Carol Dweck's Mindset Research

Carol Dweck is a 60-year-old academic psychologist who has studied animal motivation.

She has found that the key to success lies not in ability, but in how people view ability—whether it is something that needs to be demonstrated or can be developed.

This is the topic of her PhD dissertation, which was published in 1975.

Dweck and her assistants ran an experiment on elementary school children, some of whom were taught to chalk up their errors to insufficient effort, and encouraged to keep going, while others were not.

The children who were taught to persist in the face of failure learned to succeed, while the children who were not taught to persist failed.

The "fundamental attribution error" is the tendency to explain other people's actions by their character traits, rather than looking at the power of the circumstances.

Dweck helped shift the focus from attributional errors and biases to the consequences of attributions- why it matters what attributions people make.

She continued to do so as an assistant professor at the University of Illinois, collaborating with then-graduate student Carol Diener to have children "think out loud" as they faced problem-solving tasks.

The big surprise: some of the children who put forth lots of effort didn't make attributions at all. These children didn't think they were failing.

Dweck's insight launched a new field of educational psychology - achievement goal theory.

Dweck reasoned that if some students want to demonstrate something over and over, it feels like something static that lives inside of them-whereas if they want to increase their ability, it feels dynamic and malleable.

People with performance goals, she reasoned, think intelligence is fixed from birth. People with learning goals have a growth mind-set about intelligence, believing it can be developed.

Dweck's research has shown that a belief in fixed intelligence can stunt achievement.

This belief can be changed through exposure to education and training in a growth mindset.

The classroom workshop is not feasible on a large scale; for one thing, it's too costly.

Dweck and Blackwell have designed a computer-based training module to simulate the live intervention.

Early buzz from a Time magazine article and Dweck's recent book has prompted teachers to clamor for the Brainology software.

Carol Dweck is a well-known psychologist who has written a book for lay readers called "Mindset."

Dweck's book is about how people can change their mindsets, which can help them overcome any obstacle.

Dweck's research has implications for the way businesses manage their employees, and for leaders who want to make bold, visionary moves.

People who have a fixed mind-set (that is, they believe that they are naturally good at things) are less likely to put in effort, and this can lead to their downfall.

However, leaders and employees can benefit from Dweck's work by learning to change their mindsets. This will allow them to overcome any obstacle and achieve their goals.