THE EFFORT EFFECT | From Arno Illgner’s Warrior’ Way Site)
From an article about Carol Dweck (THE ORIGINAL ARTICLE LINK HERE—Summary reprinted from Arno Illgner’s Warrior’ Way Site)
Researcher Carol Dweck’s study asked the following question:
“What makes a really capable child give up in the face of failure, where other children may be motivated by the failure?”
She studied results of a British soccer team to see why the most talented players at the start of the season tended to show the least improvement.
- The difference seemed to be in the mindset of the person: fixed-mindset and growth-mindset.
- Fixed-mindset people who attributed their failures to lack of ability would become discouraged even in areas where they were capable. Growth-mindset people thought they simply hadn’t tried hard enough and would be fueled by setbacks. Students referred to their errors as insufficient effort. Those children learned to persist in the face of failure—and to succeed. The fixed-mindset showed no improvement at all, continuing to fall apart quickly and to recover slowly.
- Common sense suggests that ability inspires self-confidence. And it does for a while—so long as the going is easy. But setbacks change everything. the difference lay in the kids’ goals. “The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something,” and “learning goals” inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviours than “performance goals.”
- For performance-oriented students (fixed-mindset): want to look smart even if it means not learning a thing in the process. For them, each task is a challenge to their self-image, and each setback becomes a personal threat.
- Students with learning goals (growth-mindset), on the other hand, take necessary risks and don’t worry about failure because each mistake becomes a chance to learn.
- How we label things: if some students want to show off their ability, while others want to increase their ability, “ability” means different things to the two groups. “If you want to demonstrate something over and over, it feels like something static that lives inside of you—whereas if you want to increase your ability, it feels dynamic and malleable.
- People with performance goals, think intelligence is fixed from birth. People with learning goals have a growth mindset about intelligence, believing it can be developed.
You pick which attitude you think is best 🙂 !
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