Explore Quotes by Carol S. Dweck

My undergraduates, at first, get all starry-eyed about the idea of finding their passion, but over time, they get far more excited about developing their passion and seeing it through. They come to understand that that's how they and their futures will be shaped and how they will ultimately make their contributions.

Males and females can both have a fixed mindset about math and science, but it hurts girls more because they are on the negative end of the stereotype.

The mindset ideas were developed as a counter to the self-esteem movement of blanketing everyone with praise, whether deserved or not.

Do you think it is possible to increase your intellectual ability? For decades, I have studied the power of this belief to become reality and watched as the concept of maintaining a 'growth mindset' has taken root in education and parenting circles.

Business leaders who openly acknowledge people's concerns about becoming obsolete and who invest resources in workers' growth can help create a nation of learners - and perhaps resolve some of the political chaos that's bubbling around us.

Unproductive effort is never a good thing.

Creating organizations that value a growth mindset can create contexts in which more people grow into the knowledgeable, visionary, and responsible leaders we need.

When I went into psychology, there were very few women.

I have seen schools across the country working long and hard to embed a commitment to the unlimited development of every student into their cultures. The result, in terms of motivated learners and test scores, often is spectacular.

We found that process praise predicted the child's mindset and desire for challenge five years later.

Think about being a teenager and feeling like school is just about taking tests you may or may not be interested in, after which someone will judge whether or not you're smart. No one's going to be inspired by that.

Children love this idea that their brain is like a muscle that gets stronger as they use it.

We're not saying people don't need fuel for strenuous work; they just don't need it constantly. People have many more resources at hand than they might think.

'Hard-working' is what gets the job done. You just see that year after year. The students who thrive are not necessarily the ones who come in with the perfect scores. It's the ones who love what they're doing and go at it vigorously.

I've always been interested, since graduate school, in why some children wilt and shrink back from challenges and give up in the face of obstacles, while others avidly seek challenges and become even more invested in the face of obstacles. So this has been my primary question for over 40 years.

In one world, effort is a bad thing. It, like failure, means you're not smart or talented. If you were, you wouldn't need effort. In the other world, effort is what makes you smart or talented.

Emphasizing effort gives a child a variable that they can control. They come to see themselves as in control of their success. Emphasizing natural intelligence takes it out of the child's control, and it provides no good recipe for responding to a failure.

You try something, it doesn't work, and maybe people even criticize you. In a fixed mindset, you say, 'I tried this, it's over.' In a growth mindset, you look for what you've learned.

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

Our message to parents is to focus on the process the child engages in, such as trying hard or focusing on the task - what specific things they're doing rather than, 'You're so smart. You're so good at this.' Although it's never too late to change, what you do early matters.

Some students start thinking of their intelligence as something fixed, as carved in stone. They worry about, 'Do I have enough? Don't I have enough?'