Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

Dweck’s 3 Key Distinctions
Carol Dweck’s work Self-Theories. She has written another book, written for a more general, less academic readership called Mindsets, in which she applies the entity/incremental construct to a broad range of domains: business, interpersonal relationships, etc. I’ve read both. In Self-Theories Dweck’s target are academic or educational contexts in which she argues that the difference in academic performance can plausibly be explained by distinguishing between two conceptions of ability, the entity theory and the incremental theory. According to the incremental spin, the abilities you possess are of a certain quantity which is FIXED (for all time) and therefore unalterable; which is to say your abilities cannot really be altered or changed; they are not really responsive to EFFORT. On the incremental view, abilities you possess are not FIXED and ARE RESPONSIVE TO EFFORT over time. One huge payoff, which Dweck points out frequently, is that in voluntarily adopting an incremental view of ability, you put yourself in a position to be FAR less vulnerable to self-blame, helplessness patterns, and self-despair in the event of failure, which can futher undermine your ability to execute your abilities. People of a more perfectionistic turn of mind have MUCH to gain by adopting a incremental spin on ability for the reasons just mentioned. “An ability is only as good as its execution”–Bandura.Dwecke’s an exceptionally lucid writer, and even her more academic work, “Self-Theories” is not written in academese but in language so clear and informal, you almost begin to wonder whether this is a professor in psychology at Columbia University. She’s that good, at least I think so. (Bandura’s prose is also clear, and conceptually rigorous, but his prose bears an elegant conciseness or compactness of insight, which would not incline me to describe as informal. But I digress. Long story short, the answer to your question is, I think, ‘yes’, Dweck’s work is closely related to Bandura’s.I’m not sure if Dweck’s work should be seen as “derived” from Bandura’s, however. Dweck draws three key distinctions:a) between learning goals and performance goals,b) between helplessness pattern and task-orientednessc) between incremental and entity theory of abilityDweck’s claim is this: People who hold an entity view of their abilities TEND to also to be people who adopt performance goals over learning goals. A performance goals is one which is more concerned about “looking or appearing smart” than in taking steps to insure greater informedness at the cost of looking stupid or uninformed. Thus, adopting a performance goal is AT CROSS PURPOSES with a learning goal. Second, entitiy theorists, when persuaded of their own failure, have MUCH REASON TO DESPAIR over their failed performances because performance failure (for them) JUST IS a demonstration of the fact that they do not possess (and what’s more NEVER can possess) the capacities required to succeed; for they believe that their abilities are FIXED structures inhering in them which are not alterable by effort. Knowing this, you’d expect that, prior to performance, entity theorists SHOULD FEEL GREAT anxiety about their future performances and ABOUT THE THREAT OF FAILURE AND WHAT IT IS DIAGNOSTIC OF. Failure is a PERMANENT DIAGNOSIS for which NATURE HOLDS NO APPELLATE COURT. If you fail at math once, twice. You’re a math idiot. If you fail at a relationship; you’re no good at love and romance. Period. The awareness of these prospects can’t help intrude on one’s performances, and keep on from doing anything which could be contrued (in your eyes) as failure, even if that means that, in the short term, you have to admit incompetence or admit nonknowledge in a subject matter, or nonunderstanding. And this is self-defeating. The situation is according to Dweck much different for those people who hold an incremental theory about ability. For these people, failure is not diagnostic of something – a wanted capability to produce desired effects in a cared-about domain of human life – which they can’t EVER possess; no, failure doesn’t MEAN (for them) that whatever it is in people taht allows them to produce exceptional EFFECTS in the world, in any cared-about domain of performance–that thing, call it an “ability”–is something whose possess and “size” or quantiy or magnitude is something over which you can exercise some control over and the way you can do this is through EFFORT. The entity theorist does not see personal exertion as diagnostic of LOW ability; she sees it as the MEANS to ACQUIRE greater capabilities, a means to enhance her personal causation. By contrast, the entity theorist views exertion as diagnistic of Low ability; like a doctor who sees a patient and says “Those spots mean measles,” the entity theorist views exceptional effort to mean “low ability.”Bandura’s view (in SE) is, similar to Dwecks, in that he thinks that it is functionally optimal to view abilities as developmentally responsive to effort. Abilities ARE things one possesses – powers one can personally exericise to produce desired effects in the environment – but for learners it is self-limiting to think of abilities as innate or in-born capabilities rather than as things which can be obtained though “acquireable means” and guided mastery. Bandura’s general approach to learning seems to be that complex or difficult performances can be decomposed into simpler tasks; learners can learn and gain competence at the simpler tasks (increasing perceived self-efficacy incrementally as they go), then, once actually in possesion of those simpler skills, move on to tackle more difficult tasks, and so on until they actually possess the skills to perform the complex performances. This is what goes on in med schools, trade schools, most all graduate schools. On B’s view, abilities are entities you possess, but the trick is to incrementalize your ACQUISITION OF THEM, using your skills acquired at lower and medium levels to boot youself up to higher levels. But of course, this means your conception of your ability has to be adequate to get you to the highest level of performance, or you have to locate the means and strategies which will elevate your performances to higher levels, and once these are identified you have to acquire them. And acquiring competency in the simpler tasks, lower skills, are, so far as I can tell from SE, the means to acquiring the skills to perform at higher levels; which is as much to say they are the means to acquiring greater abilities.

