Here's a paper by Dr. Dweck on the topic [1]. Thanks to dfabulich above for suggesting the right terms to google. I'm no expert at evaluating claims in developm

Here's a paper by Dr. Dweck on the topic [1]. Thanks to dfabulich above for suggesting the right terms to google. I'm no expert at evaluating claims in developmental psychology, but this seems like credible research after a quick read through. Note that the claims supported by the research here are closer to something like "praise of a certain kind makes children more likely to answer followup questions a certain way," rather than "there are two well separated groups of people that adhere to meaningfully differing mindsets in a persistent way." Claims of the first kind are much less problematic, but as far as the latter, remember that there are many, many instances where the spread within a group of people is much larger than the difference between groups of people: that should be the default assumption whenever there isn't strong evidence to the contrary. [1] http://web.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/system/files/Intelligence%20Praise%20Can%20Undermine%20Motivation%20and%20Performance.pdf http://web.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/syst...