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Mindset: The New Psychology of Success Paperback – 26 December 2007

by Carol S. Dweck (Author)

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The updated edition of the bestselling book that has changed millions of lives with its insights into the growth mindset

“Through clever research studies and engaging writing, Dweck illuminates how our beliefs about our capabilities exert tremendous influence on how we learn and which paths we take in life.”—Bill Gates, GatesNotes

After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. People with a fixed mindset—those who believe that abilities are fixed—are less likely to flourish than those with a growth mindset—those who believe that abilities can be developed. Mindset reveals how great parents, teachers, managers, and athletes can put this idea to use to foster outstanding accomplishment.

In this edition, Dweck offers new insights into her now famous and broadly embraced concept. She introduces a phenomenon she calls false growth mindset and guides people toward adopting a deeper, truer growth mindset. She also expands the mindset concept beyond the individual, applying it to the cultures of groups and organizations. With the right mindset, you can motivate those you lead, teach, and love—to transform their lives and your own.

Print length

320 pages
Language

English
Publication date

26 December 2007
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0345472322
ISBN-13

978-0345472328
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From the renowned psychologist who introduced the world to “growth mindset”

Bill Gates says, “Dweck illuminates how our beliefs about our capabilities exerts influence.”

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Review

“A good book is one whose advice you believe. A great book is one whose advice you follow. This is a book that can change your life, as its ideas have changed mine.”—Robert J. Sternberg, co-author of Teaching for Wisdom, Intelligence, Creativity, and Success

“An essential read for parents, teachers [and] coaches . . . as well as for those who would like to increase their own feelings of success and fulfillment.”—Library Journal (starred review)

“Everyone should read this book.”—Chip Heath and Dan Heath, authors of Made to Stick

“One of the most influential books ever about motivation.”—Po Bronson, author of NurtureShock

“If you manage people or are a parent (which is a form of managing people), drop everything and read Mindset.”—Guy Kawasaki, author of The Art of the Start 2.0

About the Author

Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading researchers in the fields of personality, social psychology, and developmental psychology. She is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, and has won nine lifetime achievement awards for her research. She addressed the United Nations on the eve of their new global development plan and has advised governments on educational and economic policies. Her work has been featured in almost every major national publication, and she has appeared on Today, Good Morning America, and 20/20. She lives with her husband in Palo Alto, California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

THE MINDSETS

As a young researcher, just starting out, something happened that changed my life. I was obsessed with understanding how people cope with failures, and I decided to study it by watching how students grapple with hard problems. So I brought children one at a time to a room in their school, made them comfortable, and then gave them a series of puzzles to solve. The first ones were fairly easy, but the next ones were hard. As the students grunted, perspired, and toiled, I watched their strategies and probed what they were thinking and feeling. I expected differences among children in how they coped with the difficulty, but I saw something I never expected.

Confronted with the hard puzzles, one ten-year-old boy pulled up his chair, rubbed his hands together, smacked his lips, and cried out, “I love a challenge!” Another, sweating away on these puzzles, looked up with a pleased expression and said with authority, “You know, I was hoping this would be informative!”

What’s wrong with them? I wondered. I always thought you coped with failure or you didn’t cope with failure. I never thought anyone loved failure. Were these alien children or were they on to something?

Everyone has a role model, someone who pointed the way at a critical moment in their lives. These children were my role models. They obviously knew something I didn’t and I was determined to figure it out—to understand the kind of mindset that could turn a failure into a gift.

What did they know? They knew that human qualities, such as intellectual skills, could be cultivated through effort. And that’s what they were doing—getting smarter. Not only weren’t they discouraged by failure, they didn’t even think they were failing. They thought they were learning.

I, on the other hand, thought human qualities were carved in stone. You were smart or you weren’t, and failure meant you weren’t. It was that simple. If you could arrange successes and avoid failures (at all costs), you could stay smart. Struggles, mistakes, perseverance were just not part of this picture.

