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Speaker 1: Pushkin. In my job as a professor, I often face

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Speaker 1: situations in which I need to introduce my students to

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Speaker 1: challenging concepts, ones that are kind of hard to learn.

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Speaker 1: They often struggle, at least at first, but after wrestling

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Speaker 1: a bit with the material, they usually arrive at that

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Speaker 1: blissful aha moment where everything makes sense. You can practically

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Speaker 1: see the light bulbs going off in their heads. But sadly,

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Speaker 1: sometimes I also observe the opposite students never make it

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Speaker 1: to that aha moment, because all of a sudden, they

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Speaker 1: just seem to give up. It's a moment that every

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Speaker 1: teacher dreads. I was a middle school teacher and my

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Speaker 1: only skill was getting my kids fired up to learn. Unfortunately,

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Speaker 1: once they were fired up, I had mediocre pedagogical skills,

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Speaker 1: and so I went to graduate school wanting to learn

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Speaker 1: if I say this to my kids, are they going

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Speaker 1: to be more motivated than if I say that? And

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Speaker 1: you'd be amazed how little research actually tests anything like that.

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Speaker 1: This is David Yeager, a psychology professor at UT Austin.

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Speaker 1: He and his collaborator, the renowned Stanford professor Carol Dweck,

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Speaker 1: study how the things we believe about the world are

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Speaker 1: so called mindset can influence our behavior, and they've found

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Speaker 1: that the way we think about a challenge can make

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Speaker 1: a huge difference in how well we get through it.

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Speaker 1: Do I believe that things in the world can change?

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Speaker 1: And if the answer is yes, then the stakes are

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Speaker 1: a little bit lower when things go wrong. This is

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Speaker 1: what Carol Dwack is called the growth mindset, and this

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Speaker 1: is the idea that there's the potential for change. As

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Speaker 1: you'll hear in this episode, the science shows that helping

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Speaker 1: my students develop a growth mindset can lower the likelihood

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Speaker 1: that they'll shut down when the going gets tough, and

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Speaker 1: developing a growth mindset can also have lots of benefits

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Speaker 1: for your personal life and happiness too. So you can

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Speaker 1: have a mindset about your intelligence, and your mindset could

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Speaker 1: be that intelligence has fixed. You either have it or

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Speaker 1: you don't. Let's say you bomb your algebra one test

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Speaker 1: right the first major tests of the year. Then that's

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Speaker 1: an event that happened to you. It's an objective fact

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Speaker 1: you got a sixty. But the world then gets subjectively

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Speaker 1: interpreted by you in your mind. Your beliefs about the

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Speaker 1: nature of your intelligence can powerfully shape the sense you

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Speaker 1: make of the failed test. So in a growth mindset,

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Speaker 1: the test is one piece of information. It's something that

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Speaker 1: you need to attend to and react to positively and

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Speaker 1: figure out how to overcome the same failure. Though in

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Speaker 1: a fixed mindset is very different. That failure feels like

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Speaker 1: something to be ashamed of because it's revealed your lack

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Speaker 1: of ability. You don't want to redouble your efforts and

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Speaker 1: try hard in a fixed mindset because that just outs

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Speaker 1: you even more as the kind of person who has

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Speaker 1: to try hard. And a growth mindset, though effort is good.

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Speaker 1: Effort is just the process through which you get better.

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Speaker 1: Asking for help is another thing you do. In a

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Speaker 1: growth mindset, you say, wow, I don't understand this, what

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Speaker 1: does it mean? In a fixed mindset, you don't ask

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Speaker 1: clarifying questions. So it's this cycle of concealing our misunderstanding

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Speaker 1: that comes from a fixed mindset and then causes us

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Speaker 1: to underperform relative to what we could do. So that's

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Speaker 1: a fixed mindset in academic domain. But but there's also

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Speaker 1: research showing these mindsets might play out in the context

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Speaker 1: of even how we think about our own health and longevity.

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Speaker 1: What Eleocrum has figured out is that people differ in

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Speaker 1: whether they think of stress as something that is fundamentally

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Speaker 1: bad for you and will undermine your goals or something

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Speaker 1: that could be enhancing. And it's a brilliant insight because

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Speaker 1: if you look around our society, there's a negative mindset

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Speaker 1: about stress. But you can have a different mindset. The

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Speaker 1: mindset that that stress response. You're racing heart or sweating palms,

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Speaker 1: the shortness of breath, the feelings of anxiety in your stomach,

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Speaker 1: those are signs that your body is mobilizing energy to

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Speaker 1: really do well and to succeed, and that stress is

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Speaker 1: in a dancing mindset, interestingly, actually changes the way your

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Speaker 1: body responds. So if you believe that your racing heart

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Speaker 1: and sweating palms can be fuel for cooling your body

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Speaker 1: down and bringing oxygenated blood to your brain, then that

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Speaker 1: actually happens when scientists measure those things during a stressful experience.

