Psychology › Personality & intelligence › Intelligence and the g factor
Growth mindset: believing ability can grow (Dweck)
1988; book 2006; big trials 2018–2019· Theory or model
Mixed evidenceSome support; effects smaller or less consistent than once thought.
Carol Dweck's idea that believing abilities can be developed, rather than fixed, helps people persist and learn.
See it on the Psychology map →What it says
Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck grew the idea from 1970s work on why some children give up after failure. In 1988 she and Ellen Leggett contrasted 'entity' (fixed) and 'incremental' (growth) beliefs; her 2006 book Mindset made it a school and corporate movement. Then large tests arrived. A 2019 national US study of about 12,000 ninth graders found an under-an-hour online lesson raised lower achievers' grades by about 0.1 grade points. Meta-analyses find small average effects, larger for struggling students.
Why it matters
A clear case of a popular idea surviving but shrinking under rigorous testing: a cheap nudge with modest benefits, not a transformation.
The evidence
A 2018 pair of meta-analyses by Victoria Sisk and colleagues found weak links between mindset and achievement and tiny average intervention effects; a 2023 analysis argued effects shrink further after correcting for study quality.
Open questions
Researchers dispute whether the remaining effects are real but context-dependent, appearing mainly in supportive classrooms, or largely artifacts of which studies get published.
Connections (2)
▸The replication crisis shrank the claimed effects of Growth mindset: believing ability can grow (Dweck)Well replicated
The connection
Early studies by Carol Dweck's group suggested that teaching students their ability can grow substantially improved effort and grades. In the replication era, large tests found much smaller effects: a 2018 meta-analysis of 43 interventions found a very small average effect, and a 2019 national US trial found a small grade gain, mostly among lower-achieving students.
Who showed it and when
Meta-analysis by Victoria Sisk, Brooke Macnamara and colleagues (Psychological Science, 2018); trial of over 12,000 ninth-graders by David Yeager, Dweck and colleagues (Nature, 2019).
The evidence
The 2019 trial was preregistered with a nationally representative sample, and the meta-analyses pooled hundreds of studies; both point to small effects.
Open questions
Whether small effects matter at scale in the right schools, as Dweck argues, or are near zero overall, as a 2023 analysis by Macnamara concluded.
▸Growth mindset: believing ability can grow (Dweck) grew out of Dweck's work on Learned helplessnessWell replicated
The connection
In the 1970s Carol Dweck studied why some children give up after failure while others try harder. Helpless children blamed lack of ability; mastery-oriented ones blamed effort or strategy. Over the 1980s she traced these reactions to beliefs about whether intelligence is fixed or can grow, which became the 'growth mindset'.
Who showed it and when
University of Illinois, 1970s–1980s: Dweck's 1975 study retraining helpless children and Carol Diener and Dweck's 1978 study; later at Columbia and Stanford.
The evidence
Dweck's own papers trace the line explicitly, from learned helplessness (1975, 1978) to her 1988 model with Ellen Leggett of fixed versus growth beliefs.
Open questions
The origin is clear; the payoff is debated. Large trials found mindset lessons raise grades only slightly, mainly for struggling students, and some meta-analyses find near-zero effects.