One of the most popular pop psychology concepts to take hold in recent years is that of the “growth mindset.” As articulated by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck (2006), the belief that you can improve your mental powers (grow your brain) can be a powerful tool in helping you actually achieve the success you desire. The converse mindset, or “fixed,” keeps you tied so heavily to the idea that you need to perform well that you fear doing anything that could jeopardize a favorable outcome.

But what if your mindset doesn’t really matter? What if the idea is just an oversimplification, as so many pop psychology concepts are? The only way to answer these questions is by conducting a hard-headed look at the available research, one in which scientists approach the data in an unbiased and impartial manner. These questions about mindset’s validity led Case Western University’s Brooke Macnamara and Georgia Institute of Technology’s Alexander Burgoyne (2023) to delve into the facts behind 63 mindset intervention studies on almost 98,000 participants.

A Brief History of the Mindset Movement

Before going through the results of Macnamara and Bugoyne’s extensive scrutiny of the mindset literature, it’s worth taking a step back to see what the original mindset fuss was all about. As Dweck claimed, your mindset can affect everything from the way you “lead your life” to your creation of “entire psychological worlds.” If you go around on a daily basis seeking to expand your mental powers based on the belief that there’s no limit to what you can do, this growth mindset will only feed on itself. You’ll try harder and feel less deflated by defeat. Even more, she proposed, the mindset mentality could even help promote such varied outcomes as weight loss, business success, and peace in the Middle East.

Although these claims about mindset’s importance come from books intended for the public, Dweck and her collaborators also published studies subjected to scientific review. As Macnamara and Burgoyne point out, one of these early studies was cited more than 4,000 times. Conducted on a growth mindset intervention sample of 48 seventh-grade students vs. a control sample of 43, the results showed not that the intervention worked to increase performance, but that students in the intervention group didn’t decrease following the intervention. In other words, the mindset intervention at best kept students from getting worse.

Over the course of the next 11 years or so, there were enough other published studies to allow an independent team of researchers to perform a meta-analysis in which they statistically evaluated a large number of intervention studies. The meta-analysis found a tiny positive effect, but the authors cautioned that this should be taken with a huge grain of salt. For example, many studies lacked “manipulation checks," meaning that it's possible that factors other than the intervention caused even this tiny blip of improvement.

Questioning the Mindset Mentality

Turning to the methods and findings of the Macnamara and Burgoyne study, the authors adopted best practices in conducting a meta-analysis, having at their disposal a fresh set of studies beyond those already analyzed in the earlier review. Many of the controls that the authors imposed on their analysis involved the technicalities of intervention research including not just manipulation checks, but the so-called “blinding” of conditions, and checking whether participants who completed the intervention were different than those who intended to, but did not.

Looking at those financial incentives, the authors also evaluated whether the findings of mindset studies were written in such a way as to provide “evidence in favor of these claims and omit contradictory evidence” (p. 141). Hence, Macnamara and Burgoyne scrubbed the articles they fed into their meta-analysis to eliminate any conducted by authors who work for a growth mindset company (such as consultants to schools), registered with a speakers’ bureau to give mindset talks, and receive profits from a self-help book promoting growth mindset. Of nearly 100 published articles identified in this manner, 28 had one or more authors who stood to profit by the findings.

When all was said and done, and after three separate meta-analyses, the authors identified “several concerning patterns of threats to internal validity” (p. 161). The first involved the introduction of extraneous factors into the intervention, such as encouraging participants in the treatment group to work harder or providing study plans that the control group did not receive. Expectancy bias, or the belief that the treatment would work, was the second threat to validity. Surprisingly, mindset authors also engaged in a special form of distortion in which they described null (no effect) results as though they were significant. This happened in 10% of cases.

Finally, financial bias indeed played a role in the reporting of significant results, with studies conducted by those with financial interest reporting positive effects more than two and a half as often as those with no apparent incentive. This implies that people who got paid to promote the growth mindset may have held off on releasing data that could cost them in terms of funding or speakers fees.

As a result of these and other problems identified in the meta-analysis, the authors concluded that “the argument that growth mindsets lead to meaningful changes in motivation and behavior is not well supported” (p. 163).

If Mindset Doesn’t Matter, How Can You Still Get Better?

It’s easy to become disturbed after reading this detailed dissection of what seemed like a good idea. You may even own one of the mindset books and thought that it helped you. Now must you throw out all the psychological advantages you thought you gained?

If you feel that you benefited, there's no reason to rewind back to your previous mindset. However, the study provides a cautionary tale before you hop on the next self-help bandwagon. The research team advocated sternly that researchers should “avoid overhyping their results in future studies” (p. 164). You can also do your own forensic analysis to see whether the authors of the next book you reach for on the virtual shelf have based their ideas on legitimately-conducted studies. Stay away from, as the research team commented, claims about “magical” effects (p. 165).

To sum up, seeking ways to grow and change seems like a strategy worth adopting. Having an open mind doesn’t mean that you accept uncritically the latest self-help fad, though. There are many great ideas out there in the published literature, and ensuring that those you pursue have scientific backing can help you as you seek your own personal formula for fulfillment.