How to Enhance Performance & Learning by Applying a Growth Mindset

welcome to the huberman Lab podcast

where we discuss science and

science-based tools for everyday life

I'm Andrew huberman and I'm a professor

of neurobiology and Ophthalmology at

Stanford school of medicine today we're

discussing growth mindset growth mindset

is one of the most interesting and

Powerful Concepts in all of psychology

growth mindset is essentially a way of

embracing Challenge and thinking about

your bodily and brain's response to

challenge in a way that allows you to

optimize your performance growth mindset

consists of many things which we will

discuss today and of course we will

discuss how to implement growth mindset

but some of the key features of growth

mindset are developing an ability to

distance your identity from The

Challenge you happen to be embracing now

that might come as a bit of a surprise

to many of you for instance we grow up

hearing we hope from time to time that

we are smart that we are talented that

we are a good athlete that we are a good

artist you know we like to think that we

are good at something or perhaps many

things but it turns out that the kind of

Praise or feedback that we receive that

attaches our identity to Performance can

actually undermine our performance and

believe it or not this is especially

problematic for people that perform well

in their Endeavors that's right if you

are somebody who performs well in school

or Athletics or music and you are told

that you are very smart that you're an

excellent student that you're an

excellent athlete or that you're an

excellent musician you have much to lose

if you at any moment do not perform well

and that's because your identity has

been integrated with your performance

somewhat counter-intuitively growth

mindset is the process of distancing

your identity from performance and

rather attaching your identity and your

efforts and your sense of motivation to

effort itself and to the process of

enjoying learning and getting better at

learning anything so today we are going

to discuss what growth mindset is and

what it isn't because it's often

discussed in terms that frankly are not

accurate to the science we will also

talk about another mindset which is the

stress is enhancing mindset that it

turns out can act synergistically with

growth mindset such that when you

combine growth mindset with the stresses

enhancing mindset you and anyone it's

been shown can vastly improve your

performance in essentially anything so

today's discussion will of course

explore the classic work of Carol dweck

who was really the founder of the growth

mindset field as well as some of the

newer research from people like David

Yeager Ali Crum and others who have

explored how growth mindset and stress

as enhancing mindsets can be applied

both in and out of the classroom in

children and adults and really in people

of all backgrounds by the end of today's

episode you will have a rich

understanding of the science as well as

many tools that you can apply in

everyday life in essentially any

Endeavor before we begin I'd like to

emphasize that this podcast is separate

from my teaching and research roles at

Stanford it is however part of my desire

and effort to bring zero cost to

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science related tools to the general

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let's talk about growth mindset growth

