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Psychological factor, barrier 6 of 8

Fixed beliefs about ability

Dweck (2006) proposed that people who view ability as fixed avoid challenges. Later large studies found real but small effects.

Evidence

  • Two meta-analyses. One covered 273 studies (365,915 people) on mindset and achievement and one covered 43 studies (57,155 people) on mindset interventions. Overall effects were weak in both, though students with low socioeconomic status or at academic risk may benefit (Sisk et al., 2018).
  • National experiment. An online mindset intervention of under one hour, tested in a nationally representative U.S. sample, improved grades among lower-achieving students and increased enrollment in advanced math, mainly in schools where peer norms supported the message (Yeager et al., 2019).

Note: These two mindset studies support the statement above that the effects are real but small.

What can be done

Actions rated on the strength-rating scale (A strong and replicated, B solid but limited, C weak or debated, D contested or failed), applied to the specific claim made.

  • Brief online growth mindset lessons, only for lower-achieving students in supportive schools (C). In a national U.S. sample, a lesson of under an hour raised grades of lower-achieving students by 0.10 points and had no effect on higher achievers (Yeager et al., 2019). Meta-analyses disagree: effects were weak overall (Sisk et al., 2018), not significant after correcting for publication bias (Macnamara and Burgoyne, 2023), or small but real in targeted groups (Burnette et al., 2023, Tipton et al., 2023).
  • Not effective: school-wide, teacher-delivered mindset programs to raise attainment (D). A trial with 5,018 pupils in 101 English schools found effects of -0.01 in math and 0.00 in reading, with no benefit for disadvantaged pupils (Foliano et al., 2019).
  • Weak: praising effort rather than intelligence (C). The original finding that praising intelligence harms persistence (Mueller and Dweck, 1998) failed a close replication with 624 children (Li and Bates, 2019). The practice is cheap and unlikely to harm, but it is not shown to change outcomes.

Proposed and experimental methods

Methods that are proposed, under trial, approved in some places, or tried and then failed. Each shows a stage label and an evidence rating. A stage label shows how far a method has progressed, not whether it works. The stage labels are explained on the psychological factor page.

  • Social-belonging exercises before college (Large trial, B). A short online exercise tells incoming students that worries about fitting in are common and fade, so early struggle is not read as proof of lacking ability. In a preregistered trial with 26,911 students at 22 institutions, an exercise of under 30 minutes raised the rate of completing the first year as full-time students, especially in groups that had historically progressed at lower rates, and only where those groups were afforded opportunities to belong (Walton et al., 2023). The university reported a gain of two percentage points for those groups and an estimated 12,136 more first-year completers a year if all 749 U.S. four-year institutions offered it (De Witte, 2023). Earlier experiments with more than 9,500 students by the same research group narrowed institutional achievement gaps by 31 to 40% (Yeager et al., 2016), but a well-powered replication of a related brief exercise (values affirmation) found no effect and ruled out effects larger than 0.10 (Hanselman et al., 2017).
  • AI tutors with learning safeguards (Early trial, B for short-term test gains). These are chatbots that give hints rather than answers. In a Turkish high school with nearly 1,000 math students, an unrestricted GPT-4 tool raised practice scores by 48% but lowered later unassisted exam scores by 17%, while a tutor version with teacher-written hints and solutions raised practice scores by 127% and avoided the harm, though it did not raise exam scores (Bastani et al., 2025). In a six-week randomized trial in Nigerian secondary schools using Microsoft Copilot (based on GPT-4) for English, scores rose by 0.31 standard deviations on a combined test and 0.23 in English, which the authors equate to 1.5 to 2 years of usual schooling (De Simone et al., 2025). In one Harvard physics class (194 eligible students), an AI tutor designed by the authors produced more learning than an active learning class (0.73 to 1.3 standard deviations by quantile regression, 0.63 by linear regression) in a median of 49 minutes (Kestin et al., 2025). All three are single short trials, and lasting effects on independent skill are unknown.
  • Mastery learning, where students advance only after showing mastery (Large trial, contested, C). It signals that ability grows with practice and feedback. A meta-analysis of 108 controlled evaluations found an average gain of 0.52 standard deviations on examinations, but effects were much smaller on standardized tests than on locally developed ones, and self-paced versions often reduced course completion in college (Kulik, Kulik, and Bangert-Drowns, 1990). A rival review found essentially no effect of group-based mastery learning on standardized achievement tests in studies of at least four weeks (Slavin, 1987). No recent large trial of mastery grading at scale was found.

