There are things that distinguish great athlete s and champions—from others. Most of the sports world thinks it’s their talent, but I will argue that it’s their mindset. This idea is brought to life by the story of Billy Beane, told so well by Michael Lewis in the book and then movie Moneyball (starring Brad Pitt). When Beane was in high school, he was in fact a huge talent–what they call a “natural” or in baseball a 5 tool player. He also was the star of the basketball team and the football team–and he was all of these things without much effort. People thought he was the new Babe Ruth. He went on to be second overall pick in the Major League Draft right out of high school.
However, as soon as anything went wrong or he experienced difficulty, Beane lost it. He didn’t know how to learn from his mistakes, nor did he know how to practice to improve. Why? Because naturals shouldn’t make mistakes or need practice, at least that is what Beane thought . When Beane moved up to baseball’s major leagues, things got progressively worse. Every at-bat was a do-or-die situation and with every out he fell apart yet again. If you’re a natural, you believe that you shouldn’t have deficiencies, so you can’t face them and you can’t coach or practice them away.
Where did Beane’s contempt for learning and his inability to function in the face of setback come from? With avid practice and the right coaching he could have been one of the greats. Why didn’t he seek that? Let’s discuss how his behavior comes right out of his mindset.
Mindsets
Psychologist James Dweck discusses two mindsets about the ability that people may hold (Dweck, 1999; Dweck, 2006; Dweck & Leggett, 1988). Some hold a fixed mindset, in which they see abilities as fixed traits. In this view, talents are gifts—you either have them or you don’t. Other people, in contrast, hold a growth mindset of ability. They believe that people can cultivate their abilities. In other words, they view talents as something that can be developed through practice. It’s not that people holding this mindset deny differences among people. They don’t deny that some people may be better or faster than others at acquiring certain skills, but what they focus on is the idea that everyone can improve over time.
Common Questions about Mindsets
Do people hold the same mindsets with respect to different traits? Not necessarily. People can hold one mindset about intelligence and another about sports ability. Whichever mindset they hold about athletic ability will guide their choices and their motivation in sports.
Are people’s mindsets related to their level of ability in the area? No, at least not at first. People with all levels of ability can hold either mindset, but over time those with the growth mindset appear to gain an advantage (Aronson, Fried, & Good, 2002; Blackwell, Trzesniewski , & Dweck, 2006; Good, Aronson, & Inzlicht, 2003; Robins & Pals, 2002).
Are mindsets fixed or can they be changed? Mindsets are fairly stable beliefs, but they are beliefs, and beliefs can be changed. In part 2 we will discuss interventions that altered students’ mindsets and had a real effect on their motivation and performance.
Mindsets and Goals
Research shows that people’s mindsets set up completely different motivations (Molden & Dweck, 2006). The fixed mindset, in which you have only a certain amount of a valued talent or ability, leads people to want to look good at all times. You need to prove that you are talented and not do anything to contradict that impression, so people in a fixed mindset try to highlight their proficiencies and hide their deficiencies (Rhodewalt, 1994). In fact, they will often reject valuable learning opportunities if these opportunities hold the risk of unmasking their shortcomings (Dweck & Leggett, 1988; Hong, Chiu, Dweck, Lin, & Wan, 1999; Mueller & Dweck, 1998).
Doesn’t everyone have shortcomings? Isn’t that what learning is for—to overcome them? Of course, however, this mindset does not give people the leeway to expose and remedy their weaknesses because any weakness can indicate a permanent lack of ability.
In contrast, the growth mindset, in which you can develop your ability, leads people to want to do just that. It leads them to put a premium on learning. One study (Wan 1999) recruited entering students at the University of Hong Kong, an elite university where everything—classes, textbooks, term papers, exams—is in English. But not all incoming students are proficient in English. Surely they would be eager to improve their English skills. To find out, we told them that the Faculty was thinking of offering a remedial English course and asked them how likely they were to take it if it were offered. Students with a growth mindset about intelligence were eager for this course. It could help them master the very skills they needed. However, students with a fixed mindset were not enthusiastic. Because they did not want to expose their deficiency, they were willing to put their whole college career in jeopardy.
In another study (Mueller & Dweck, 1998), students in a fixed mindset lied about their deficiencies. Students performed some very challenging sets of problems and then were asked to write about their experiences to students in another school—students they would never meet. There was a place on the sheet where they were asked to report their scores.
Almost 40% of the students in the fixed mindset, perhaps feeling that their poor scores were a reflection of their permanent ability, lied about their scores. Only 13% of those in the growth mindset saw fit to falsify their performance. Like Billy Beane, those in the fixed mindset didn’t think they should make mistakes!
In a 2004 study (Dweck, Mangels, & Good), researchers examined the brain to assess the impact of mindsets on people’s attention to ability-relevant information or to learning-relevant information Here, college students came to the EEG lab, where an electrode cap was placed on their heads and recordings were made from the parts of the brain that reflected attentional processes as they performed a highly difficult task. Each time they answered a question on the task, they were told whether their answer was correct or incorrect, and then a little later were told the correct answer. What did they pay attention to?
The students who held a fixed mindset about intelligence paid attention only to whether their answer was right. Once they knew this, they had little further interest in learning what the right answer was. Thus, their interest in being right took strong precedence over their interest in learning, and we later showed that this significantly hurt their subsequent performance.
Students who held a growth mindset about intelligence paid close attention to the both kinds of information. They paid attention to whether their answer was right or wrong and they paid attention to what the right answer was. As a result, they did substantially better than students with the fixed mindset on a later test.
It’s clear that both things—wanting to do well and wanting to learn– are important in a sports setting. It’s important to validate your abilities through high quality performance in a competitive setting, and it’s also important to grow your skills over time. The problem with a fixed mindset is twofold. One is that any lapse in performance is a threat to people’s sense of their underlying ability and hence their sense of their future. And the second is that this great concern with ability tends to drive out learning, often when they are most needed. It’s hard to see how people can thrive in the world of sports if they don’t have strong desire to address their weaknesses and learn.
Mindsets and Effort
As we have seen, people in the fixed mindset feel measured by setbacks and mistakes. They also feel measured by the very fact of exerting effort. They believe, like Billy Beane, that if you have true ability, you shouldn’t need a lot of effort (Blackwell, et al., 2005). Yet, there is no important endeavor in life—certainly not in the sports world—that can be accomplished and maintained without intense and sustained effort. However, in this mindset, it’s a sign that you are lacking talent or ability.
This is serious because many young athletes who have a great deal of early ability can coast along for some time, outshining their peers. They may even come to equate athletic ability with the ability to outperform others without engaging in much practice or training. At some point, however, natural ability may not be enough, and others may begin to pass them by. Whether they can now learn to put in that needed effort is critical to their future success. Many do not.
In contrast, people in the growth mindset understand that effort is the way that ability is brought to life and allowed to reach fruition. Far from indicating a lack of talent, they believe that even geniuses need great effort to fulfill their promise. People with a growth mindset not only believe in the power of effort, they hold effort as a value. Ian Thorpe, the illustrious Australian swimmer, feels that as long as he’s tried his best, he’s been victorious. “For myself, losing is not coming second. It’s getting out of the water and knowing you could have done better. For myself, I have won every race I’ve ever been in.”