Growth Mindset Research Studies

Each month this year, AAUW is teaming up with Nature Publishing Group, one of the world’s leading science publishers, to put together an online forum on women in science. The AAUW posts highlight findings from our 2010 research report, Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics, now in its third printing.

In one study about growth mindsets, Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck and her colleagues assessed the mindsets of 373 students entering junior high school and then tracked the students’ math grades for two years. At the end of the study, students who endorsed a strong growth mindset were outperforming those who held a fixed mindset, controlling for prior achievement.

In light of this finding, the researchers conducted a second study to see if an intervention to teach seventh graders that intelligence is malleable would have any effect on their motivation in the classroom or on their grades. The students were split into two groups for a 25-minute period once each week for eight weeks. During this time, half of the students were taught that intelligence is malleable, and the other half were taught study skills.

The students in the intervention group were taught that learning changes the brain and that they should think of the brain as a muscle that becomes stronger, developing new connections and strengthening existing ones as someone learns. As a result, a person becomes smarter. The lessons also stressed that mistakes made in the course of learning are necessary and help students learn. The lessons concluded with the message that students are in charge of this process and that being smart is a choice.

The results of this intervention were remarkable. While grades for all students in the experiment were declining on average before the intervention, for those students who were taught that intelligence is malleable, the decline in grades was reversed and their average math grades improved within a few months. In contrast, the students in the control group continued to experience a decline in grades.

This study provides evidence that the learning environment can influence an individual’s mindset and that a fixed mindset can be changed into a growth mindset.