How to Enhance Performance & Learning by Applying a Growth Mindset

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Praising intelligence can backfire

  Huberman starts with Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck's late-1990s paper, 'Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance'. More than 100 children received intelligence feedback ('you're so smart, so talented'), effort feedback ('you tried really hard, you kept going after a wrong answer') or no specific praise. The intelligence-praised children later chose easier problems so they could keep earning the label, while the effort-praised children picked harder problems that would teach them more.

• 02

  The performance effect runs in both directions

  All the children started at similar levels. On a second problem set, the control group scored about the same as before, say 75% if they had scored 75% the first time. The intelligence-praise group's scores dropped significantly, and the effort-praise group's rose significantly. Effort-praised children also took on more problems overall.

• 03

  Identity praise also invites dishonesty

  When asked to report their scores to other children, publicly or even privately on paper, those given intelligence praise were more likely to inflate them, even when they were already in the top bracket. Huberman calls this an underappreciated cost of telling people they are gifted.

• 04

  Timing doesn't rescue identity praise

  Telling someone 'you're so smart, you'll ace this' before an exam, or 'you're so talented' after a perfect score, both undermine later performance. Effort praise helps whether it comes before or after. It must be genuine, though: praising effort that didn't happen fails because people know when they are being lied to.

• 05

  Effort and attention are what you can truly control

  Huberman finds 'control what you can control' irritatingly vague and makes it concrete: the two things inherent to you and your nervous system are where you place your attention and how much effort and persistence you apply. Unlike labels, effort verbs transfer across domains. A good memory doesn't make you a good musician, but a habit of practising and analysing errors goes wherever you do.

• 06

  Growth and fixed mindsets show up in how the brain handles errors

  In an EEG (event-related potential) study by Mangels and colleagues, with Dweck as senior author, people answered trivia questions, rated their confidence and were then told whether they were right. When told they were wrong, people with a fixed view of intelligence showed a larger error-related P3 signal over the anterior (rostral) cingulate, linked to emotional and bodily responses. Growth-mindset participants' activity shifted toward regions associated with cognitive appraisal: they turned attention to understanding the mistake.

• 07

  You can switch modes in the moments after a mistake

  Everyone has a fixed mindset in some area, especially when embarrassed about being confidently wrong. Huberman's point is that you don't have to suppress the feeling. You can add attention to the error, asking what led to it and digging in, which gradually outweighs the emotional hijack. If emotions are too high, it's fine to wait a day or two before analysing.

• 08

  How you view stress changes how your body responds

  Alia Crum's paper 'Rethinking stress: The role of mindsets in determining the stress response' gave people one of two short, true lectures: that stress is harmful or that stress improves health and vitality. Huberman stresses that this isn't placebo or deception. Those taught that stress can enhance performance showed shorter cortisol release, better cardiac stroke volume and more peripheral blood flow, and could see more anabolic hormonal effects. Chronic, sleep-disrupting stress remains harmful.

• 09

  Growth mindset plus stress-is-enhancing mindset work synergistically

  David Yeager (UT Austin, a former Dweck student) and colleagues published 'A synergistic mindsets intervention protects adolescents from stress' in Nature in July 2022. Across six experiments with imagined, laboratory and real classroom stress, students who learned both mindsets showed better peripheral blood flow, altered cortisol responses and more challenge-oriented thinking. Notably, a single 30-minute session worked, compared with earlier programmes of four to eight sessions.