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Speaker 1: And this is another thing that fixed mindset messes us

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Speaker 1: up on is the extent to which we seek challenges. Right,

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Speaker 1: you're resting on your laurels is a good thing if

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Speaker 1: you're totally scared that every mess up means you know

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Speaker 1: you're a whole person and you'll never get better. But

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Speaker 1: talk about why a growth mindset hasn't kind of pushed

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Speaker 1: yourself in this new way. Dave nus Mom did a

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Speaker 1: study where he took people taught to either the fix

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Speaker 1: or the growth mindset and then had them do a

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Speaker 1: task where they got feedback that they were at the

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Speaker 1: twenty fifth percentile. But then they had a chance to

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Speaker 1: either look at the work of people who are at

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Speaker 1: the ninetieth percentile or at the work of people at

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Speaker 1: the tenth percentile. And a fixed mindset, they looked at

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Speaker 1: the tenth percentile because it made them feel better, like, well,

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Speaker 1: these are not as bad as these losers. And the

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Speaker 1: growth mindset, though they looked at the people who did better,

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Speaker 1: they try to adopt their strategies, which is so important, right,

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Speaker 1: I mean, to learn, you don't want to be looking

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Speaker 1: to the people who are doing badly. To learn, you

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Speaker 1: need to look to the people who hopefully are better

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Speaker 1: than you. So different kinds of responses to the same

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Speaker 1: feedback depending on your mindset. So far, we've been talking

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Speaker 1: about the beliefs that we have about our own ability

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Speaker 1: to change. But when we get back from the break,

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Speaker 1: we'll find out what happens if we challenge ourselves to

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Speaker 1: believe that change is possible for other people too, even

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Speaker 1: for people who totally suck. Think middle school bullies. If

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Speaker 1: we entertain the thought that not so nice people can

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Speaker 1: change into kinder people, what will that change in us?

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Speaker 1: That Penis lab will be right back. Often people have

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Speaker 1: heard about growth mindset in academic domain. I think in

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Speaker 1: part because Carroll's due work has become so famous. But

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Speaker 1: you've actually done some really lovely work looking at growth

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Speaker 1: mindset in a different context, in the context of kind

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Speaker 1: of being nice and forgiveness. So tell me about some

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Speaker 1: of that stuff. I wanted to develop an experiment to

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Speaker 1: try to change kids mindsets and see if I could

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Speaker 1: reduce aggression and revenge in real high schools. And so

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Speaker 1: we created a growth Mindset program this is about two

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Speaker 1: thousand and nine two ten, to change kids mindsets about

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Speaker 1: bullies really and about themselves as victims. And we went

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Speaker 1: into the second lowest income high school in the Bay Area,

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Speaker 1: took over biology class on Tuesdays and Thursdays for three

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Speaker 1: weeks and did workshops about the brain and how the

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Speaker 1: brain can change and how people can change. And we

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Speaker 1: asked kids to do skits and sketches about change and

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Speaker 1: wrote essays where they reframed bad actions as things that

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Speaker 1: can change, and then we need to measure aggression. Turns

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Speaker 1: out it's very hard to measure aggression in the high

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Speaker 1: school because you can't just sit around and wait for

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Speaker 1: a fight because it's very few kids fight. So we

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Speaker 1: decided to do an experimental manipulation where you kind of

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Speaker 1: have to make everybody mad and then see if they

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Speaker 1: take revenge. And so we had a classroom of like

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Speaker 1: seventy ninth and tenth graders at a time at this

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Speaker 1: urban school, and Saint Jose who went through a cyberball

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Speaker 1: paradigm where they are on a computer and they other

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Speaker 1: players are throwing the ball to each other and never

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Speaker 1: throw it to you. And then we say, okay, now

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Speaker 1: it's time to do a taste testing task and we're

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Speaker 1: gonna match you with the guy you displayed cyber ball with.