mindset as the name suggests is the idea

that we can get better at things that is

that our abilities are not fixed but

rather that our abilities are malleable

and at the core of growth mindset is the

idea that our brains can change and

indeed they can we refer to that ability

as neuroplasticity or the the nervous

system's ability to change in response

to experience now I've done several

episodes about neuroplasticity so that's

a topic unto itself but suffice to say

that neuroplasticity Brain Change can

occur throughout the entire lifespan it

is far more robust early in life from

birth until about age 25

neuroplasticity is sort of the default

process our brain is being shaped by our

everyday experiences but certainly from

age 25 and onward and certainly well

into people's 90s even it's been shown

the brain can change if we want it to it

can change for the worse of course

through injury or disease things of that

sort but it also can change for the

better through deliberate focused bouts

of learning we can learn new languages

we can learn art we can learn music we

can get smarter we can get better at

essentially anything if we devote our

attentional resources to learning those

things so really any discussion about

growth mindset has as a subtext a

discussion about neural elasticity

although today we aren't going to focus

so much on neuroplasticity meaning we

aren't going to focus so much on the

neural circuit and neurochemical changes

that underlie neuroplasticity because

I've covered those on previous episodes

we'll talk about them a little bit today

but we are mainly going to talk about

the data the studies from the field of

psychology applying growth mindset in

and out of the classroom in children and

adults and we are going to talk about

tools everyday tools that you can use to

enhance growth mindset for yourself and

perhaps for those around you if you care

to teach growth mindset which is you'll

learn later turns out to be an excellent

way to reinforce your own growth mindset

and we're going to talk about how to

apply those tools in a bunch of

different domains musical athletic

intellectual and on and on no discussion

of growth mindset would be complete

without mentioning that growth mindset

is the brainchild of my colleague Carol

dweck in the department of psychology at

Stanford University

today you'll learn how she discovered

growth mindset and you will learn how

others have taken that Discovery and

expanded upon it and especially its

application in and out of the classroom

to start off our discussion about growth

mindset however we need to Define what a

mindset is I think most of us think we

know what a mindset is we think oh it's

kind of a a mental stance where you know

we are positive or we are negative or we

believe something or we don't believe

something but a mindset actually has a

very specific definition and here I'm

referring to the definition provided by

Dr Ali Crum Ali Crum is also a professor

of psychology at Stanford she runs her

own laboratory working on stress-related

mindsets and other mindsets she's

actually been a guest on this podcast

previously highly recommend you listen

to that episode if you haven't already

Dr Crum defines a mindset as quote a

mental frame or lens that selectively

organizes and encodes information

and I think the key thing to highlight

there is organizes information because

as you all well know we are constantly

being bombarded with information from

the outside world sensory information

about what's going on with our visual

system what we're hearing what we're

seeing what we're feeling we are also

bombarded with internal sensations of

how full or empty our gut feels are we

hungry are we tired are we anxious are

we calm Etc so tons and tons of

information funneling into our brain and

mindsets really help us organize that

information such that we pay attention

to certain things and not others and we

respond to certain things and not others

okay so here I'm not trying to put

additional language on something simple

in order to make it complex I'm trying

to put a little bit of language that is

that a mindset does many things but it

mainly organizes information I'll add to

that for specific actions or inactions

in a way that allows us to simplify our

world in a way that allows us to make

certain choices and do away with

thinking about and acting on other types

of information the other thing about

mindsets is that they include entire

narratives and most of the time we

aren't even aware of how those

narratives are operating

meaning we don't walk around looking at

opportunities in the world like the

opportunity to get better at Fitness or

a sport or music or arithmetic or

languages or anything for that matter

thinking okay what is my mental frame or

lens that selectively organizes and

encodes information we don't do that

instead what we have are stories and

those stories are usually attached to

our sense of identity like I'll just use

myself for instance I do not think of

myself as a good musician in fact I

can't read music I'm terrible at playing

instruments I like listening to music

but I consider myself a terrible

musician right I've really assigned a

value or I've assigned my value to music

and my relationship to music right we

tend to do that we can also do it in the

opposite direction right I'm running a

laboratory for a long time been in

science for you know close to three

decades so if you ask me you know do I

feel proficient at science I'd say yeah

I'm proficient at science I know how to

do experiment setup experiments write

research papers write grants Etc I'm

pretty good at it right we tend to

decide if we are good or bad at things

and we tend to integrate those with our

identity somewhat or a lot to depending

on whether or not you know we're a

professional or amateur how much we

engage in an activity the point being

that mindsets include all of these

narratives and often those narratives

are visible to us if we think about them

but most of the time we are moving

through the world meaning school work

relationships and all our endeavors

without a lot of careful thought about

the narratives we carry and the beauty

of growth mindset is that it forces us

to step back and ask ourselves some

simple questions these are questions

that you could ask yourself right now

and in fact I highly recommend you do

you could ask yourself for instance what

have I been told I'm really good at you

should also ask yourself what have I

been told I'm really poor at that I'm

just not good at what have I told myself

I'm really good at and what have I told

myself I'm really bad at and then a

second set of questions is what am I

good at and why did it come naturally to

me did I apply myself for many years

meaning did I apply a lot of effort to

learning that thing or perhaps both

right and then it's also important to

ask yourself why am I not good at other

things is it simply because you've never

applied yourself with those things or is

it because you tried and had an early

failure or perhaps you tried and tried

and tried for many years and you

continue to fail at that thing or you

just didn't reach a level of proficiency

that made you want to pursue it further

in asking yourselves those questions you

are asking yourself not just what you're

good at and bad at and why you should

also be thinking about where the

messages of being good at something or

being bad at something arrived from did

they arrive from outside you meaning

from your parents from your coaches from

your teachers or was it the case that

despite a lot of positive feedback you

just sort of decided you weren't good at

something or conversely was it the case

that despite a lot of negative feedback

that you would never be good at

something or that you weren't good at

something that you continue to persist

because there are certainly people like

that the more negative feedback they get

the more they dig their heels in to

prove themselves as capable of becoming

good at something so I do recommend as

we March forward in this conversation

you think about those questions what am

I good at what am I bad at why am I good

at those things why am I bad at those

things and ask yourself to what extent

your labels that is your identity is

attached to the things that you are good

at or bad at and the reason I'd like you

to ask yourself those questions is that

next we're going to talk about some

research from Dr Carol dweck's

laboratory that was really the seed of

the entire field of growth mindset it

relates to a specific set of experiments

that really show that the specific

feedback we get meaning whether or not

we get feedback that is attached to our

identity like a label like smart or

great athlete or talented sends us down

a very different path of performance in

the short and long run

as compared to whether or not we receive

feedback that's based on effort meaning

you tried really hard or you really seem

to apply yourself under conditions where

you're getting the right answer over

time because you simply refuse to quit

those are two very Divergent sets of

feedback and as you'll learn in a moment

the sorts of feedback that we get

especially early in life or early in an

Endeavor so this doesn't just apply to

young kids this applies to adults too

who are taking on a new skill or trying

to expand on an existing skill those two

Divergent forms of feedback get

integrated into our core beliefs about

what we think is possible for us in a

given Endeavor and the great news is we

can also modify those core beliefs

simply by changing the feedback that we

give ourselves the research paper I'd

like to discuss briefly that beautifully

embodies the runway that led to the

discovery of growth mindset is paper

from Dr Carol dweck as well as her

colleague Claudia Mueller and the title

of the paper essentially says it all the

title is praise for intelligence can

undermine children's motivation and

performance

right that should be surprising that

praise for intelligence can undermine

motivation and performance I would have

thought and I think many people probably

believe that if you tell a child or an

adult that they're really good at

something and you're genuine about that

feedback meaning they're performing well

and you say great you're doing really

well you're so smart you're so talented

that their performance would continue to

