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It's important to note that mindset theory has recently come under question: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797619897588?journalCode=pssa http

It's important to note that mindset theory has recently come under question: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797619897588?journalCode=pssa https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761989758... For a twitter summary of the above paper, see here: https://twitter.com/BrookeMacnamara/status/1224716904574545920 https://twitter.com/BrookeMacnamara/status/12247169045745459...

0xcde4c3db 7y ago
It came under question several years ago, too. As far as I can tell, Carol Dweck's response was basically to no-true-Scotsman any failures as being based on "false growth mindset" [1]. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/12/how-praise-became-a-consolation-prize/510845/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/12/how-pr...
- adamisom 7y ago
  I think if I had a theory that became popularized, I, too, would have legitimate concern that people were using that theory imprecisely—-ie incorrectly. Ive noticed that as ideas get popularized they get watered down or misapplied. Think Agile.
  - 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
    Sure, but the problem I have with Dweck's response is that it seems to be muddying the water rather than adding precision. In particular, she says: > Everyone is a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets. You could have a predominant growth mindset in an area but there can still be things that trigger you into a fixed mindset trait. I have no problem with this concept per se; as far as it goes, it seems eminently more realistic than most descriptions I've seen of mindset theory (which seem to treat it like what therapists sometimes call a "core belief"). But if mindset is significantly contingent on immediate circumstances, what are we saying when we say that someone "has" a fixed or growth mindset? Are the instruments used in the studies capturing any of this variation? If not, what needs to be done to ensure that studies are properly taking this into account?
    - SquishyPanda23 7y ago
      I'm generally skeptical of pop psychologically, but in this case her response seems valid to me. There are a number of areas where it's widely believed that one must be a born X to be good at some skill. (Say, drawing, or mathematics). The basic idea is that this is a limiting belief. People who think that drawing is amenable to hard work and practice grow more in that particular area. But you can generally believe in the power of growth while also thinking that your least favorite subject (say math) is only for people with innate talent. In that case you grow in your "growth mindset" areas and plateau in your "fixed mindset" areas. > Are the instruments used in the studies capturing any of this variation? No, honestly probably not. The studies themselves may not replicate. But that doesn't mean that you can't measure such things better than we have.
  - wpietri 7y ago
    Indeed, my experience so far is ideas getting watered down to incoherence is the rule, not the exception. For Agile, definitely [1], but for all sorts of other stuff. Object orientation. Lean Startup. Startups period (e.g., WeWork). Dunning Kruger. And a depressingly large number of other things. The consolation prize is that anybody willing to dig in can often find a lot of value that other people overlooked. But what always gets me is that it becomes almost impossible to talk about that deeper value, because people already think they know it. Agile being a prime example here. [1] My Agile postmortem is here: http://agilefocus.com/2011/02/21/agiles-second-chasm-and-how-we-fell-in/ http://agilefocus.com/2011/02/21/agiles-second-chasm-and-how...
  - mundo 7y ago
    It's a legitimate concern, but not a legitimate response to repeated failures-to-replicate. The "Criticism" subhead on her wiki page has a good overview. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism
  - keithnz 7y ago
    agile went wrong as soon as it went "agile". The manifesto was a nice idea in principle, I think it would've been better for all the "agile" methods to not have come under a single umbrella term that made it so anything vaguely associated with any agile concept could be called agile in an "all inclusive" manner. But agile was never a specific process or way of doing things.
  - username90 7y ago
    If most scientists fail to understand what growth-mindset is then it is a worthless theory. The people in this thread who praise it as something awesome then almost surely have the wrong idea about it in their head and is applying it wrongly. So you are right, this is a concern, which is why we should take failure to replicate extremely seriously!
    - HelloMcFly 7y ago
      Much of the growth mindset literature out there has its foundations built on goal orientation theoretical framework, which has been replicated extensively across domains, frameworks, and cultures. There's been a number of studies on growth mindset as well, but the results are clearly more mixed. That's interesting to me given how the concepts are related, but obviously not identical.
      - username90 7y ago
        Goal orientation is pretty simple, for a larger goal set up concrete smaller goals like "practice the parts I can't do every day for 1 hour until I can do them" and then do those. I don't see how growth mindset is related at all. Here is the main definition of fixed mindset (the opposite of growth mindset): > In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. I don't believe this at all. I strongly believe that people cannot improve their intelligence, that some people are destined to be dumb their whole lives while others are brilliant. Of course I can still see the value of practice, and that working hard can immensely improve your performance, but I am still "fixed mindset" according to the definition. Do you believe that people can improve their intelligence through hard work? If not, then you are fixed mindset like me.
        HelloMcFly 7y ago
        I don't believe people can improve their core intelligence or "g", no. But I do think that people can become smarter and more knowledgeable generally. A person with a lower g can still learn, grow, and improve. They may take longer to do it, they may reach diminishing returns sooner, but they can do it.
- avindroth 7y ago