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Speaker 1: And by the way, this person hates spicy food. I'm

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Speaker 1: gonna give you a box full of much of different

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Speaker 1: kinds of foods. You could allocate whatever you want. The

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Speaker 1: deependit measure for aggression was how much hot sauce did

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Speaker 1: they spoon into a cup, thinking that the other guy

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Speaker 1: who just excluded them would have to eat all of it.

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Speaker 1: We found is that kids who learned people can change

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Speaker 1: allocated forty percent less hot sauce in this task. In addition,

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Speaker 1: at the end of the year, teachers were more likely

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Speaker 1: to have nominated them for good interpersonal behavior. So I

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Speaker 1: was like, okay, this is great. You can have a

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Speaker 1: theory of a problem like aggression, you can do a treatment,

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Speaker 1: and you can get results. So from there we said,

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Speaker 1: how can it go online and get it to more people.

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Speaker 1: We went from the sixth day workshop to the thirty

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Speaker 1: minute workshop two high schools at seventy five schools and

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Speaker 1: now that growth mindset treatments can be done in a

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Speaker 1: very short amount of time and now hundreds of thousands

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Speaker 1: of people per year get them for free. It's so amazing.

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Speaker 1: It's such an important work. I mean, what did it

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Speaker 1: feel like in the early days to learn that, like,

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Speaker 1: if you can change people's internal stories, you can really

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Speaker 1: change their behaviors in like a profound way, like reducing bullying,

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Speaker 1: you know, getting teachers to say these are better students.

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Speaker 1: What people don't appreciate is in two thousand nine, ten

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Speaker 1: people thought this was the dumbest idea ever. Like nobody

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Speaker 1: thought this was a legitimate part of education or like

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Speaker 1: school reform or anything like that. Right, I'll never forget

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Speaker 1: when I was doing the Hot Sauce study, we were

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Speaker 1: doing the surveys in the PE class. So I've got

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Speaker 1: like ninety sweaty kids, and so they're grooping off and

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Speaker 1: the PE coach comes up to me and he's like, hey, man,

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Speaker 1: why are you doing the study. I'm like, kind of

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Speaker 1: want to reduce suppression and you know, help kids have

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Speaker 1: a better life. And he's like, it's too late for

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Speaker 1: these kids. You should have gone to the elementary school.

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Speaker 1: These kids can't change. I'm literally here to teach them

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Speaker 1: that people can change. I mean, but I think the

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Speaker 1: power of this insight is like it's just a thing

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Speaker 1: that we can all learn from, right, you know. I

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Speaker 1: think we forget that our internal stories are driving you know,

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Speaker 1: what we eat, the decisions we make, how much we

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Speaker 1: put effort into things. But like they really are controlling

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Speaker 1: so much of our behavior and ultimately so much of

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Speaker 1: who we wind up being as a person. These same

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Speaker 1: studies work in lots of important things for adults. One

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Speaker 1: of my favorites is around. Our parents work on mindsets

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Speaker 1: and intractable conflict. Basically, if you think another group is

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Speaker 1: fundamentally evil and can never change, then when that group

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Speaker 1: does something to harm your group, you immediately think of

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Speaker 1: counterattacks and revenge. You don't think of a peace process.

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Speaker 1: And they did this work with Israelis soon after a

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Speaker 1: terrorist attack, thinking about Palestinians and an affect mindset, Israelis

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Speaker 1: are like no counter terrorism in a growth mindset, even

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Speaker 1: if they were kind of right wing in general and

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Speaker 1: inclined more toward a military response, in a growth mindset,

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Speaker 1: they said, no, let's give the peace process a chance

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Speaker 1: at least first. So I think that's an example where

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Speaker 1: even adults who they haven't just spent their whole life

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Speaker 1: coming up with a fixed mindset, there have been generations,

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Speaker 1: like thousands of years thinking that way. Even in that group,

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Speaker 1: a growth mindset can make a difference. We need to

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Speaker 1: have a growth mindset about growth mindsets, right, like we

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Speaker 1: need to recognize that our beliefs can change too. I

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Speaker 1: think that's important because in a lot of pop psychology,

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Speaker 1: we have these quizzes and tests and Myers Briggs and

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Speaker 1: a lot of it's used to put people in boxes.

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Speaker 1: And one thing I hear a lot from managers should

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Speaker 1: I only hire people with a growth mindset? And I

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Speaker 1: don't think mindset should be used as a screening tool necessarily.