improve that it would bolster their

motivation to engage in that activity

which hopefully they enjoy but

regardless provided that it's a safe

activity it's educational or what have

you that it would serve to encourage

them right the kid thinks not only am I

engaging in this activity but I'm

getting positive feedback presumably

from people that I care about or whose

opinion I care about wouldn't that serve

to elevate performance

it does not in fact the exact opposite

happens so I'll just give you a few of

the key takeaways from this study

the way it was done is very interesting

they essentially gave feedback about

performance that was linked up with a

child's intelligence telling kid they're

smart they're talented that they can

learn things really easily or that

they're very good at learning this sort

of thing and they call that intelligence

feedback

or they gave them what was called effort

feedback the simple way to think about

effort feedback is that it's more

attached to verbs as opposed to labels

so effort feedback consists of things

like

you tried really hard on that problem it

was great the way that you applied

effort it was great the way that you

persisted it was great the way that even

when you got the wrong answer you spent

10 minutes thinking about it and then

you tried again and again or in some

cases even if they didn't get the right

answer telling them well even though you

didn't get the right answer it's really

terrific that you continue to try Okay

so intelligence feedback was the sort of

feedback that was tied to labels of

identity things like smart talented Etc

whereas effort feedback was tied to

verbs choices behavioral and cognitive

choices that children made in an effort

to learn or get better at something so

in this study which included over 100

children they either got the

intelligence type feedback or the effort

type feedback or there was a control

group that didn't get either the

intelligence or the effort type feedback

and then they looked at a number of

different outcomes so I'll just

highlight a few examples of what they

found first of all the kids that got the

intelligence-based feedback when they

were then later offered problem sets

that were either challenging or were of

the sort that they knew they could

perform well on they tended to select

problems that they knew they could

perform well on these are what were

referred to as performance goals in

other words they picked problems that

allowed them to continue to get the

praise that they had received previously

about being smart or talented whereas

the kids that got feedback about their

strong effort when later presented with

problems that were either easy or hard

more often than not they picked the

harder problems that stood to teach them

more so that's striking it says that if

you tell a kid that they're smart or

talented and that's the reason why they

perform well

when they encounter challenges they are

likely to go with the least amount of

challenge so that they can continue to

receive that praise or feedback whereas

if you receive praise and feedback for

your strong effort then later you tend

to pick environments problem sets Etc

that allow you to exert the very effort

that got you the praise in the first

place so in both cases these children

are essentially attached to the praise

right in some sense I mean we like to

think that they enjoy these activities

and they're benefiting from them as well

but in both cases the praise really

serves to reinforce a certain pattern of

behavior but in the case of giving

intelligence feedback the kids are

really just trying to reinforce being

told that they're smarter talented as

opposed to reinforcing the engagement in

the activity that got them the praise in

the first place

and the converse is also true when kids

are told hey you really tried hard and

that's great or I like how you persisted

or you're so persistent I can really see

how persistent you are in trying to get

the right answer even if you don't get

the right answer well then when you

present those kids with additional

challenges they work very hard to stay

in Challenge and guess what no surprise

the kids that are rewarded for effort

and that continue to pick harder

problems outperform the kids that are

given the intelligence praise and

feedback by a large margin so what does

this tell us this tells us that the

narratives that we hear from others of

course reinforce certain patterns of

behavior what else does this tell us

this tells us that if you're a parent or

teacher you have to be very careful

about giving feedback to a child that is

attached to their identity around an

endeavor

especially if they're performing well at

that endeavor right now of course if a

child is not performing well at

something you also don't want to tell

them that they're stupid right you don't

want to tell them that they're deficient

right but that's a rare occurrence in

the classroom one would hope that's a

rare occurrence on the field one would

hope but what's very common very very

common is that when we see children or

adults performing well we tend to give

them identity labels as a way to try and

reinforce whatever Behavior we observe

and we like now the other thing they

looked at in the study besides whether

or not these kids would pick hard or

easier challenges down the line where

the actual raw performance on cognitive

problems and these data I must say are

just so interesting

they took the kids and they gave them

all the same problem sets and all the

kids across the board whether or not

they were getting intelligence praise or

effort praise or they were in the

control group we're performing more or

less the same way they were getting some

of these questions right some of these

questions wrong

then they gave them praise after

they completed those problems they

either got intelligence praise you're so

smart you're so talented or they got

effort praise you tried so hard you

really persisted that's fantastic then

later they gave them another set of

problems and they looked at performance

now remember the first time around all

the kids got some of the questions right

and some of the questions wrong so

there's room for improvement for

everybody

what they found was absolutely striking

the kids that were in the control group

so they didn't get any specific form of

Praise they perform more or less the

same way as they did before so if they

were getting 75 percent of the answers

right the first time they got 75 percent

of the answers right the second time 25

wrong in both cases

the kids that were in the intelligence

praise group that you're so smart you're

so talented praise group their

performance went down significantly

whereas the kids that were in the effort

praise group their performance increased

significantly okay so this is a

bi-directional effect where giving

intelligence praise reduces performance

and giving effort praise improves

performance which is absolutely striking

and tells you everything you need to

know which is if you're a parent you're

a teacher and of course as we all give

ourselves feedback

rewarding yourself for effort is the

best way to improve performance

rewarding yourself based on identity

labels so smart so talented you're a

great athlete Etc all that stare in the

mirror and do self-affirmation stuff can

actually undermine performance and in

fact it does undermine performance it

may not do it right away but eventually

it does and in a moment I'll explain why

the other thing this study looked at

that I just have to mention is this

notion of persistence so remember

earlier I said that the kids that got

intelligence praise tended to pick

easier problems down the line whereas

the kids that got effort praise tended

to pick harder problems it turns out

that the kids that got intelligence

praise also tended to take on fewer

problems overall they tended to limit

the total number of challenges that they

engaged in whereas the kids that got the

effort praise that you worked so hard

you're so determined that was so

impressive how you just kept going even

when you got some answers wrong those

kids not only opted for harder

challenges they not only performed

better but they also took on many more

challenges so these data really made

clear that the effort praise is the way

to go now I know many people have heard

this whole thing about don't reward the

person reward the effort reward the

verbs as I'm referring to it but it's

actually pretty rare that we hear effort

rewarded in everyday settings and it is

very common for us to overhear

intelligence praise or Talent praise you

know a kid comes home with a trophy and

we tell them you're a great athlete

right a kid comes home with a great

report card you know you're so smart

congratulations a kid comes home with

some sort of win in their world and we

tend to give them a label because we

like to think that that label will get

internalized and they'll start to view

themselves as a winner we tell them you

can do anything you're a winner you're a

winner and of course you don't want to

tell children or yourself or any other

adult you're a loser right we do not

want to do that you don't want to

undermine performance that way but it's

very clear based on This research and a

lot of other papers similar to it that

we all have a giant blind spot sitting

in our psychological field when we are

getting and receiving praise that really

it is the sort of praise that's attached

to the very efforts that led to the

results that will lead to even improved

results over time okay so this paper is

really truly important it's a landmark

paper in the field of psychology

motivation learning and performance and

that's why I'm discussing it in such

detail here but it actually includes one

additional piece of information that I

also think everyone should know about

and that is the tendency for children

who get intelligence praise

to misrepresent their performance on

subsequent efforts

what do I mean by that basically what

I'm saying is in this paper they had the

children perform on a given task and

then they either got intelligence praise

you're so smart you're so talented or

effort praise you worked so hard you're

so diligent you kept going even when you

were faced with results you didn't like

and then they had them do a series of

