I’ve fallen in love: intensely, deeply in love with Carol Dweck. And I won’t hear a bad word against her. It’s probably not healthy, it’s definitely a bit weird, but it’s how I feel and I won’t apologise: My intellectual love for her runs deep and flows fast.
Dweck pioneered a distinction between what she calls a fixed mindset and a growth mindset. Originally conceived as a descriptor for attitudes towards intelligence, this distinction has traction for most cognitive attributes and provides insight and explanation for observable behaviour. A fixed (entity) mindset is characterised by a belief that there is a constant level of some cognitive attribute or trait for every person which cannot be surpassed no matter how much it is worked at. A growth (incremental) mindset is contrasted with this and is characterised as a belief that a given attribute or trait is malleable and can be affected and changed by an individual. So, for instance, someone holding a fixed mindset of intelligence will believe that everyone is born with a certain level of intelligence and no matter how studious and motivated they are, once they reach their intelligence ceiling, they cannot surpass it. This outlook is typified by sentences such as “he’s the clever one” or “I’m no good at x” – the subtext here is “he was born clever” and “I can never be any good at x”. Conversely, someone with a growth mindset might say “I have to work hard to get good results in x”.
Life in the grown up lane 