Carol Dweck - A Simple Shift In Thinking Can Increase Success

I have just been reading an article about Carol Dweck and her book Mindset. This whole idea seems to have grown from her early work on attribution theory which I remember reading about when I was studying psychology back in 1998.


In her book she suggest that there are two default mindsets: fixed and growth. In the fixed mindset, people think their talents and abilities are fixed. If you think this way, then you worry about them and try to validate them, limiting you.

In contrast, when you embrace a growth mindset, you believe that your talents and abilities can be developed through hard work, good strategy and mentoring, she said. 

But of course people do not exclusively use one mindset or the other. Different situations produce different mindsets which govern the behaviour or response to that situation. It is obvious that she believes the growth mindset to be a more effective way to respond to life's challenges.

Because people are a mix of both fixed and growth mindsets, the key to improving performance is to understand what triggers a fixed mindset, she said.

To change this thought process, "You have to start by finding your fixed-mindset trigger. Listen to the situation; when you start feeling your ability is fixed or limited. Just accept it at first, just listen to it. Then you start working with it. You can give your fixed mindset a name; it could be your father or your aunt. Who is that person [that discourages you]? Start talking to that voice. Reason with your persona: 'Thank you for looking out for me, but I'd really like to try this,'" she said

My two favourite quotes from the article are:

"You don't know what your abilities are until you make a full commitment to developing them."

"They may create a culture of genius where people compete with each other to look smart, instead of learn."

You can read the full article here.

Albert Bandura again

Another quote from Albert:

"Accomplishment is socially judged by ill defined criteria so that one has to rely on others to find out how one is doing."

I usually dislike statements that generalise and oversimplify human behaviour. But this sentence rings true even after I have thought about it for a while. Even my personal eccentricities have a certain degree of social acceptability about them, and just serve to make me stand out a bit more from the crown. But not to the extent that I am perceived as a weirdo.
But then what about the weirdos? Are they the exception to this statement? And yet the few 'weirdos' I can think of tend to belong to a small group of like-minded people. I'm sure that most of us don't want to be lonely. And one way to avoid that is to fit in with a group and accept their criteria as a measure of your accomplishments.
Maybe!

Albert Bandura

A quote from Albert Bandura which I spotted on the wikipedia page as I was skimming quickly through it:

"Most of the images of reality on which we base our actions are really based on vicarious experience."

So that means that many of our behaviours are not based on our own experience, but on other peoples' descriptions of their experiences? I wonder?