Whether human qualities are things that can be cultivated or things that are carved in stone is an old issue. What these beliefs mean for you is a new one: What are the consequences of thinking that your intelligence or personality is something you can develop, as opposed to something that is a fixed, deep-seated trait? Let’s first look in on the age-old, fiercely waged debate about human nature and then return to the question of what these beliefs mean for you.

WHY DO PEOPLE DIFFER?

Since the dawn of time, people have thought differently, acted differently, and fared differently from each other. It was guaranteed that someone would ask the question of why people differed—why some people are smarter or more moral—and whether there was something that made them permanently different. Experts lined up on both sides. Some claimed that there was a strong physical basis for these differences, making them unavoidable and unalterable. Through the ages, these alleged physical differences have included bumps on the skull (phrenology), the size and shape of the skull (craniology), and, today, genes.

Others pointed to the strong differences in people’s backgrounds, experiences, training, or ways of learning. It may surprise you to know that a big champion of this view was Alfred Binet, the inventor of the IQ test. Wasn’t the IQ test meant to summarize children’s unchangeable intelligence? In fact, no. Binet, a Frenchman working in Paris in the early twentieth century, designed this test to identify children who were not profiting from the Paris public schools, so that new educational programs could be designed to get them back on track. Without denying individual differences in children’s intellects, he believed that education and practice could bring about fundamental changes in intelligence. Here is a quote from one of his major books, Modern Ideas About Children, in which he summarizes his work with hundreds of children with learning difficulties:

A few modern philosophers . . . assert that an individual’s intelligence is a fixed quantity, a quantity which cannot be increased. We must protest and react against this brutal pessimism. . . . With practice, training, and above all, method, we manage to increase our attention, our memory, our judgment and literally to become more intelligent than we were before.

Who’s right? Today most experts agree that it’s not either–or. It’s not nature or nurture, genes or environment. From conception on, there’s a constant give and take between the two. In fact, as Gilbert Gottlieb, an eminent neuroscientist, put it, not only do genes and environment cooperate as we develop, but genes require input from the environment to work properly.

At the same time, scientists are learning that people have more capacity for lifelong learning and brain development than they ever thought. Of course, each person has a unique genetic endowment. People may start with different temperaments and different aptitudes, but it is clear that experience, training, and personal effort take them the rest of the way. Robert Sternberg, the present-day guru of intelligence, writes that the major factor in whether people achieve expertise “is not some fixed prior ability, but purposeful engagement.” Or, as his forerunner Binet recognized, it’s not always the people who start out the smartest who end up the smartest.

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN FOR YOU? THE TWO MINDSETS

It’s one thing to have pundits spouting their opinions about scientific issues. It’s another thing to understand how these views apply to you. For twenty years, my research has shown that the view you adopt for yourself profoundly affects the way you lead your life. It can determine whether you become the person you want to be and whether you accomplish the things you value. How does this happen? How can a simple belief have the power to transform your psychology and, as a result, your life?

Believing that your qualities are carved in stone—the fixed mindset—creates an urgency to prove yourself over and over. If you have only a certain amount of intelligence, a certain personality, and a certain moral character—well, then you’d better prove that you have a healthy dose of them. It simply wouldn’t do to look or feel deficient in these most basic characteristics.

Some of us are trained in this mindset from an early age. Even as a child, I was focused on being smart, but the fixed mindset was really stamped in by Mrs. Wilson, my sixth-grade teacher. Unlike Alfred Binet, she believed that people’s IQ scores told the whole story of who they were. We were seated around the room in IQ order, and only the highest-IQ students could be trusted to carry the flag, clap the erasers, or take a note to the principal. Aside from the daily stomachaches she provoked with her judgmental stance, she was creating a mindset in which everyone in the class had one consuming goal—look smart, don’t look dumb. Who cared about or enjoyed learning when our whole being was at stake every time she gave us a test or called on us in class?