  Even if she went back on it (which I think she never will), people would still obsess over the idea. The ‘growth mindset’ has an agency on its own, a proper meme in the psyche of modern populus. Something similar would be the Marshmallow Experiment, which is still to this day completely misinterpreted. People just need bases for what they want to believe; the loads of new psychological theories have the same function as modern fake news does.
- Pete-Codes 7y ago
  As a Scotsman I've never heard of no-true-Scotsman.
  - teddyh 7y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
avindroth 7y ago
growth mindset is the scientific justification to the self-help market. there is a modicum of usefulness behind it, but it negligently divides the world into red-pillers and blue-pillers. when the fantasy ends (e.g. finding out it doesn’t work), the pain is overwhelming. there are better methods that do not require voodoo believery, but they just don’t sound as good (or hopeful or scientific).
- harimau777 7y ago
  What would the alternative methods be?
  - avindroth 7y ago
    Either eclectic modern clinical psychology (introspective methods) or taoism. But both are hard to learn through texts sadly (anything important really is) psych: https://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Emotional-Brain-Eliminating-Reconsolidation/dp/0415897173 https://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Emotional-Brain-Eliminating... https://www.amazon.com/Gestalt-Therapy-Excitement-Growth-Personality-ebook/dp/B0051R9XPK https://www.amazon.com/Gestalt-Therapy-Excitement-Growth-Per... taoism: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003T0G9E4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003T0G9E4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... but really, search for a master
    - dnate 7y ago
      That sounds like you replaced one belief system with another. It is hard for me to see that one is necessarily better or "truer" than the other.
      - mooseburger 7y ago
        Trying out belief systems is like choosing programming languages: rather hard to appraise them without actually trying to build something and run it in your wetware computer.
      - avindroth 7y ago
PakG1 7y ago
Reading these tweets, I realize I had no idea that "growth mindset" had very specific claims. Finding evidence to either invalidate or lessen the validity of said claims doesn't take away from the main lessons I've had from growth mindset ideas though. Tweeter seems to be quibbling with details and semantics, which may or may not be helpful. If "growth mindset" is a specific theoretical framework with clearly defined points for the sake of marketing one Carol Dweck and other people cannot use the phrase for what they thought it meant, fine, whatever. But the lesson I took from the idea was that people who think that people cannot grow find themselves in a self-fulfilling prophecy where they don't try to grow. They potentially can get stuck in their careers and potentially might get bitter about things if they are not satisfied, wondering why the world is unfair, while other people who apply themselves can continue to grow. Yes, many variables and factors also influence how things happen, but the fundamental idea that people actually do limit themselves for no good reason is also frequently seen. How many people in the world are like this, I don't know, but they exist, and we should encourage those people to change the way they think. I am not sure how anyone would be able to argue against that being true.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  One core question is if you can change yourself from being one kind of person to the other kind. If you can't, this is still a useful way to categorize people, but not much use as self help.
  - cjblomqvist 7y ago
    I'd say it's possible, speaking from my own experience. Neither my parents care much about sport, rather they discouraged it. I still actively do lots of sports though. I think it's important to have others to learn and inspire from, while also realizing you can actively work towards it yourself (directly and indirectly). It's imo quite hard though...
    - blinkingled 7y ago
      You took a path different from your parents not from your own past self. Changing who you are is a much more difficult battle. You need to be a certain type and have another overriding motivation to truly drive yourself to the change.
tonystubblebine 7y ago
Having done a lot of applied work in this area, I think growth mindset training was incorrectly seen as a change in knowledge rather than a change in behavior. The original framing was about knowledge. Some kids were taught the concept of brain plasticity and then later scored higher on tests. But what concrete actions did these kids take in between the lesson and the test? That's what's missing. I helped my mom adopt this training for her third grade class and thus got a closer look. She trained the class with a three part YouTube series. The first was a Steph Curry video about practice. That was for motivation. The second was a cartoon about brain plasticity. That was the knowledge. The last was Janelle Monae on Sesame Street singing about the power of the word Yet. "I'm not good at math, YET." So then for the rest of the year, the kids practiced saying the word yet. I don't know how to do X, yet. So essentially, my mom instituted a year long behavior change toward positive self talk, training these kids to be open to the idea that practice could make them better. Presumably they did also practice more, although nothing in this story is really A/B testable. But I'm pretty confident that this is closer to the true story about growth mindset. Also, the kids did end up with huge improvements in their standardized test scores (which sadly mattered to the district). I wrote this up on Medium. Here's the free version: https://medium.com/better-humans/growth-mindset-is-a-habit-you-want-c46061ee9fe6?source=friends_link&sk=bbcfe334a2290411a521d2e3c7e577ad https://medium.com/better-humans/growth-mindset-is-a-habit-y... I'd never quite made the connection before, but growth mindset is the same sort of good-news/bad-news as steroids. It's not primarily that steroids make you directly stronger, it's that for the most part they help you train more and recover faster. The good news is that you'll get stronger. The bad news is that you end up working even more than if you weren't on steroids. It's the same with growth mindset. The good news is that you will get smarter, better, more skilled. The bad news is that the way those improvements happen is still through hard work. In fact, a lot of growth mindset is about having an open mind to do even more work.
- artificialLimbs 7y ago
  "The bad news is that the way those improvements happen is still through hard work." Why is this bad news?
  - 7y ago

