Grit(56)

To test her idea, Carol divided the children into two groups. Half the children were assigned to a success only program. For several weeks, they solved math problems and, at the end of each session, no matter how many they’d completed, they received praise for doing well. The other half of the children in Carol’s study were assigned to an attribution retraining program. These children also solved math problems, but were occasionally told that they hadn’t solved enough problems during that particular session and, crucially, that they “should have tried harder.”

Afterward, all the children were given a combination of easy and very difficult problems to do.

Carol reasoned that, if prior failures were the root cause of helplessness, the success only program would boost motivation. If, on the other hand, the real problem was how children interpreted their failures, then the attribution retraining program would be more effective.

What Carol found is that the children in the success only program gave up just as easily after encountering very difficult problems as they had before training. In sharp contrast, children in the attribution retraining program tried harder after encountering difficulty. It seems as though they’d learned to interpret failure as a cue to try harder rather than as confirmation that they lacked the ability to succeed.



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Over the next four decades, Carol probed deeper.

She soon discovered that people of all ages carry around in their minds private theories about how the world works. These points of view are conscious in that if Carol asks you questions about them, you have a ready answer. But like the thoughts you work on when you go to a cognitive behavioral therapist, you may not be aware of them until you’re asked.

Here are four statements Carol uses to assess a person’s theory of intelligence. Read them now and consider how much you agree or disagree with each:

Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.

You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are.

No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.

You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.

If you found yourself nodding affirmatively to the first two statements but shaking your head in disagreement with the last two, then Carol would say you have more of a fixed mindset. If you had the opposite reaction, then Carol would say you tend toward a growth mindset.

I like to think of a growth mindset this way: Some of us believe, deep down, that people really can change. These growth-oriented people assume that it’s possible, for example, to get smarter if you’re given the right opportunities and support and if you try hard enough and if you believe you can do it. Conversely, some people think you can learn skills, like how to ride a bike or do a sales pitch, but your capacity to learn skills—your talent—can’t be trained. The problem with holding the latter fixed-mindset view—and many people who consider themselves talented do—is that no road is without bumps. Eventually, you’re going to hit one. At that point, having a fixed mindset becomes a tremendous liability. This is when a C–, a rejection letter, a disappointing progress review at work, or any other setback can derail you. With a fixed mindset, you’re likely to interpret these setbacks as evidence that, after all, you don’t have “the right stuff”—you’re not good enough. With a growth mindset, you believe you can learn to do better.

Mindsets have been shown to make a difference in all the same life domains as optimism. For instance, if you have a growth mindset, you’re more likely to do well in school, enjoy better emotional and physical health, and have stronger, more positive social relationships with other people.

A few years ago, Carol and I asked more than two thousand high school seniors to complete a growth-mindset questionnaire. We’ve found that students with a growth mindset are significantly grittier than students with a fixed mindset. What’s more, grittier students earn higher report card grades and, after graduation, are more likely to enroll in and persist through college. I’ve since measured growth mindset and grit in both younger children and older adults, and in every sample, I’ve found that growth mindset and grit go together.



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When you ask Carol where our mindsets come from, she’ll point to people’s personal histories of success and failure and how the people around them, particularly those in a position of authority, have responded to these outcomes.

Consider, for example, what people said to you when, as a child, you did something really well. Were you praised for your talent? Or were you praised for your effort? Either way, chances are you use the same language today when evaluating victories and defeats.

Praising effort and learning over “natural talent” is an explicit target of teacher training in the KIPP schools. KIPP stands for the Knowledge Is Power Program, and it was started in 1994 by Mike Feinberg and Dave Levin, two gritty young Teach For America teachers. Today, KIPP schools serve seventy thousand elementary, middle, and high school students across the country. The vast majority of KIPPsters, as they proudly refer to themselves, come from low-income families. Against the odds, almost all graduate from high school, and more than 80 percent go on to college.

KIPP teachers get a little thesaurus during training. On one side, there are encouragements teachers often use with the best of intentions. On the other, there is language that subtly sends the message that life is about challenging yourself and learning to do what you couldn’t do before. See below for examples appropriate for people of any age. Whether you’re a parent, manager, coach, or any other type of mentor, I suggest you observe your own language over the next few days, listening for the beliefs your words may be reinforcing in yourself and others.