I’ve seen so many people with this one consuming goal of proving themselves—in the classroom, in their careers, and in their relationships. Every situation calls for a confirmation of their intelligence, personality, or character. Every situation is evaluated: Will I succeed or fail? Will I look smart or dumb? Will I be accepted or rejected? Will I feel like a winner or a loser?

But doesn’t our society value intelligence, personality, and character? Isn’t it normal to want these traits? Yes, but . . .

There’s another mindset in which these traits are not simply a hand you’re dealt and have to live with, always trying to convince yourself and others that you have a royal flush when you’re secretly worried it’s a pair of tens. In this mindset, the hand you’re dealt is just the starting point for development. This growth mindset is based on the belief that your basic qualities are things you can cultivate through your efforts. Although people may differ in every which way—in their initial talents and aptitudes, interests, or temperaments—everyone can change and grow through application and experience.

Do people with this mindset believe that anyone can be anything, that anyone with proper motivation or education can become Einstein or Beethoven? No, but they believe that a person’s true potential is unknown (and unknowable); that it’s impossible to foresee what can be accomplished with years of passion, toil, and training.

Did you know that Darwin and Tolstoy were considered ordinary children? That Ben Hogan, one of the greatest golfers of all time, was completely uncoordinated and graceless as a child? That the photographer Cindy Sherman, who has been on virtually every list of the most important artists of the twentieth century, failed her first photography course? That Geraldine Page, one of our greatest actresses, was advised to give it up for lack of talent?

You can see how the belief that cherished qualities can be developed creates a passion for learning. Why waste time proving over and over how great you are, when you could be getting better? Why hide deficiencies instead of overcoming them? Why look for friends or partners who will just shore up your self-esteem instead of ones who will also challenge you to grow? And why seek out the tried and true, instead of experiences that will stretch you? The passion for stretching yourself and sticking to it, even (or especially) when it’s not going well, is the hallmark of the growth mindset. This is the mindset that allows people to thrive during some of the most challenging times in their lives.

A VIEW FROM THE TWO MINDSETS

To give you a better sense of how the two mindsets work, imagine—as vividly as you can—that you are a young adult having a really bad day:

One day, you go to a class that is really important to you and that you like a lot. The professor returns the midterm papers to the class. You got a C+. You’re very disappointed. That evening on the way back to your home, you find that you’ve gotten a parking ticket. Being really frustrated, you call your best friend to share your experience but are sort of brushed off.

What would you think? What would you feel? What would you do?

When I asked people with the fixed mindset, this is what they said: “I’d feel like a reject.” “I’m a total failure.” “I’m an idiot.” “I’m a loser.” “I’d feel worthless and dumb—everyone’s better than me.” “I’m slime.” In other words, they’d see what happened as a direct measure of their competence and worth.

This is what they’d think about their lives: “My life is pitiful.” “I have no life.” “Somebody upstairs doesn’t like me.” “The world is out to get me.” “Someone is out to destroy me.” “Nobody loves me, everybody hates me.” “Life is unfair and all efforts are useless.” “Life stinks. I’m stupid. Nothing good ever happens to me.” “I’m the most unlucky person on this earth.”

Excuse me, was there death and destruction, or just a grade, a ticket, and a bad phone call?

Are these just people with low self-esteem? Or card-carrying pessimists? No. When they aren’t coping with failure, they feel just as worthy and optimistic—and bright and attractive—as people with the growth mindset.

So how would they cope? “I wouldn’t bother to put so much time and effort into doing well in anything.” (In other words, don’t let anyone measure you again.) “Do nothing.” “Stay in bed.” “Get drunk.” “Eat.” “Yell at someone if I get a chance to.” “Eat chocolate.” “Listen to music and pout.” “Go into my closet and sit there.” “Pick a fight with somebody.” “Cry.” “Break something.” “What is there to do?”

