That may be a separate factor: that people who believe intelligence is malleable tend to recover better from failures - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles

That may be a separate factor: that people who believe intelligence is malleable tend to recover better from failures - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/instance/1838571/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/instance/1838571/ If you've been taught to judge your worth by your intelligence, and simultaneously believe intelligence is fixed at birth, it's a logical consequence that you might do a lot of dumb things to preserve your internal belief that you're smart.