Sources cited on this page

  1. Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Random House. C Limited
  2. Sisk, V. F., Burgoyne, A. P., Sun, J., Butler, J. L., & Macnamara, B. N. (2018). To what extent and under which circumstances are growth mind-sets important to academic achievement? Two meta-analyses. Psychological Science, 29(4), 549-571. DOI A Strong
  3. Yeager, D. S., Hanselman, P., Walton, G. M., et al. (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature, 573(7774), 364-369. DOI A Strong
  4. Burnette, J. L., Billingsley, J., Banks, G. C., Knouse, L. E., Hoyt, C. L., Pollack, J. M., et al. (2023). A systematic review and meta-analysis of growth mindset interventions: For whom, how, and why might such interventions work? Psychological Bulletin, 149(3-4), 174-205. link B Moderate
  5. Foliano, F., Rolfe, H., Buzzeo, J., Runge, J., & Wilkinson, D. (2019). Changing mindsets: Effectiveness trial. Education Endowment Foundation. link B Moderate
  6. Li, Y., & Bates, T. C. (2019). You can't change your basic ability, but you work at things, and that's how we get hard things done: Testing the role of growth mindset on response to setbacks, educational attainment, and cognitive ability. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 148(9), 1640-1655. link B Moderate
  7. Macnamara, B. N., & Burgoyne, A. P. (2023). Do growth mindset interventions impact students' academic achievement? A systematic review and meta-analysis with recommendations for best practices. Psychological Bulletin, 149(3-4), 133-173. link B Moderate
  8. Mueller, C. M., & Dweck, C. S. (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75(1), 33-52. link C Limited
  9. Tipton, E., Bryan, C., Murray, J., McDaniel, M., Schneider, B., & Yeager, D. S. (2023). Why meta-analyses of growth mindset and other interventions should follow best practices for examining heterogeneity. Psychological Bulletin, 149(3-4), 229-241. link B Moderate
  10. Bastani, H., Bastani, O., Sungu, A., Ge, H., Kabakcı, Ö., & Mariman, R. (2025). Generative AI without guardrails can harm learning: Evidence from high school mathematics. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 122(26), e2422633122. link B Moderate
  11. De Simone, M., Tiberti, F., Barron Rodriguez, M., Manolio, F., Mosuro, W., & Dikoru, E. J. (2025). From chalkboards to chatbots: Evaluating the impact of generative AI on learning outcomes in Nigeria (Policy Research Working Paper No. 11125). World Bank. link B Moderate
  12. De Witte, M. (2023, May 4). Improving student success through social belonging. Stanford News. link B Moderate
  13. Hanselman, P., Rozek, C. S., Grigg, J., & Borman, G. D. (2017). New evidence on self-affirmation effects and theorized sources of heterogeneity from large-scale replications. Journal of Educational Psychology, 109(3), 405-424. link B Moderate
  14. Kestin, G., Miller, K., Klales, A., Milbourne, T., & Ponti, G. (2025). AI tutoring outperforms in-class active learning: An RCT introducing a novel research-based design in an authentic educational setting. Scientific Reports, 15(1), 17458. link C Limited: (B for its own sample)
  15. Kulik, C.-L. C., Kulik, J. A., & Bangert-Drowns, R. L. (1990). Effectiveness of mastery learning programs: A meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 60(2), 265-299. link C Limited
  16. Slavin, R. E. (1987). Mastery learning reconsidered. Review of Educational Research, 57(2), 175-213. link C Limited
  17. Walton, G. M., Murphy, M. C., Logel, C., Yeager, D. S., Goyer, J. P., Brady, S. T., et al. (2023). Where and with whom does a brief social-belonging intervention promote progress in college? Science, 380(6644), 499-505. link B Moderate
  18. Yeager, D. S., Walton, G. M., Brady, S. T., Akcinar, E. N., Paunesku, D., Keane, L., et al. (2016). Teaching a lay theory before college narrows achievement gaps at scale. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(24), E3341-E3348. link B Moderate

Every source for this factor is listed on the psychological factor page.