What is there to do! You know, when I wrote the vignette, I intentionally made the grade a C+, not an F. It was a midterm rather than a final. It was a parking ticket, not a car wreck. They were “sort of brushed off,” not rejected outright. Nothing catastrophic or irreversible happened. Yet from this raw material the fixed mindset created the feeling of utter failure and paralysis.

When I gave people with the growth mindset the same vignette, here’s what they said. They’d think:

“I need to try harder in class, be more careful when parking the car, and wonder if my friend had a bad day.”

“The C+ would tell me that I’d have to work a lot harder in the class, but I have the rest of the semester to pull up my grade.”

There were many, many more like this, but I think you get the idea. Now, how would they cope? Directly.

“I’d start thinking about studying harder (or studying in a different way) for my next test in that class, I’d pay the ticket, and I’d work things out with my best friend the next time we speak.”

“I’d look at what was wrong on my exam, resolve to do better, pay my parking ticket, and call my friend to tell her I was upset the day before.”

“Work hard on my next paper, speak to the teacher, be more careful where I park or contest the ticket, and find out what’s wrong with my friend.”

You don’t have to have one mindset or the other to be upset. Who wouldn’t be? Things like a poor grade or a rebuff from a friend or loved one—these are not fun events. No one was smacking their lips with relish. Yet those people with the growth mindset were not labeling themselves and throwing up their hands. Even though they felt distressed, they were ready to take the risks, confront the challenges, and keep working at them.

SO, WHAT’S NEW?

Is this such a novel idea? We have lots of sayings that stress the importance of risk and the power of persistence, such as “Nothing ventured, nothing gained” and “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again” or “Rome wasn’t built in a day.” (By the way, I was delighted to learn that the Italians have the same expression.) What is truly amazing is that people with the fixed mindset would not agree. For them, it’s “Nothing ventured, nothing lost.” “If at first you don’t succeed, you probably don’t have the ability.” “If Rome wasn’t built in a day, maybe it wasn’t meant to be.” In other words, risk and effort are two things that might reveal your inadequacies and show that you were not up to the task. In fact, it’s startling to see the degree to which people with the fixed mindset do not believe in effort.

Product details

Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 320 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0345472322
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345472328

Best Sellers Rank: 274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 4 in Social Psychology
- 4 in Applied Psychology
- 4 in Professions & Industrial Sectors

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Karyn ashley goh

Great 👍 lovely book

Reviewed in Singapore 🇸🇬 on 25 July 2022

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Great 👍 lovely 😊 book for self actualization

Reviewed in Singapore 🇸🇬 on 4 January 2022

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Bought this as a Christmas gift for my niece who is very capable but lacks self-confidence. I wanted to help her change her mindset & be the very best she already is!

One person found this helpful

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Davin Ong

Great insight on the growth mindset. Applicable to all aspect of life.

Reviewed in Singapore 🇸🇬 on 4 May 2022

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The mindset needed to approach challenges and learning in life.

Reviewed in Singapore 🇸🇬 on 4 December 2021

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Great book! Opened up my mind and how I looked at things

Reviewed in Singapore 🇸🇬 on 9 July 2022

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Book arrived dirty with black marks and stains

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Mila G

Known this to be a great book’

Reviewed in Singapore 🇸🇬 on 17 April 2021

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Arrived early and it great condition. Reading later!

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Seller pls note English instructions and price

Nice read

Reviewed in Singapore 🇸🇬 on 3 September 2020

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Nice read

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@Timothy_Hughes

Game Changer!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 17 December 2018

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Every now and again you come across a book that is not just interesting, informative, insightful or educational, and not just changes the way you think, but changes the way you see the world. Mindset takes you through a journey of the differences between a "growth mindeset" and "fixed mindeset" what that means and how you can make a difference.
Or try and make a difference. In your work life, your personal life, how you deal with colleagues, your friends, family and your children. This book is not a "tickbox" or a "top ten things you need to do" and the reason for this, is that the change has to come from within you. This book purley is a catalyst to empower you to make that change. I've purchased a copy for all my friends for Christmas.