other tasks and then report their

results to other kids and what they

found is that children who get

intelligence praise when they need to

report their scores either by walking up

to the board and putting a little Mark

where their particular score is or

telling another student what their score

was or even writing it down on a piece

of paper covertly so that's not visibly

being compared to all the other scores

the kids that got intelligence praise

tend to lie about their score

and as you could imagine they tend to

lie in the direction of making

themselves appear as having performed

better than they actually did so this is

a pretty Sinister aspect of intelligence

praise that we don't often hear about

even if you've heard telling a person

that they are smart or talented can

ultimately undermine performance rarely

if ever do we hear that telling someone

that they're smart or talented

can increase the probability that that

person is going to misrepresent their

performance in the future and that's

true regardless of whether or not they

perform pretty well or not in the past I

mean you could imagine that the kids

that were told that they were

intelligent that they're talented that

those kids you know if they were doing

well and then suddenly did poorly that

they Slide the score up a little bit we

don't want anyone to do that but you can

imagine how a young kid might do that to

kind of preserve their ego but no in

some cases these kids are already

performing pretty well they're not

getting 100 but they're performing in

the top bracket and yet if they received

intelligence praise they're still more

likely to lie about their performance

increasing it further still whereas the

kids that receive the effort praise do

no such thing they Faithfully represent

their performance and as I mentioned

before for many reasons that we'll talk

about in a few minutes meaning the

mechanisms and what's really going on in

the heads of these kids that get effort

praise they're performing better than

everybody else so just to illustrate how

important the findings in the study

really are the paper was Paul published

in 1998 but just two years prior in 1996

there was a survey of parents asking to

what extent do you believe that

intelligence is fixed and 85 percent

answered that they thought that

intelligence was fixed that means they

believe that the brain was sort of a

vessel of fixed size that of course when

we're born into the world it's kind of

empty we don't have any knowledge but

that the job of schooling was to teach

kids things and reveal an intelligence

capacity that was innate and that

couldn't be increased upon whereas

nowadays we really understand mainly

through our deeper understanding of

neuroplasticity and how the brain learns

that indeed the brain can learn and that

intelligence is not fixed however in

1998 when these studies were done most

people were of the core belief that

intelligence is fixed that it cannot be

improved upon and these results really

drive home the fact that the type of

feedback we get about our performance

even when our performance is good can

undermine our future performance or if

we receive feedback of the effort praise

type the you tried so hard you're so

persistent type that our abilities can

indeed improve and when you look at any

intelligence test if you look at

standard IQ test or you you know go way

out onto the other end of the Continuum

in terms of intelligence testing you

look at emotional intelligence it is

very clear that anyone and everyone can

improve their scores on those exams and

in fact can improve the various aspects

of intelligence because in fact there

are many different forms of intelligence

through dedicated effort so this paper

was really ahead of its time and it's

really what seeded the entire field of

growth mindset and the understanding of

what that is so now I'd like to shift

our attention to not just how getting

one form of Praise or another form of

Praise can diminish or enhance

performance but really to ask why that

would be how that is because in that

understanding there's a very simple set

of tools of narratives that you can tell

yourself or that you can tell a child as

they are attempting to learn that can

greatly enhance your or their ability to

learn before we go any further however I

know many of you are listening to this

with an eye toward the tools meaning you

want to know what the tools are that you

can Implement well earlier I had you ask

some questions what are you good at what

have you been told you're good at and

how did you arrive at being good at

those things I also encourage you to

think about what you've been told you're

bad at

or less good at and what you tell

yourself you're bad at and less good at

and how you arrived at that conclusion

right now I'd like you to ask yourself

what is your typical narrative when you

are engaging in things that you believe

you are good at and what is your typical

narrative meaning your internal dialogue

in your head when you're engaging in

things that you are not good at or if

you're not engaging in those things when

you think about engaging in those things

and the tool that's very effective to

apply even just in your own mind is to

start shifting your narrative from those

performance narratives of being really

good at something or bad at something

which are In fairness are the labels I'm

using here but that's for sake of

discussion and Clarity and to start to

shift those narratives towards effort

related narratives so I'll use myself as

an example I'm pretty good at learning

and remembering things cognitive

information

I'm pretty terrible at playing music in

fact I'm downright terrible if I were to

step back from those two statements

I could take an intelligence type praise

narrative and tell myself okay I'm

um I have a great memory right that's

that's a intelligence praise type

narrative or I could tell myself the

truth which is I tend to spend a lot of

time with information in different forms

I listen to it I read it I write it down

I highlight it I put it up on a

whiteboard I tell myself that

information again in my head I think

about it in different contexts I tell

other people about it that's how I

developed a good memory for certain

types of information and that's still

how I continue to build my memory and my

information Bank in my head to this day

it's not because I have a quote unquote

great memory it's because I engage in

certain verb processes to build up that

memory okay I can also take a look at

the let's call it the negative statement

I am abysmal at music which frankly is a

fair statement and I could say okay I'm

just a terrible musician I have no

musical sense I have no musical ability

those are labels of the intelligence

type labels

or I could look at the verbs

this is also true

I have never really spent a lot of time

trying to learn an instrument I failed

early on at least in my mind I failed to

get the results I wanted and so I

stopped playing

I made the dog next door Howell which by

the way I did so I stopped playing

I ceased the effort process and so in

looking at it through that lens yes I'm

a terrible musician but I'm a terrible

musician as a consequence of having

never really engaged in the types of

behaviors and effort over time that

would have allowed me to be anything but

a terrible musician now I'm not asking

you to do this exercise simply as a way

to Puff yourself up about the things

you're good at and reward yourself for

all the effort that went into it nor am

I asking you to look at the things that

you're not good at and trying to take

away some of the shame and blame

although that would be a good thing as

well

that led to the fact that you're not

good at these things the reason I'm

requesting that you ask those questions

of yourself is that they can start to

give you a sense of the actual tools and

how those tools are implemented in order

to get better at the things that you

want to get better at and and this is a

very important and to not set yourself

up for getting worse at the things that

you already think you're good at because

as we'll soon talk about when we attach

performance labels to things that we are

really good at we internalize that sense

of self oh I'm good at this particular

thing in my case if I gave a performance

label or an intelligence label it would

be of the sort okay I have a great

memory but what happens when someone

gives themselves or hears a performance

or intelligence label around something

that they're good at and then has an

error or has a period where they're not

that good at something well if you

internalized a sense of identity around

performing well at that thing and then

at some point you don't perform well you

will also attach your identity to that

diminished performance whereas if you

attach effort verbs to why you got good

at something as well as why you are not

good at something well then there's only

room for improvement why do I say that

well when we're talking about effort

we're talking about verbs that is

inherent to you if you did it in one

context you can do it in another whereas

ability and performance it's not the

case that if you have a good memory You

Are by default a good musician that

might be the case but in my case

certainly it's not the point being that

when you think about the effort

processes that you've engaged before and

over and over again that allows you to

continue to get better in a given domain

even when or perhaps we should say

especially when you stop getting the

results you want or you start getting

poor results and that effort process of

practicing a lot many repetitions

analyzing why you didn't get something

right that can be engaged in a lot of

different Endeavors across domains as we

say so when we talk about verbs like

effort or persistence or practicing a

lot or analyzing errors and why you did

something incorrectly and then getting

back to the drawing board as it's called

when you start to think about your

successes and your failures through

those lenses through the lens of verbs

then you're really talking about

something that's Central to who you are

it's how you're wired it's Machinery

that exists in your brain and nervous

system and body that you can engage that

time and anytime as many of you know

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been talking about cognitive or