0xcde4c3db 7y ago

It came under question several years ago, too. As far as I can tell, Carol Dweck's response was basically to no-true-Scotsman any failures as being based on "false growth mindset" [1]. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/12/how-praise-became-a-consolation-prize/510845/ https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2016/12/how-pr...

adamisom 7y ago
I think if I had a theory that became popularized, I, too, would have legitimate concern that people were using that theory imprecisely—-ie incorrectly. Ive noticed that as ideas get popularized they get watered down or misapplied. Think Agile.
- 0xcde4c3db 7y ago
  Sure, but the problem I have with Dweck's response is that it seems to be muddying the water rather than adding precision. In particular, she says: > Everyone is a mixture of fixed and growth mindsets. You could have a predominant growth mindset in an area but there can still be things that trigger you into a fixed mindset trait. I have no problem with this concept per se; as far as it goes, it seems eminently more realistic than most descriptions I've seen of mindset theory (which seem to treat it like what therapists sometimes call a "core belief"). But if mindset is significantly contingent on immediate circumstances, what are we saying when we say that someone "has" a fixed or growth mindset? Are the instruments used in the studies capturing any of this variation? If not, what needs to be done to ensure that studies are properly taking this into account?
  - SquishyPanda23 7y ago
    I'm generally skeptical of pop psychologically, but in this case her response seems valid to me. There are a number of areas where it's widely believed that one must be a born X to be good at some skill. (Say, drawing, or mathematics). The basic idea is that this is a limiting belief. People who think that drawing is amenable to hard work and practice grow more in that particular area. But you can generally believe in the power of growth while also thinking that your least favorite subject (say math) is only for people with innate talent. In that case you grow in your "growth mindset" areas and plateau in your "fixed mindset" areas. > Are the instruments used in the studies capturing any of this variation? No, honestly probably not. The studies themselves may not replicate. But that doesn't mean that you can't measure such things better than we have.
- wpietri 7y ago
  Indeed, my experience so far is ideas getting watered down to incoherence is the rule, not the exception. For Agile, definitely [1], but for all sorts of other stuff. Object orientation. Lean Startup. Startups period (e.g., WeWork). Dunning Kruger. And a depressingly large number of other things. The consolation prize is that anybody willing to dig in can often find a lot of value that other people overlooked. But what always gets me is that it becomes almost impossible to talk about that deeper value, because people already think they know it. Agile being a prime example here. [1] My Agile postmortem is here: http://agilefocus.com/2011/02/21/agiles-second-chasm-and-how-we-fell-in/ http://agilefocus.com/2011/02/21/agiles-second-chasm-and-how...
- mundo 7y ago
  It's a legitimate concern, but not a legitimate response to repeated failures-to-replicate. The "Criticism" subhead on her wiki page has a good overview. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Dweck#Criticism
- keithnz 7y ago
  agile went wrong as soon as it went "agile". The manifesto was a nice idea in principle, I think it would've been better for all the "agile" methods to not have come under a single umbrella term that made it so anything vaguely associated with any agile concept could be called agile in an "all inclusive" manner. But agile was never a specific process or way of doing things.
- username90 7y ago
  If most scientists fail to understand what growth-mindset is then it is a worthless theory. The people in this thread who praise it as something awesome then almost surely have the wrong idea about it in their head and is applying it wrongly. So you are right, this is a concern, which is why we should take failure to replicate extremely seriously!
