Carol S. Dweck Quotes

1946

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Carol Susan Dweck (born October 17, 1946) is an American psychologist. She holds the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professorship of Psychology at Stanford University. Dweck is known for her work on motivation and mindset. She was on the faculty at the University of Illinois, Harvard, and Columbia before joining the Stanford University faculty in 2004. She was named an Association for Psychological Science (APS) James McKeen Cattell Fellow in 2013, an APS Mentor Awardee in 2019, and an APS William James Fellow in 2020, and has been a member of the National Academy of Sciences since 2012.

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when they see it — it’s the ability to dig down and find the strength even

Before we judge, let's remember that effort isn't quite everything and that all effort is not created equal.

However, this point is crucial: The growth mindset does allow people to love what they're doing — and to continue to love it in the face of difficulties.

When you enter a mindset, you enter a new world. In one world — the world of fixed traits — success is about proving you’re smart or talented. Validating yourself. In the other — the world of changing qualities — it’s about stretching yourself to learn something new. Developing yourself.

scientists are learning that people have more capacity for lifelong learning and brain development than they ever thought.

But isn’t potential someone’s capacity to develop their skills with effort over time? And that’s just the point. How can we know where effort and time will take someone? Who

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?

Create an organization that prizes the development of ability — and watch the leaders emerge.

Praising children’s intelligence harms their motivation and it harms their performance.

We also know that there is a mindset that helps people cope well with setbacks, points them to good strategies, and leads them to act in their best interest.

… see failure not as a sign of stupidity but as a lack of experience and skill.

(Seth Abrams)

In summary, people who believe in fixed traits feel an urgency to succeed, and when they do, they may feel more than pride. They may feel a sense of superiority, since success means that their fixed traits are better than other people’s. However, lurking behind that self-esteem of the fixed mindset is a simple question: If you’re somebody when you’re successful, what are you when you’re unsuccessful?

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.

In one world, failure is about having a setback. Getting a bad grade. Losing a tournament. Getting fired. Getting rejected. It means you’re not smart or talented. In the other world, failure is about not growing. Not reaching for the things you value. It means you’re not fulfilling your potential.

They were self-effacing people who constantly asked questions and had the ability to confront the most brutal answers — that is, to look failures in the face, even their own, while maintaining faith that they would succeed in the end.