psychological processes and the basic

take home is that labels of intelligence

labels of identity undermine performance

and a striking aspect of that by the way

which I failed to mention earlier but I

should have is that if we receive those

labels of being a high performer smart

talented Etc either before or after

a given task or game or exam

it still has a detrimental effect in

both cases meaning you tell someone

heading into something you're a great

athlete you are so smart you're going to

do so well on this exam you undermine

their performance or if they take the

exam and afterwards before you see their

scores or even after they score let's

say they get an A plus they get

everything perfect and you say you are

so smart you are so talented you are

undermining the performance on the next

exam that's how striking these results

are and again they've been shown again

and again in different populations of

students and adults conversely it's

striking how powerful the effort labels

can be at improving performance

conversely and fortunately the same is

true for effort-based praise so if

before a kid or adult heads into a

competition or exam or preparation for a

competition and exam you say you know

what I know you to be a really dedicated

worker you really persist you know how

to do hard things you really dig your

heels when it gets hard and you overcome

challenges if you do that before that

child or adult heads into challenge they

will perform better and if after an exam

or performance or practice whatever the

effort happens to be you tell them you

really worked hard I love the way that

even when you know you got kicked in the

shin and you're limping along there and

you're hurt you continue to play or even

when you know everyone else went to

sleep and you continue to study although

by the way I do encourage people to get

enough sleep there are times in which

let's face it the person who stays up

latest studying provides they get enough

sleep

they're getting the extra hours in right

I might have been that kid in college or

tried to be that kid in college

if you reward effort after the effort

you also set the mind the brain of that

child or adult up to provide more effort

to future endeavors so it's very clear

it doesn't matter if the timing of the

praise comes before or after a given

bout of effort or performance you give

identity praise before performance

diminishes you give identity praise

after

subsequent performance diminishes you

give effort praise before performance

goes up you give effort praise after

performance goes up so I know I sound a

little bit like a broken record but we

hear so often about growth mindset about

giving the right form of Praise but it's

not often that we are told when to give

that praise and the short answer of

course is doesn't matter in fact we

should always be striving to give others

and ourselves praise that is correctly

attached to genuine effort and that word

correctly is important here I'm not

saying you know take a kid who performed

poorly on an exam because they kind of

loafed or the kid that was just

shuffling their feet out on the soccer

field and say hey great you know you you

worked so hard when they didn't you know

we know when we're being lied to or when

we're lying to ourselves

but that should give you a sense of

control not a sense of lack of control

because ultimately effort is something

that we can control in fact whenever I

hear the term control what you can

control I get a little bit nauseated and

a little bit irritated too because it's

never clear what people are referring to

when they say control what you can

control focus on what you can control

what's the thing that we all really can

control it's our level of persistence

and our level of effort and of course we

all have different circumstances such

that persistence and effort can be

harder in certain circumstances and for

certain people certainly but at the end

of the day at the end of the year and at

the end of our life really the only

thing that you really truly can control

is where you place your attention and

where you place your effort those are

the two things that are really inherent

to you and your nervous system no one

can do the effort for us no one can

direct our attention for us

things and people can try and divert or

distract our attention and our effort

but ultimately effort and attention that

is intrinsic motivation come as the name

suggests directly from us okay so it's

clear that we have a striking set of

results in the literature and again

major hat tip to Carol dweck and her

colleagues for making this discovery

right it is what eventually led to the

discovery of growth mindset and it's

what we're really building up to here

okay so this early work from dweck and

colleagues and by early I mean late 90s

right

is really spectacular it really

transformed the way that we think about

education and learning in general and in

fact neuroplasticity but what it didn't

answer is why you know why is it that

effort praise leads to better

performance and intelligence praise

identity praise leads to diminished

performance and it turns out that the

answer resides in how people respond to

errors how they respond to feedback that

they did not want and there's a really

nice study that looked at this

mechanistically in the brain to ask

what's going on under the hood meaning

within the brain when people who have

one mindset or another

adopt a growth mindset that is the idea

that if they engage in effort that they

can get better at things or if they have

what's called a fixed mindset this idea

that if they're not performing well it

must be because they just simply can't

perform well they don't have the

capacity or the ability to perform well

so the study I'm referring to is a study

first author mangles last author no

surprise Carol dweck and it's entitled

why do beliefs about intelligence

influence learning success a social

cognitive Neuroscience model

I'm not going to go into all the details

of the study but the study used what's

called erps event related potentials

event related potentials

are measured by putting a cap on the

skull that has a bunch of electrodes but

they don't penetrate the skull they're

picking up electrical potentials that

correlate with shifts in brain activity

now an advantage of erps is that it's

pretty non-invasive you can even do it

on babies you don't have to cut into the

skull you don't have to remove any skin

as you would if you were going to you

know put electrodes down into the brain

which essentially is neurosurgery and

it's not as disruptive as being put into

a functional magnetic Imaging machine

where you're put into a tube and you

have to lie motionless for an hour or

more actually it was in an MRI machine

not for any clinical reason but just as

a diagnostic scan recently and nowadays

they allow you to watch Netflix in there

or do something but you have to stay

very very still so it's hard for a lot

of people to do that but it can be done

if you need it to be done you do it but

erps are great because people can come

into the laboratory put on this skull

cap it's got this funny thing or it

looks funny with all these little wires

coming out of it and you can get a

fairly good measure of

Global levels of activity across the

brain you can't really pinpoint fine

structures and you can't look at brain

activity deep in the brain that's

probably the major drawback of looking

at these erps but you can see global

shifts in activity across the brain and

the other Advantage is you can do that

while people are engaging a lot of

different types of tasks you can move

around a lot whereas when you're in an

MRI machine you're in that little tube

you can't really do much so this study

had people equipped with these skull

caps looks like a kind of like a hoodie

with a bunch of wires coming out of it

and they had them

play a game basically what they did is

they were asked questions these are

trivia type questions like what's the

capital of Australia Australians you're

not allowed to answer that question but

everyone else should try and then here

I'm paraphrasing people indicate their

confidence in how accurate they were

with the response okay so they ask them

a question like what's the capital of

Australia the person would answer and

then they say how confident are you on a

scale of say one to ten

that you got the answer correct and then

they were given two pieces of feedback

and the first piece of feedback provided

information only about their response

accuracy were they right or were they

not right

and then the second feedback was they

got the correct answer so this is a

pretty clever experimental design

because it allowed the researchers to

look at people's thinking as they're

trying to get the right answer then

compare that to how confident they were

that they had the right answer right you

could imagine that if someone was really

confident like if you ask me what's your

name and I say Andrew what's my

confidence that my name is Andrew 75

just kidding 100 okay 100 whereas if you

asked me

um I was confronted this the other day

uh in your physics class when they

talked about the right hand rule which

is if you're listening don't don't worry

about it it's just when you put out your

index finger your middle finger and your

thumb with your right hand in the right

hand rule is the magnetic field the the

middle finger the index finger the thumb

and I'm pretty sure that it's pretty

sure that it's the the magnetic field is

the the middle finger that's the vector

of the middle finger but how confident

am I in this result I don't know maybe

50 because it's been a while since I've

looked at this stuff and I should know

this but I haven't looked at so 50 when

you give people these kinds of questions