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Speaker 1: It's an acquired belief system that comes from someone's experience

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Speaker 1: in the world, and we have to legitimate where it

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Speaker 1: comes from. If the world treats you as though you

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Speaker 1: or your group can never change, what else are you

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Speaker 1: going to belive? Like, of course you believe things can't change,

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Speaker 1: But then we shouldn't write you off and say there's

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Speaker 1: your fixed mindset. There you go because the environment gave

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Speaker 1: you that mindset. So I think we need to just

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Speaker 1: help people adopt a growth mindset, but also we need

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Speaker 1: to do what we can to make it actually true

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Speaker 1: in people's lives. That means providing resources, I mean providing opportunities,

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Speaker 1: providing support, giving people the space to grow, and anyone

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Speaker 1: who has power over somebody else a manager or coach,

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Speaker 1: a mentor, we need to create the affordances for mindset,

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Speaker 1: not tell people to have a growth mindset. So far,

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Speaker 1: we've seen that a growth mindset has lots of benefits

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Speaker 1: both when we apply that mindset to our own changes

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Speaker 1: and those of other people. But that raises a big question,

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Speaker 1: how exactly do we get a growth mindset. When we

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Speaker 1: get back from the break, we'll talk about strategies you

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Speaker 1: can use to think more effectively about your own capacity

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Speaker 1: for change, and why doing so can boost your happiness

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Speaker 1: in ways you don't often expect. The Happiness Lab will

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Speaker 1: be right back. After spending so much time talking with

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Speaker 1: psychologist David Yeager about the power of the growth mindset,

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Speaker 1: I started to hear a little bit from my inner critic.

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Speaker 1: She started saying, Laurie, you know how important a growth

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Speaker 1: mindset is, but you don't always have one. You suck

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Speaker 1: at it. You're such a phony. Luckily David was at

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Speaker 1: the ready to deal with this. He has tons of

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Speaker 1: strategies for how we can adopt a growth mindset, including

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Speaker 1: one that was hypothesized by his famous collaborator, Carol Dweck.

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Speaker 1: She argued that we should try to pay close attention

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Speaker 1: to what our inner critics are telling us. Here's a hypothesis.

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Speaker 1: You can actually start to distinguish the growth and fixed

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Speaker 1: mindset thoughts in your head and notice those fixed mindset

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Speaker 1: thoughts and not suppress them and push them away, but

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Speaker 1: name them, figure out why they're legitimate, and then choose

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Speaker 1: to follow the growth mindset ones. So Carol thinks that

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Speaker 1: this is only a halfway serious idea of it, that

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Speaker 1: you could name your fixed mindset persona. You know, you

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Speaker 1: start hearing wait, you think you can try hard and

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Speaker 1: get ahead, Like, that's ridiculous if that is in your head.

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Speaker 1: You say, oh, Larry, you know, Larry's always goofing off

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Speaker 1: back over there with this fixed mindset ideas. And I

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Speaker 1: appreciate you, Larry, but no thanks today. And you know,

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Speaker 1: I don't know if that exact idea works, although I

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Speaker 1: think it's kind of appealing. But the idea of not

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Speaker 1: villainizing our fixed mindset thoughts and realizing they come from

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Speaker 1: a legitimate place, but also thinking they're not for us,

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Speaker 1: they're not going to help us. I love this idea

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Speaker 1: of kind of labeling the mindset, you know, maybe even

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Speaker 1: giving it a goofy name. You know. Another thing we

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Speaker 1: need to pay attention to are the words that we're

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Speaker 1: using in our stories, right, so talk about how the

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Speaker 1: use of our words and terms can be really powerful.

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Speaker 1: I think that's a really profound question, because mindsets are

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Speaker 1: as you've been saying your own causal theory of the world.

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Speaker 1: But those theories are shaped by language, and it's because

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Speaker 1: language has this power of communicating cause and effect very

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Speaker 1: quickly and easily. So one of the biggest distinctions is

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Speaker 1: noun phrasing versus verb or process phrasing. So saying like

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Speaker 1: I'm a good writer, they're a bad person, they're a loser.

