No Clarity Around Growth Mindset

(if you’re not familiar with it, growth mindset is the belief that people who believe ability doesn’t matter and only effort determines success are more resilient, skillful, hard-working, perseverant in the face of failure, and better-in-a-bunch-of-other-ways than people who emphasize the importance of ability. Therefore, we can make everyone better off by telling them ability doesn’t matter and only hard work does. More on Wikipedia here).

It’s unnatural, is what it is. A popular psychological finding that doesn’t have gruff people dismissing it as a fad? That doesn’t have politicians condemning it as a feel-good justification for everything wrong with society? That doesn’t have a host of smarmy researchers saying that what, you still believe that, didn’t you know it failed to replicate and has since been entirely superseded by a new study out of Belarus? I’m not saying Carol Dweck has definitely made a pact with the Devil, I’m just saying I don’t have a good alternative explanation.

Which brings me to the second reason I’m biased against it. Good research shows that inborn ability (including but not limited to IQ) matters a lot, and that the popular prejudice that people who fail just weren’t trying hard enough is both wrong and harmful. Social psychology has been, um, very enthusiastic about denying that result. If all growth mindset did was continue to deny it, then it would be unexceptional. But growth mindset goes further. It’s not (just?) that ability doesn’t matter. It’s that belief that ability might matter is precisely what makes people fail. People who believe ability matters will refuse to work hard, will avoid challenges, will become “helpless” in the face of pressure, will hate learning as a matter of principle, will refuse to work hard, will become blustery and defensive about their “brilliance”, will lie to people and hide their failures, and will drop out of school and turn to drugs (really)! People who believe that anyone can succeed if they try hard enough will be successful, well-adjusted, and treat life as a series of challenging adventures. It all strikes a curmudgeon like me as just about the thickest morality tale since Pilgrim’s Progress, and as just about the most convenient explanatory coup since “the reason psychic powers don’t work on you is because you’re a skeptic!”

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