while recording brain activity you're

getting a lot of information you're

looking at accuracy you're also looking

at confidence you're looking at lack of

confidence and you can correlate that

with different patterns of brain

activity now they had essentially two

groups of people in the study one group

had an intelligence mindset they

believed intelligence was more or less

fixed the other had what we call a

growth mindset they believed that

through effort that intelligence was

malleable that people could learn new

information including themselves they

could learn new information

and you wouldn't necessarily think that

these two groups would show different

patterns of brain activity in response

to getting things right or wrong while

their brain was being imaged but in fact

that's exactly what happened there's a

certain waveform of activity the name

isn't really important you call it the

P3 wave in these Erp experiments P3 wave

is a certain pattern of activity that

emerged during the presentation to the

subject that they gotten something wrong

so the P3 wave it's just a little

blippin neural activity in the brain

correlated with when people were told

nope you got that one wrong okay and

what was really interesting is that the

height of the P3 this let's just call it

an error signal because it correlated

with the error signal this nope you got

it wrong signal in the brain that signal

was larger in people with a fixed

mindset as opposed to in people with the

growth mindset

now what was especially interesting is

that the location of that activity was

above a brain area called the interior

cingulate cortex the ACC the anterior

cingulate cortex is a structure involved

in many different functions in the brain

but one of its primary functions is that

in the front of the ACC what we call the

rostral or anterior ACC

ivity there tends to correlate with

emotional responses it tends to

correlate with our internal sense

so-called enteroception whereas in the

dorsal ACC meaning the top of the ACC

activity there tends to correlate with

cognitive information and cognitive

appraisal meaning this structure has a

lot of different functions but it's got

a little area within it that tends to be

more related to our emotional or somatic

responses to things and it's got another

area inside of it the tends to be more

related to our thinking our cognition

and what was really interesting is that

in the group that had the fixed mindset

when they were told that they got

something wrong there tended to be a

greater signal in that rostral or

anterior ACC meaning they had a bigger

emotional response to it or at least the

neural activity suggested that whereas

people with a growth mindset when

presented with ah you got something

wrong the error signal the error signal

within their brain tended to reside or

even to shift toward areas that are

associated with cognitive appraisal and

so the conclusion of this study as well

as other studies using functional

magnetic resonance imaging that have

looked at similar tasks is that when

people have a growth mindset and they

are presented with the information that

they got something wrong rather than

just feel it as a somatic response or an

emotional response they tend to appraise

it they tend to direct their attentional

resources toward trying to understand

what the error was and why they got that

error and this I believe is absolutely

fundamental to understanding the

distinction between a fixed mindset and

a growth mindset because perhaps you've

seen these lists these you know

side-by-side lists that you know a fixed

mindset versus a growth mindset you know

a fixed mindset is one in which you're

trying to look smart that you're not so

focused on effort that your response to

setbacks is to give up you know and your

academic and other forms of performance

tends to be low whereas in a growth

mindset your goal tends to be to learn

you tend to Value effort more you tend

to respond to setbacks by working harder

and your performance is higher and I'm

not trying to make light of these lists

these lists are important because they

help us organize our information and

differentiate between a fixed versus

growth mindset but they don't tell us

why focusing on effort and engaging more

effort would actually translate into

higher performance for instance you

could imagine a scenario where the exact

opposite is true right we can make up a

just so story where if your identity is

so rigidly fixed to high performance

you're likely to outwork everybody right

that seems like a logical conclusion as

well but that's not the way it plays out

it's when your identity is attached to

yourself sense of ability to engage in

ongoing effort especially when you

receive signals that you're getting

things wrong or not performing well that

is tied to elevated performance in the

study using erps tells us that's likely

to be the case because of how people who

have a growth mindset Focus their

attention when they're told nope you got

that wrong or when people think they got

something right right they give an

answer and they say what's your

confidence level and they say 90 maybe

99 maybe even 100 percent it's wrong

people who have a fixed mindset

focus on the emotional response to that

more of their brain resources are

devoted to I got it wrong I thought I

got it right then the people who have a

growth mindset who are thinking wait

okay then what was that answer and how

could I possibly get that answer wrong

I'm going to figure that out okay now as

you're hearing this you're probably

thinking oh no I'm somebody who

reflexively gets disappointed when I get

something wrong well fortunately this is

not just about that 100 milliseconds to

five seconds after you're told something

is wrong you can shift from a fixed

mindset to a growth mindset response in

fact that's an important tool that we

all need to learn how to implement we

all suffer from fixed mindset all suffer

from fixed mindset in certain Endeavors

and when we get things wrong especially

when there's some embarrassment or shame

which often accompanies when we think we

were very right we're convinced we're

right that fixed mindset can really

hijack our emotional response

but

there are a lot of data that point to

the fact that at those moments if we

think okay I'm going to step back from

that and I'm going to just think about

the error I'm going to think about what

led to the error and I'm going to start

devoting my intentional resources to

that process

that process itself can be built up over

time such that we start to outweigh the

fixed mindset with growth mindset simply

by devoting our attentional resources to

the error acknowledging it happened

maybe feeling something about it maybe

not it's really hard to control our

feelings what we can control as I

mentioned before is our effort and our

attention so focusing our attention on

why we got something wrong and really

digging into that that's growth mindset

in action so you'll notice as we have

this discussion about the more

mechanistic underpinnings of growth

mindset is that we're not talking about

psychological terms as much we're not

talking about ego protection we're not

talking about identity now all of those

things are extremely important but the

problem with things like ego protection

and identity is that when we are faced

with results that we don't want and we

are faced with those results in a real

world context like we're not getting the

results we want in school in work in

athletics in relationships Etc

we hear these messages and we try to for

instance you know set our ego aside or

you know not attach our identity so much

to what is happening but it's really

really hard and it's really really hard

because

statements like set your ego aside or

don't attach yourself to it so much are

wonderful aspirations but there's no

actual process that one can go through

by oneself that allows you to

immediately disentangle yourself from

your ego right I mean there's this whole

process of ego dissolution that we

talked about in the episode with Robin

cardard Harris but none of that was

directed at specific challenges that one

is undertaking in real time right so

when you're faced with results that you

don't like you can't simply step back

nor should you expect yourself to be

able to step back and say oh I'm not

going to get upset about this error

right it makes perfect sense why you

would get upset about not getting the

results that you want however once you

start to understand some of the

mechanistic underpinnings of what will

allow you to rescue your performance

that is to start focusing on those

errors from a more cognitive and a

slightly less emotional stance or even a

combination of emotional and cognitive

right because it's very hard to suppress

our emotional response to something but

oftentimes we can enhance our

attentional or cognitive response to

Something in parallel with that and in

doing so we can kind of Rob some of the

emotional response

and when we do that sort of thing it's

hard and anytime we do hard things we

generally want to know that the doing of

those hard things is working that it's

in service to something and the study I

just reviewed as well as what I'm going

to talk about next really points to the

fact that building up a practice a

capacity of focusing on one's effort on

focusing on the errors one made from a

cognitive standpoint and really trying

to understand what led to those errors

is the basis it's the Cornerstone of

building up growth mindset it does

however require that we don't just tell

ourselves to focus on effort and the

errors and analyzing those errors it

also requires an additional piece which

is what we're going to talk about now

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so by now I like to think that we all

