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We praised other students for their efforts: “Wow, you got eight right. That’s a really good score. You must have worked really hard.” They were not made to feel that they had some special gift; they were praised for doing what it takes to succeed.

Both groups were exactly equal to begin with. But right after the praise, they begun to differ. As we feared, the praise pushed students right into the fixed mindset, and they showed all the signs of it, too: When we gave them a choice, they rejected a challenging new task that they could learn from. They didn’t want to do anything that could expose their flaws and call into question their talent. In contrast, when students were praised for effort, 90 percent of them wanted the challenging new task that they could learn from.

Excerpted from‘Mindset’ by Carol S. Dweck