51 people found this helpful

Amazon Kunde

Gut für ein besseres Verständnis des Growth Mindsets, aber wenig Theorie

Reviewed in Germany 🇩🇪 on 27 August 2018

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Wer an der Idee des "growth mindset" interessiert ist, sollte vorweg auf Youtube ein oder zwei entsprechende Videos von Frau Dweck anschauen - in denen sagt sie in wenigen Worten bereits alles Wesentliche. Der Wert dieses Buches liegt somit vor allem darin, dass es anhand von Beispielen das growth mindset systematisch erläutert. Zuerst erschien mir dies als zu oberflächlich, da ich mir mehr theoretischen Tiefgang erhofft hatte, allerdings ist es allgemein bekannt, dass Beispiele fürs Verständnis enorm wichtig und hilfreich sind. Insofern kann man von diesem Buch durchaus profitieren - wenn man ein Buch zu einem Thema gelesen hat, dann hat man es oft besser verinnerlicht als nach einem kurzen Video.

Was mich etwas gestört hat: Ihr Buch beginnt Frau Dweck mit den Worten "No book has ever explained this mindset and shown people how to make use of it in their lives." - das entspricht nicht der Realität. Von der Philosophie der Antike (besonders die Stoiker) über Nietzsche bis hin zu Psychologen wie Kazimierz Dabrowski: Das Gedankengut findet sich bereits bei vielen anderen Menschen und in vielen anderen Büchern, bloß sind diese nicht so modern und haben keinen griffigen Titel wie "growth mindset". Der Nobelpreisträger Santiago Ramón y Cajal meinte vor hundert Jahren schon: "Any man could, if he were so inclined, be the sculptor of his own brain." Das ist im Wesentlichen die Botschaft des Buches, deren Bedeutung dann durch viele Beispiele erläutert wird. Hier hätte ich mir wenigstens eine andeutungsweise historische Einordnung gewünscht.

Zusammenfassend: Wer sich mal einen Vortrag von Dweck angehört hat und lesen möchte, wie das growth mindset in verschiedenen Situationen konkret aussieht, um ein besseres Verständnis zu erlangen, der kann das Buch guten Gewissens kaufen. Man kann hier durchaus etwas lernen, auch wenn an Theorie vergleichen mit ihren TED Talks nicht so viel dazu kommt.

124 people found this helpful

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Ineta

Repetitive and waste of time

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 3 May 2019

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The book is collection of examples. Examples of people with fixed mindset and growth mindset. Challenge yourself-you will succeed. After two chapters I gave up as it’s only examples and no actual psychology behind it. I would advise to start with Atomic Habits by James Clear to actually know how to challenge yourself and become better everyday.

46 people found this helpful

Amit Bharti

Want to recognise your hidden confidence and potential then must go through this book.

Reviewed in India 🇮🇳 on 17 August 2020

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Font size is small and paper is not that good quality in comparison to other books.
Though I am overlooking these things and will soon update my review about this book.

𝐔𝐩𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐨𝐧 22 𝐣𝐮𝐥𝐲 2020

𝐌𝐢𝐧𝐝𝐬𝐞𝐭 𝑏𝑦 𝐷𝑟. 𝐶𝑎𝑟𝑜𝑙 𝑆. 𝐷𝑤𝑒𝑐𝑘
𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒏𝒈𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒘𝒂𝒚 𝒚𝒐𝒖 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌 𝒕𝒐 𝒇𝒖𝒍𝒇𝒊𝒍 𝒚𝒐𝒖𝒓 𝒑𝒐𝒕𝒆𝒏𝒕𝒊𝒂𝒍

From the back side of the book.-
World renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck, in decades of research on achievement and success, has discovered a truly groundbreaking idea— the power of our mindset.