understand what growth mindset is and

what differentiates it from a fixed

mindset however just understanding what

growth mindset is and how having a

desire to implement it and a bit of

understanding of how to implement it

turns out to be necessary but not

sufficient there's an additional piece

that we need to accomplish the good news

is that additional piece is very

straightforward to understand if we zoom

out and we start to really understand

that growth mindset is really a way of

connecting motivation to cognition it's

taking this thing that we call

motivation which is of course what we

all want we all want to be motivated we

all want to be effort driven Etc

and we take motivation and we tie it to

a set of specific thoughts or thought

processes that we can control

that is Far and Away different than

looking at motivation simply as an

emotional or an internal state of quote

unquote feeling motivated and in fact

that's what most people including myself

default to we want to feel motivated so

fortunately we try and get good sleep

which is essential that really helps for

daytime mood focus and alertness and

thereby motivation we hydrate we

exercise we might even drink caffeine as

a way to increase our level of alertness

and motivation and all of that is

finding good in fact all of that is

encouraged although I would say that the

caffeine part is optional but all those

other things are encouraged toward

mental health physical health and

performance and motivation but what

growth mindset is really about is it's

taking this thing that we call

motivation and it's saying okay what are

the specific types of thoughts and

actually the specific thoughts the

specific cognitive processes that will

allow us to feel more motivated

especially under conditions where we

feel something is hard where we are not

getting the results we want and in order

to master that process we need to

embrace another mindset that's right in

order to access growth mindset it's very

clear that we need to be able to think

about errors and we need to overcome

errors and we need to devote our

attention to errors and we need to

devote our attention to reframing what's

going on in our head when we're feeling

not motivated Etc and all of that is

really hard to do from a purely

psychological standpoint but there's

this additional mindset which has to do

with our mindset around stress and

frustration itself that can allow us to

access growth mindset far more easily

and this mindset around stress actually

has a name it's called the stress is

enhancing mindset and there's a very

straightforward way to increase your

stress is enhancing mindset so first I

want to step back and acknowledge the

person who really made some of the key

fundamental discoveries in this area

that we call stresses enhancing mindsets

and that's Dr Alia sometimes referred to

as Dr Ali Crum she's a tenured professor

of psychology at Stanford she also is a

former division one athlete and a

licensed clinical psychologist she's an

absolute Phenom and I promise you that

she is so successful in all those

categories by way of immense amounts of

effort in addition to that she also

happens to be an incredibly kind person

and generous person she was a guest on

this podcast previously you can find

that episode in the show note captions

or by going to hubermanlab.com and

simply searching for mindset crumb

c-r-u-m

her personal story and her work and the

tool she offers are absolutely

spectacular however you don't need to go

to that episode just yet I'm going to

talk about some of those tools now and

I'm going to talk about how using those

tools can allow you to access growth

mindset and then I'm going to talk about

how the combination of applying a stress

is enhancing mindset with a growth

mindset acts synergistically to even

further improve performance in the short

and long run the stresses enhancing

mindset is the outgrowth of many

different studies and not just from Dr

Ali Crum but from others as well but for

the time being I want to focus on one

paper in which Dr Crum was the first

author so this work was done before she

arrived at Stanford the paper is

entitled rethinking stress the role of

mindsets in determining the stress

response and the key takeaway from this

paper is that how we think about stress

impacts how we react to stress so much

so in fact that what this paper

illustrates is that if people are given

even just a short tutorial about some of

the negative consequences of stress on

learning and performance and their

physiology and their health they

experience a lot of negative

consequences of stress when they are put

into a stressful circumstance

conversely if people are taught about

the performance enhancing aspects of

stress then those people will experience

performance enhancement when they are

confronted with stress in a learning or

other performance type environment so

what we are talking about here is not

the placebo effect I want to be very

clear about that

we are also not talking about lying to

people in order to shift their response

to stress what we're talking about here

is two different conditions one

condition where people are exposed to

information that is true about how

stress can diminish performance and

another condition in which people are

exposed to information that is also true

about how stress can enhance performance

now you might be saying how can it be

true that stress is both performance

diminishing and stress is performance

enhancing and ah therein lies the key

takeaway from this paper it depends on

what you believe about stress in fact a

different way to umbrella this whole

discussion is to say that how you think

about stress impacts the stress response

in profound ways so this paper

rethinking stress the role of mindsets

and determining stress

did a very simple set of manipulations

they had people in one group listen to a

lecture that effectively was titled

quote the effects of stress are negative

and should be avoided and that lecture

included information about how stress

diminishes performance and how it can

diminish health and vitality learning

and performance productivity it

increases uncertainty Etc okay and all

of that information is true

a separate group listened to a lecture

entitled quote experiencing stress

improves health and vitality and again

that information is true now I realize

that some of you are probably still

asking how can it be that stress

diminishes health and performance and

stress also enhances health and

performance and the answer lies in two

things one the level of stress and

therefore the level of hormones that are

released in response to that stress the

duration over which the stress response

occurs but the key variable here is that

our cognitive understanding about what

stress does impacts whether or not our

physiology goes down the direction of

debilitating or enhancing effects of

stress Okay so we've got a condition

here where people are being informed

very differently about what stress does

in one case it's the stresses bad

message in the other case it's the

stress is good message and there are

many different experiments within this

paper but one of the more interesting

ones I believe

is where they looked at work performance

both in terms of performance of what

they call soft tasks so these are

somewhat easier tasks as well as hard

tasks and when you look at the group

that was given information about how

stress diminishes performance in the

soft tasks okay so the somewhat easy

task You Don't See Much change in their

performance

as you compare the before the learning

about stress is diminishing to after the

learning whereas the people who learn

that stress is enhancing actually

experience some improvement in work

performance even though the challenge

that they're facing isn't that great so

again what this means is that learning

that stress can enhance performance by

providing people true information about

how stress can enhance performance can

increase performance even in the context

of stuff that's not that hard not that

stressful even more interesting is that

when you look at performance on tasks

that are considered hard and you compare

the stresses diminishing group meaning

the group that was taught that stress is