  - HelloMcFly 7y ago
    Much of the growth mindset literature out there has its foundations built on goal orientation theoretical framework, which has been replicated extensively across domains, frameworks, and cultures. There's been a number of studies on growth mindset as well, but the results are clearly more mixed. That's interesting to me given how the concepts are related, but obviously not identical.
    - username90 7y ago
      Goal orientation is pretty simple, for a larger goal set up concrete smaller goals like "practice the parts I can't do every day for 1 hour until I can do them" and then do those. I don't see how growth mindset is related at all. Here is the main definition of fixed mindset (the opposite of growth mindset): > In a fixed mindset students believe their basic abilities, their intelligence, their talents, are just fixed traits. I don't believe this at all. I strongly believe that people cannot improve their intelligence, that some people are destined to be dumb their whole lives while others are brilliant. Of course I can still see the value of practice, and that working hard can immensely improve your performance, but I am still "fixed mindset" according to the definition. Do you believe that people can improve their intelligence through hard work? If not, then you are fixed mindset like me.
      - HelloMcFly 7y ago
        I don't believe people can improve their core intelligence or "g", no. But I do think that people can become smarter and more knowledgeable generally. A person with a lower g can still learn, grow, and improve. They may take longer to do it, they may reach diminishing returns sooner, but they can do it.
avindroth 7y ago
Even if she went back on it (which I think she never will), people would still obsess over the idea. The ‘growth mindset’ has an agency on its own, a proper meme in the psyche of modern populus. Something similar would be the Marshmallow Experiment, which is still to this day completely misinterpreted. People just need bases for what they want to believe; the loads of new psychological theories have the same function as modern fake news does.
Pete-Codes 7y ago
As a Scotsman I've never heard of no-true-Scotsman.
- teddyh 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman

avindroth 7y ago

growth mindset is the scientific justification to the self-help market. there is a modicum of usefulness behind it, but it negligently divides the world into red-pillers and blue-pillers. when the fantasy ends (e.g. finding out it doesn’t work), the pain is overwhelming. there are better methods that do not require voodoo believery, but they just don’t sound as good (or hopeful or scientific).

harimau777 7y ago
What would the alternative methods be?
- avindroth 7y ago
  Either eclectic modern clinical psychology (introspective methods) or taoism. But both are hard to learn through texts sadly (anything important really is) psych: https://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Emotional-Brain-Eliminating-Reconsolidation/dp/0415897173 https://www.amazon.com/Unlocking-Emotional-Brain-Eliminating... https://www.amazon.com/Gestalt-Therapy-Excitement-Growth-Personality-ebook/dp/B0051R9XPK https://www.amazon.com/Gestalt-Therapy-Excitement-Growth-Per... taoism: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003T0G9E4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1 https://www.amazon.com/dp/B003T0G9E4/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?... but really, search for a master
  - dnate 7y ago
    That sounds like you replaced one belief system with another. It is hard for me to see that one is necessarily better or "truer" than the other.
    - mooseburger 7y ago
      Trying out belief systems is like choosing programming languages: rather hard to appraise them without actually trying to build something and run it in your wetware computer.
    - avindroth 7y ago

