Mindset · editorial rating
Carol S. Dweck
Dweck is still on the Stanford faculty, and the best public test she coauthored found a small, preregistered grade gain for lower-achieving ninth graders (S1, S3). Meta-analyses find weak average effects, the praise studies did not cleanly replicate, and the school kit is priced well above that modest result (S4, S5, S7, S9, S10).
Editorial opinion: SG Score 76 out of 100. Verdict: EVIDENCE-BACKED. This is not a customer star rating and not a finding by a court.
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Books
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- Mindset: The New Psychology of Success Carol S. Dweck
Free resources
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- Carol Dweck Revisits the 'Growth Mindset'Free 2015 Education Week commentary.Guide
- A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievementOpen-access 2019 Nature paper.Free
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Strengths
- A current Stanford professor with peer-reviewed experiments, including a preregistered national trial (S1 S3)
- She warned in 2015 that effort slogans are a false growth mindset and can hide gaps instead of closing them (S2)
- The paperback is $20, and Mindset Works says she does not profit from its products (S13 S11)
Weaknesses
- Average effects are weak: mindset and intervention meta-analyses were weak overall, and the highest-quality trials were not significant (S4 S5)
- The famous intelligence-praise result did not cleanly replicate: motivation measures did not, and two follow-ups found no effect (S7)
- Brainology class sets are listed at $499 for 30 students, or $4,499 a school site, for gains a public trial called a couple of percentage points (S10 S9)
Claims
partly. Students who believed their intelligence could be developed outperformed those who believed it was fixed, and changing mindsets could boost achievement.
Two meta-analyses found weak overall effects, for the mindset-grades link (273 studies, 365,915 people) and for interventions (43 studies, 57,155 people), with more support for students at academic risk (S4 R07). A preregistered national experiment she coauthored still found a small gain for lower-achieving ninth graders, 0.10 grade points (effect size 0.11), and a meta-analysis of targeted high-fidelity programs estimated d = 0.14 with a prediction interval from -0.08 to 0.35 (S3 R08 S6).
partly. Brainology is shown to increase growth mindset, challenge-seeking, and persistence, and to support STEM achievement, by a U.S. Department of Education study.
An Institute of Education Sciences-funded randomized trial of teacher-delivered Brainology, with nearly 2,000 sixth and seventh graders, reported average grade gains of a couple of percentage points, larger for students who were behind, in math, science, and English (S9). That account does not report challenge-seeking or persistence, and the highest-quality mindset trials in a 2023 meta-analysis were not significant (d = 0.02) (S5).
partly. Praising children's intelligence, far from boosting their self-esteem, encourages them to embrace self-defeating behaviors, such as worrying about failure and avoiding risks.
Mueller and Dweck reported that pattern in six studies of 412 fifth graders (S8). A 2019 close replication found the praise line tied to one post-failure score (p = .049) but not to the eight motivation and attribution measures (mean p = .48), and two further studies found no effect of the classic manipulation (S7).
Also in Mindset
- Angela Duckworth (76, EVIDENCE-BACKED)
- Mel Robbins (61, MIXED)
- Jay Shetty (50, OVERSTATED)
Sources
- S1 Carol Dweck's Profile. Stanford Profiles. https://profiles.stanford.edu/carol-dweck
- S2 Carol Dweck Revisits the 'Growth Mindset'. Education Week. https://www.edweek.org/leadership/opinion-carol-dweck-revisits-the-growth-mindset/2015/09
- S3 A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1466-y
- S4 To What Extent and Under Which Circumstances Are Growth Mind-Sets Important to Academic Achievement? Two Meta-Analyses. Psychological Science / Association for Psychological Science. https://www.psychologicalscience.org/journals/psychological-science/0956797617739704/
- S5 Do growth mindset interventions impact students' academic achievement? A systematic review and meta-analysis with recommendations for best practices. Psychological Bulletin (PubMed). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36326645/
- S6 A systematic review and meta-analysis of growth mindset interventions: For whom, how, and why might such interventions work?. Psychological Bulletin (PubMed). https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36227318/
- S7 You can't change your basic ability, but you work at things, and that's how we get hard things done. University of Edinburgh Research Explorer / Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. https://www.research.ed.ac.uk/en/publications/you-cant-change-your-basic-ability-but-you-work-at-things-and-tha/
- S8 Praising Children For Their Intelligence May Leave Them Ill-Equipped To Cope With Failure. EurekAlert! / American Psychological Association. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1016561
- S9 Underachievers no more. EurekAlert! / University of California, Davis. https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/956123
- S10 Mindset Works school programs, including Brainology. Mindset Works. https://sites.google.com/mindsetworks.com/mindsetworks/programs/school
- S11 Mindset Works home page. Mindset Works. https://sites.google.com/mindsetworks.com/mindsetworks/home
- S12 Mindset Works programs for home. Mindset Works. https://sites.google.com/mindsetworks.com/mindsetworks/programs
- S13 Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Penguin Random House. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/44330/mindset-by-carol-s-dweck-phd/
- S14 Mindset Works organization profile. The Bridgespan Group. https://www.bridgespan.org/getmedia/eb6b8dcd-adad-4212-b489-78e79bbdf1dc/Profile-MindsetWorks-SEL_1.pdf
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