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Speaker 1: In any label you put on yourself implies a fixed

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Speaker 1: entity that lies underneath it. They can't be changed. So

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Speaker 1: children who are told you're a good drawer here more

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Speaker 1: fixed mindset thoughts and make more fixed mindset interpretations relatives

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Speaker 1: to children who hear that's good drawing. Liz Gunderson to

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Speaker 1: this study where moms are playing catch with their two

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Speaker 1: year olds in the lab and they're videotaped, and moms

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Speaker 1: who say you're such a good thrower end up with

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Speaker 1: kids who, when they're in fourth grade have more of

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Speaker 1: a fixed mindset and take the easy road, compared to

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Speaker 1: kids who have praised for the process that they ecaged in,

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Speaker 1: like this isn't this fun? Or look how we're doing this.

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Speaker 1: So I think talking to others conveys mindsets, depending on

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Speaker 1: whether you're used person or process. But when we talk

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Speaker 1: to ourselves too, that's where you can really get into

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Speaker 1: fixed mindset front. So the words to look out for

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Speaker 1: are over generalizations. Anything where it's like all the time

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Speaker 1: or every time or always or everybody that implies a

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Speaker 1: large category that's fixed and stable and can't change and

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Speaker 1: that carries fixed mindset connotations with it. I've heard that

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Speaker 1: another way that we can kind of fight those over

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Speaker 1: generalizations is just to kind of add a word at

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Speaker 1: the end to things to kind of give ourselves a

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Speaker 1: little bit of hope for change. So what's this word

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Speaker 1: we can kind of add on the end to help ourselves. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: Kildwick had this idea for a while that if you

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Speaker 1: hear a fixed mindset over generalization, you could add yet

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Speaker 1: to the end of it. So I'm not a good

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Speaker 1: programmer yet, right, I'm not a good skier yet. And

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Speaker 1: I like it. I feel like it reminds us that

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Speaker 1: everyone's on a journey of learning and it's a process.

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Speaker 1: Where it could be misused is if it turns into

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Speaker 1: like a goofy catchphrase that doesn't really help people. And

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Speaker 1: so if you say yet, but, then I'm not going

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Speaker 1: to support you in any way to help improve, and

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Speaker 1: it's almost like taking responsibility off of me. So I

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Speaker 1: think saying yet in the context of a commitment to

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Speaker 1: continuous improvement is a really powerful way to reframe that

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Speaker 1: negative self dialogue we have. And I think sometimes we

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Speaker 1: can think like, oh, I'll just think positively or think

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Speaker 1: that I'm going to get better and you know, lo

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Speaker 1: and behold you get better. The key there is the

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Speaker 1: stories are affecting how we act in the world and

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Speaker 1: the actions we take in the future. Right, Yeah. So,

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Speaker 1: I think one of the biggest dangers in mindset is

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Speaker 1: to think of it as purely lying to yourself and

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Speaker 1: having unfounded positivity. And you know, I think people are

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Speaker 1: legitimately skeptical of that. I'm skeptical of that. If someone

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Speaker 1: tells me to be positive about something that I legitimately

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Speaker 1: think is hopeless, then I think they're either naive or

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Speaker 1: just uninformed, Which is why a true growth mindset is

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Speaker 1: founded in an actual belief that change is possible, like

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Speaker 1: there has to be a real mechanism for that. Another

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Speaker 1: tip I often hear about improving growth mindset is this

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Speaker 1: idea of kind of thinking realistically about the process right

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Speaker 1: the time and effort. You know, it's easy for me

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Speaker 1: if I turn on the Olympics and I see some

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Speaker 1: Olympic gymnast to think, oh, man, I suck. I'm not

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Speaker 1: a good gymnast. Like I'm inherently not a good gymnast.

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Speaker 1: And Simone Biles is just you, deeply and inherently a

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Speaker 1: good gymnast. But what I miss there is all the

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Speaker 1: training and all the work she puts in. You know,

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Speaker 1: So talk about the power of paying attention to the

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Speaker 1: process for kind of getting us towards more of a

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Speaker 1: growth mindset. Yeah, I think that we tend to look

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Speaker 1: at excellent performance and think that's how they always were,

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Speaker 1: and then we underappreciate the steps that it took to

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Speaker 1: get there. I think what's often more useful in growth

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Speaker 1: mindset is focusing less on interpersonal comparisons, comparing myself to

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Speaker 1: someone else in more intro personal comparisons instead. So, how

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Speaker 1: can I be better in the future? What are the

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Speaker 1: processes I need to go through to become the kind

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Speaker 1: of person I would like to be? How am I

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Speaker 1: already better than I was in the past. One of

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Speaker 1: my favorite ideas on this is stroke victims. So stroke

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Speaker 1: victim of course lose functioning in their muscles that are

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Speaker 1: that are related to the regions of the brain that

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Speaker 1: are affected by the stroke. But the brain is amazingly

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Speaker 1: plastic and people can actually recover a lot of their functioning.