PakG1 7y ago

Reading these tweets, I realize I had no idea that "growth mindset" had very specific claims. Finding evidence to either invalidate or lessen the validity of said claims doesn't take away from the main lessons I've had from growth mindset ideas though. Tweeter seems to be quibbling with details and semantics, which may or may not be helpful. If "growth mindset" is a specific theoretical framework with clearly defined points for the sake of marketing one Carol Dweck and other people cannot use the phrase for what they thought it meant, fine, whatever. But the lesson I took from the idea was that people who think that people cannot grow find themselves in a self-fulfilling prophecy where they don't try to grow. They potentially can get stuck in their careers and potentially might get bitter about things if they are not satisfied, wondering why the world is unfair, while other people who apply themselves can continue to grow. Yes, many variables and factors also influence how things happen, but the fundamental idea that people actually do limit themselves for no good reason is also frequently seen. How many people in the world are like this, I don't know, but they exist, and we should encourage those people to change the way they think. I am not sure how anyone would be able to argue against that being true.

BurningFrog 7y ago
One core question is if you can change yourself from being one kind of person to the other kind. If you can't, this is still a useful way to categorize people, but not much use as self help.
- cjblomqvist 7y ago
  I'd say it's possible, speaking from my own experience. Neither my parents care much about sport, rather they discouraged it. I still actively do lots of sports though. I think it's important to have others to learn and inspire from, while also realizing you can actively work towards it yourself (directly and indirectly). It's imo quite hard though...
  - blinkingled 7y ago
    You took a path different from your parents not from your own past self. Changing who you are is a much more difficult battle. You need to be a certain type and have another overriding motivation to truly drive yourself to the change.

tonystubblebine 7y ago

Having done a lot of applied work in this area, I think growth mindset training was incorrectly seen as a change in knowledge rather than a change in behavior. The original framing was about knowledge. Some kids were taught the concept of brain plasticity and then later scored higher on tests. But what concrete actions did these kids take in between the lesson and the test? That's what's missing. I helped my mom adopt this training for her third grade class and thus got a closer look. She trained the class with a three part YouTube series. The first was a Steph Curry video about practice. That was for motivation. The second was a cartoon about brain plasticity. That was the knowledge. The last was Janelle Monae on Sesame Street singing about the power of the word Yet. "I'm not good at math, YET." So then for the rest of the year, the kids practiced saying the word yet. I don't know how to do X, yet. So essentially, my mom instituted a year long behavior change toward positive self talk, training these kids to be open to the idea that practice could make them better. Presumably they did also practice more, although nothing in this story is really A/B testable. But I'm pretty confident that this is closer to the true story about growth mindset. Also, the kids did end up with huge improvements in their standardized test scores (which sadly mattered to the district). I wrote this up on Medium. Here's the free version: https://medium.com/better-humans/growth-mindset-is-a-habit-you-want-c46061ee9fe6?source=friends_link&sk=bbcfe334a2290411a521d2e3c7e577ad https://medium.com/better-humans/growth-mindset-is-a-habit-y... I'd never quite made the connection before, but growth mindset is the same sort of good-news/bad-news as steroids. It's not primarily that steroids make you directly stronger, it's that for the most part they help you train more and recover faster. The good news is that you'll get stronger. The bad news is that you end up working even more than if you weren't on steroids. It's the same with growth mindset. The good news is that you will get smarter, better, more skilled. The bad news is that the way those improvements happen is still through hard work. In fact, a lot of growth mindset is about having an open mind to do even more work.

artificialLimbs 7y ago
"The bad news is that the way those improvements happen is still through hard work." Why is this bad news?
- 7y ago