveal a fixed lack of ability.

Praise and the mindset students develop

A key strand of Dweck’s research examined how different types of praise shape which mindset a student develops. Praising a child’s intelligence directly, such as calling them smart, was found to encourage a fixed mindset and a preference for easier tasks that protect that label, while praising effort and strategy, such as noting persistence or a clever approach, was found to encourage a growth mindset and greater willingness to tackle difficult tasks.

Classroom applications and critiques

Schools have widely adopted growth mindset language and interventions, encouraging students to view mistakes as part of learning rather than evidence of fixed limitation. However, subsequent large-scale replication studies have found more mixed and generally smaller effects from brief growth mindset interventions than initial smaller studies suggested, leading researchers to caution against treating a short intervention alone as a substitute for broader instructional quality and support.

Praise and the development of mindset

Dweck’s research found that the type of praise children receive can shape which mindset takes hold. Praise directed at ability, such as telling a child they are smart, tends to encourage a fixed mindset because it frames success as confirmation of an innate trait rather than a result of effort. Praise directed at process, such as acknowledging the strategies a child used or the effort they put in, tends to encourage a growth mindset because it frames the outcome as something the child produced and can reproduce through similar effort next time.

This distinction became influential in parenting and coaching advice, with many guides recommending process praise over trait praise. Some later research has questioned how large or consistent this effect is outside controlled laboratory settings, but the basic distinction between praising effort and praising ability remains a common talking point in discussions of motivation.

Criticism and replication concerns

Growth mindset interventions, which typically involve a short lesson teaching students that intelligence can be developed through effort, became popular in schools and were adopted at a national scale in some countries. Large-scale replication attempts have produced mixed results, with some studies finding small positive effects on grades, particularly among lower-achieving students, and others finding no measurable effect at all once the study design controlled for other factors. This has led some researchers to argue that a brief classroom intervention cannot easily undo years of experiences, feedback, and structural conditions that shape how a student sees their own ability.

Dweck herself has acknowledged that mindset is not the only factor in achievement and has pushed back against simplified versions of the idea that treat it as a one-time pep talk rather than an ongoing shift in how feedback, challenge, and failure are handled in a classroom or at home.

The concept has also spread well beyond schools into business and sports, where coaches and managers invoke growth mindset language to encourage employees or athletes to treat setbacks as a normal part of improvement rather than evidence of a fixed ceiling on their ability.

Related concepts

Growth mindset is often discussed alongside the idea of self-efficacy, a person’s belief in their own capacity to succeed at a specific task, though the two concepts are distinct: self-efficacy is task-specific confidence built from past experience, while mindset is a broader belief about whether ability in general can change. It is also frequently paired with discussions of grit and perseverance, since a student who believes ability can grow is thought to be more likely to persist through difficulty rather than giving up at the first sign of struggle. Some schools have tried to combine mindset instruction with explicit strategies for handling failure, such as teaching students to analyze mistakes for specific lessons rather than treating a poor grade as a final verdict on their ability.

Dweck’s book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, published in 2006, popularized the concept well beyond academic psychology, and the terms fixed mindset and growth mindset have since become common shorthand in everyday conversations about learning, parenting, and workplace culture.

A frequent point of confusion is treating mindset as fixed trait labels for entire people rather than as beliefs that can vary by subject, since a student might hold a growth mindset about math ability while still holding a fixed mindset about artistic talent.

Workplace training programs have also adopted growth mindset language, encouraging employees to view skill gaps as developable rather than permanent, though critics caution that invoking mindset language alone cannot substitute for actual access to training, mentorship, or resources needed to close a skill gap.

FAQs

Who developed the growth mindset concept? Psychologist Carol Dweck, who popularized it in her 2006 book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.

What did Dweck’s research find about praising intelligence versus effort? Praising intelligence directly tended to encourage a fixed mindset, while praising effort and strategy tended to encourage a growth mindset.

Editorially reviewed by Specialty Digest Editorial TeamLast reviewed November 2, 2026Researched and drafted with AI assistanceReport an issue