What are my key takeaways-
👉 This is must read book for all those who find themselves underestimated, lack of "nature gifts", those who are highly confident and also understand themselves as a god gifted.

👉 Hard work and right strategy is the key to transform your fixed mindset into growth mindset.
👉 There are more probability of getting right mindset that make us believe that we can be anyone regardless of fixed mindset or growth mindset, one need to learn how to thrive.
👉 Scientific reason behind your motivational character.
👉How to accomplish your goals by developing growth mindset.
👉 Fundamental views about human behaviour towards success.
👉 Test scores and measures of a achievement tell you where a student or your child is, but they don't tell you where a student could end up.
.
This book is full of case studies which forms a great storyline that makes us to get glued to it. Narration with case studies make it more easier to understand complex situation and psychological factors.

Professor Dweck explains why it's not just our abilities and talent that bring success, but whether we approach our goals with fixed or growth mindset.

With the right mindset, we can motivate ourselves and children to raise grades as well as reaching our own goal.

I would definitely recommend this book to all readers. 𝑨 𝒎𝒖𝒔𝒕 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒃𝒐𝒐𝒌.

Learn and amplify your life through this ultimate guide which is a breakthrough of various growth factors.

51 people found this helpful

Dr Nia D Thomas

Great ideas. Mixed contexts

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 5 February 2023

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The book talks about two different mindsets: the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. My simple definitions are:

Mindset by Carol Dweck
◦ The fixed mindset: winning and the end goal are the things that define your success along with how little or how much effort we had to put in to get there. It’s all about being someone special.
◦ The growth mindset: what we learn on the journey to great things is what defines our success along with how little or how much it expands our abilities and gives us memorable experiences on the way. It’s all about doing special things.

Dweck talks about our predisposition to lean one way or the other, whilst also acknowledging we have a bit of both in us even if we do have a stronger bias towards one mindset or the other.

Reading it felt like someone had lifted the lid on things that I already knew, but didn’t know I knew. As I read through the examples of behaviours and attitudes that exemplified the fixed or growth mindsets, I could clearly recognise them in the people around me and, scarily, in myself too.

The book is really helpful in lifting the lid on your understanding of what success and failure means to different people. It’s also an eye opener as to why some people around you can’t ever seem to get over setbacks and hurdles and reach the potential that you can see in them but they can’t see in themselves.

It gives you examples of fixed and growth mindsets and uses a lot of sporting case studies and analogies, which, if you’re not into sports and American football in particular, is a bit difficult to access. It also mixes business in with sport, family life, romantic relationships and brining up children which creates a bit of a jigsaw of mixed pieces. I’d have rather seen business, parenting, sport and relationships presented in 4 different books, but you did learn something from each section even if it wasn’t your main area of interest in the book.

The book is really effective in helping you reframe your language to encourage more growth in your world. At the end it gives you 4 steps to develop your growth mindset, one being to name your fixed mindset persona, which I really like. Mine is called Margaret Mary Pincer-Sharpe! This gives you some separation from your unhelpful mindset and with that separation you can talk more objectively about your behaviour and give the persona some good advice on how to behave differently next time. The creation of distance and time is reminiscent of the idea of giving yourself a few seconds to change a reaction into a response which is very much in the centre of becoming a more self-aware leader.

There are also echoes of the idea of the infinite game popularised by Simon Sinek. I can definitely see that the fixed mindset, the finite game and being reactionary are facing one way on the basketball court whilst the growth mindset, the infinite game and being reflective are all on the other team.

An interesting book which will give you insight into humans wherever you may find them. I definitely understand why this is a million-copy bestseller.

I give it a 4 out of 5 only because of the mixture of business, sports, romantic relationships and parenting that didn’t fit my personal situation and particular interests.

5 people found this helpful

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Mindset: The New Psychology of Success Paperback – 26 December 2007

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