I was very impressed with this book. It brought up pieces of my childhood I didn’t quite understand- why perfectionism is bad, and how to understand the “growth mindset” over the “fixed mindset.” I realized my parents had brought us up with the fixed mindset, that we were already perfect and talented. But I’ve always struggled with anxiety and depression. Now I understand that this mindset doesn’t allow for failure and how practice makes perfect. And putting yourself out there and failing is so much better than thinking you’re already there. I have used this concept with my photography. The more I’m out there doing it, the better I get. I can’t be perfect the first time I do something, it takes a lot of practice. I highly recommend this book for anyone struggling with mental health issues or for professionals looking to help their clients better.

It’s tough to imagine a book that could have a more profound impact upon a person’s self-perception than Mindset, it is a truly phenomenal work that is both easy to read and packed with in-depth research and justifications for the author’s hypothesis on learning and development.The book shelf for self-help/useful psychology is incredibly bloated and it always seems like the next book has more ringing praise than the last and, whilst I’ve read some excellent books on clinical psychology that are peerless, this will always be the book that I remember most fondly for changing my *own* mindset to one where failure was a necessary bump in the road to success, and not an irreversible breakdown. Bear in mind, this isn’t a book that will simply inform you, it’s a book that will actively change you.The core concept that Dweck puts across is that humans generally fall into two types of mindset when it comes to achievement, success, learning and ability; the growth mindset and the fixed mindset.Quintessentially the growth mindset is the “Practice makes perfect”/”Try, try and try again”/”Back in the saddle” school of thought whereas the fixed mindset is typically the “I’ve either got a knack for it or I haven’t”/”Talent is born, not developed”/”If I need to practice then I can’t be that good”.Needless to say in the pages within Dweck tries to detach people from a fixed mindset and steer them towards the growth version, giving plenty of real life and ‘laboratory’ examples of her conceptions and why they do, and should, matter to us.This is not just a book aimed at children either, we should never stop growing as people and everyone from students to seasoned academics or established athletes to those just joining an MMA club will find much to mull after reading this.The only gripe I had when reading was the author’s irritating habit of stuffing politics, particularly gender politics, into her extrapolations about different peoples attitudes to learning and the impact this has on the academic, corporate and political world. With this being Dweck’s life’s work as a psychologist I would have preferred she keep her political conjugating to herself to instead focus on the fascinating subject matter, she is free of course to release numerous other books covering such other topics as she so wishes.In summary, if you want to be convinced (within reason) that ‘Effort is what creates success’ then buy this book immediately.