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Speaker 1: And one of the biggest things that distinguishes stroke victims

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Speaker 1: who recover from those who don't is do you compare

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Speaker 1: yourself to other stroke victims or to yourself in the

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Speaker 1: past for your own functioning, or do you compare yourself

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Speaker 1: to non stroke victims who have perfect functioning. If you

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Speaker 1: do the ladder, you say, I'll never be like a

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Speaker 1: normal person again, and people don't follow through and their

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Speaker 1: physical therapy and they don't ever improve. If you say, wow,

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Speaker 1: I used to not be able to move this part

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Speaker 1: of my face and now I can kind of move that,

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Speaker 1: then people actually show a lot more improvement. So I

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Speaker 1: think with anything that changes about us, there are different

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Speaker 1: ways of appraising it or thinking about it, and your

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Speaker 1: mindsets affect that, and then that affects how we cope

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Speaker 1: with it, and then how debilitating it is or not.

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Speaker 1: And I think that the idea of you know, comparing

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Speaker 1: your performance against your own past performance can be powerful

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Speaker 1: because then you tend to notice these little winds. You know,

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Speaker 1: you can tend to notice like oh I'm just a

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Speaker 1: little bit better and reinforce this belief like, oh wait,

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Speaker 1: there is change there if I look really carefully. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I think it's hard to keep track of how much

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Speaker 1: we've changed, right. It's like you see yourself in the

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Speaker 1: mirror every day, and you change a very small amount

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Speaker 1: every day, But when you see a picture from five

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Speaker 1: years ago, you're like, oh my god, it looks so

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Speaker 1: different and so. Part of a reason why we get

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Speaker 1: stuck and fixed mindset, I think, is because we don't

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Speaker 1: appreciate the changes that we've had for the better, and

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Speaker 1: so it feels like changing anything new in the future

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Speaker 1: is as impossible. So I feel like it's a good

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Speaker 1: habit to as much as possible acknowledge and appreciating how

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Speaker 1: far you've come and revisit the steps you took to

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Speaker 1: get there. I hope you've gained as many actionable tips

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Speaker 1: from my conversation with David as I have. Next time

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Speaker 1: I get frustrated with myself for not doing something well,

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Speaker 1: I'm going to try to take a long view. I'm

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Speaker 1: going to look back at what I was like when

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Speaker 1: I first started out and give myself some credit for

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Speaker 1: all the progress I've made so far. And when that

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Speaker 1: little voice in my head tells me I'll never be

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Speaker 1: able to do cropos in yoga, or that I'm not

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Speaker 1: good at some random thing, I'll give her a silly name.

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Speaker 1: The next time she pipes up, I'll just tell her

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Speaker 1: thanks for your input, Linda lame sauce. But news flash,

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Speaker 1: humans get better over time when they put in some work,

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Speaker 1: and that means I've got this. I'm also going to

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Speaker 1: take some of David's advice about encouragement to see if

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Speaker 1: I can help foster a growth mindset among my students

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Speaker 1: when they get frustrated, so that instead of giving up

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Speaker 1: at the first sign of struggle, they can change their

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Speaker 1: mindset from i'll never get this too. I'm proud of

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Speaker 1: my effort. And if you're secretly worried that even after

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Speaker 1: hearing this episode, you'll never get the hang of this

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Speaker 1: growth mindset thing, that just means you haven't developed a

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Speaker 1: growth mindset yet. The Happiness Lab is co written and

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Speaker 1: produced by Ryan Dilley. Our original music was composed by

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Speaker 1: Zachary Silver, with additional scoring, mixing, and mastering Evan Biola.

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Speaker 1: Joseph Friedman checked our facts. Sophie Crane McKibbin edited our scripts.

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Speaker 1: Emily Anne Vaughan offered additional production support. Special thanks to

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Speaker 1: Miela Belle, Carl mcgliori, Heather Faine, Maggie Taylor, Daniella Lucarne,

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Speaker 1: Maya Kanigg, Nicole Morano, Eric Zandler, Royston Breserve, Jacob Weisberg,

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Speaker 1: and my agent, Ben Davids. That Pinus Lab is brought

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Speaker 1: to you by Pushkin Industries, Emmie Doctor, Laurie Santos