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Beyond Puzzles

It’s one thing to pass up a puzzle. It’s another to pass up an opportunity that’s important to your future. To see if this would happen, we took advantage of an unusual situation. At the University of Hong Kong, everything is in English. Classes are in English, textbooks are in English, and exams are in English. But some students who enter the university are not fluent in English, so it would make sense for them to do something about it in a hurry.

As students arrived to register for their freshman year, we knew which ones were not skilled in English. And we asked them a key question: If the faculty offered a course for students who need to improve their English skills, would you take it?

We also measured their mindset. We did this by asking them how much they agreed with statements like this: “You have a certain amount of intelligence, and you can’t really do much to change it.” People who agree with this kind of statement have a fixed mindset.

Those who have a growth mindset agree that: “You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.”

Later, we looked at who said yes to the English course. Students with the growth mindset said an emphatic yes. But those with the fixed mindset were not very interested.

Believing that success is about learning, students with the growth mindset seized the chance. But those with the fixed mindset didn’t want to expose their deficiencies. Instead, to feel smart in the short run, they were willing to put their college careers at risk.

This is how the fixed mindset makes people into nonlearners.

Brain Waves Tell the Story

You can even see the difference in people’s brain waves. People with both mindsets came into our brain-wave lab at Columbia. As they answered hard questions and got feedback, we were curious about when their brain waves would show them to be interested and attentive.

People with a fixed mindset were only interested when the feedback reflected on their ability. Their brain waves showed them paying close attention when they were told whether their answers were right or wrong.

But when they were presented with information that could help them learn, there was no sign of interest. Even when they’d gotten an answer wrong, they were not interested in learning what the right answer was.

Only people with a growth mindset paid close attention to information that could stretch their knowledge. Only for them was learning a priority.

What’s Your Priority?

If you had to choose, which would it be? Loads of success and validation or lots of challenge?

It’s not just on intellectual tasks that people have to make these choices. People also have to decide what kinds of relationships they want: ones that bolster their egos or ones that challenge them to grow? Who is your ideal mate? We put this question to young adults, and here’s what they told us.

People with the fixed mindset said the ideal mate would:

Put them on a pedestal.

Make them feel perfect.

Worship them.

In other words, the perfect mate would enshrine their fixed qualities. My husband says that he used to feel this way, that he wanted to be the god of a one-person (his partner’s) religion. Fortunately, he chucked this idea before he met me.

People with the growth mindset hoped for a different kind of partner. They said their ideal mate was someone who would:

See their faults and help them to work on them.

Challenge them to become a better person.

Encourage them to learn new things.

Certainly, they didn’t want people who would pick on them or undermine their self-esteem, but they did want people who would foster their development. They didn’t assume they were fully evolved, flawless beings who had nothing more to learn.

Are you already thinking, Uh-oh, what if two people with different mindsets get together? A growth-mindset woman tells about her marriage to a fixed-mindset man:

I had barely gotten all the rice out of my hair when I began to realize I made a big mistake. Every time I said something like “Why