diminishing

and compare that to the stresses

enhancing group you see a really

Divergent response the people that learn

that stress diminishes performance did

not improve at all whereas the people

that learn that stress can enhance

performance enhance their performance

significantly now keep in mind all they

are doing is learning that stress can

enhance their performance and then

they're given the task and they're

performing better so that's pretty

spectacular right there's no training

session that they went and did they

didn't practice these items that they

were being tested on in between they

weren't given a bunch of you know drills

to do and they didn't take a lot of time

to do it they just heard a tutorial

about how stress can enhance performance

and that I believe is remarkable because

what it says is that our cognitive

appraisal about stress which we all are

going to experience in life right

elevated heart rate narrowing a visual

Focus you know shifting of blood away

from the periphery all of these things

are characteristic features of the

stress response that we learn especially

in this day and age because it's talked

about a lot in popular culture that oh

you know all of the these mechanisms

were put into us in order for us to get

away from the saber-toothed tiger or the

or the line that's trying to eat us

let's be fair the stress response is

there for a lot of reasons not just

because of saber-toothed tigers and

lions I mean that's kind of a story that

we make up the stress response is

inherent not just to us but to other

species as a way to mobilize us either

away from things or toward things right

we need to have somewhat of a stress

response in order to engage in adaptive

challenge yes it's true that hundreds

and thousands of years ago those

adaptive challenges probably involved

hunting but they probably involved

Social Challenges as well do you think

it was you know easy for cavemen and

women to engage socially and you know

kind of settle out their romantic

interactions Etc do you think it was

easy for them to raise children no of

course not the stress response is there

for a variety of reasons not just to get

away from predators the really exciting

thing that's been discovered in the

course of Ali krum's work and other work

in the last couple of decades is that

the stress response is neither good nor

bad the stress response depends on

whether or not you believe the

sensations that you're experiencing

elevated heart rate narrowing a visual

Focus Etc are serving to enhance your

performance or diminish your performance

and this study really points to the fact

that just learning that it can enhance

performance

can enhance performance now I know a

number of you are probably saying wait

but stress doesn't feel good right and

oftentimes we experience stress under

conditions where we're trying to learn

or get good at something or listen

better or do something and it actually

is diminishing performance I think it's

important to acknowledge that

this study and studies like it are not

saying that stress becomes pleasant as a

sensation in the body nor is it saying

that it always leads to improved

performance I don't want you to think

that's the take-home message sometimes

it does it can as was demonstrated in

this research paper but oftentimes as we

know stress diminishes our performance

it takes us away from the landmarks we

want to hit it takes us away from the

grades we want to get it takes us away

from quote unquote showing up how we

want to right no one wants to have the

blotchy skin and the sweating and the

quaking of voice when we're trying to do

public speaking and things of that sort

no one wants any of that what's

important to understand is that learning

that stress is a way of mobilizing

resources in the body does two things

first of all it allows us to dampen or

adjust the stress response in real time

and it allows us to understand that that

stress response heightens our level of

focus in a way that allows us to pay

attention to the things that are going

wrong in a way that allows us us to make

correction to those errors in the future

so if you think back to that study that

Erp study where they measured brain

activity and they looked at people who

had a fixed mindset versus people who

had a growth mindset and the people who

had a growth mindset were paying more

cognitive attention to what was

happening during errors and after errors

well this stress is enhancing mindset is

very powerful because what it does is it

shifts one's attention away from the

kind of somatic experience of oh my

goodness my heart rate is elevated I'm

sweating I'm quaking I'm just I sound

terrible I feel terrible I look terrible

Etc to a mode of allocating more of our

thinking toward analyzing why things

might be going wrong and something else

powerful happens when we Embrace a

stresses-enhancing mindset as well when

we Embrace a stress is enhancing mindset

it turns out that some of the very

physiological processes that we call

quote unquote stress shift in important

ways some of those include the duration

over which the stress hormone cortisol

is released and in fact I don't even

really want to call it a stress hormone

because cortisol does so many other

things as well and it's not bad you need

cortisol believe me you want cortisol

especially released early in the day and

in response to acute stressors what you

don't want is for cortisol to stay

elevated for long long periods of time

and you especially don't want it to

interfere with your sleep okay so much

so that I think at times I wonder

whether or not our philosophy on stress

should be that stress is fantastic for

us

except when it interferes with our sleep

right and when stress becomes terrible

for us is when it starts to be

chronically elevated and especially when

it starts to inhibit our ability to

sleep well enough and long enough okay

so the point here is that when we

Embrace a stressous enhancing mindset we

are able to have shorter duration

release of cortisol we are also able to

engage what's called increased stroke

volume under conditions of stress this

gets a little bit technical but the

amount of blood that your heart can pump

with each beat turns out to be a key

metric of stress when we are very

stressed even though we need to mobilize

a lot of resources somewhat

paradoxically our total stroke volume

can actually be reduced and we tend to

shuttle blood and other resources

towards the core of our body and towards

major Limbs and away from things like

our brain and our periphery so one of

the key measures of how a stress

response quote-unquote is going is how

much peripheral blood flow there is and

when we are more relaxed under

conditions of stress there tends to be

more peripheral blood flow when we are

more anxious more panicked under

conditions of stress peripheral blood

flow is lower and in a remarkable set of

experiments

Ali Crum and colleagues have shown that

when we are just taught that stress can

be enhancing and then we are placed into

a stressful environment either because

we are imagining stress or we are

experiencing real stress and then our

physiology is measured

what is observed is that the total

amount of blood that the heart can pump

with each beat is actually increase

peripheral blood flow increases and our

ability to maintain cognition to think

clearly under conditions of stress

increases and again the only

manipulation here is a tutorial about

how stress can be enhancing which is

essentially what I'm telling you right

now in fact for those of you that

perhaps have heard stress reduces

testosterone levels stress reduces

estrogen levels Etc that's true it is

also True by the way that when you are

informed about how stress can be

enhancing of performance it becomes

anabolic that's right it actually can

lead to deployment of androgens and

estrogens things that many not all

people desire to have increased or

certainly desire to not have diminished

below their normal Baseline so there's a

lot of false stories out there about

stress not false because what you're

hearing is wrong

because indeed chronic stress

chronically elevated cortisol can reduce

testosterone reduce estrogen diminish

sleep diminish immunity Etc

but it is also true that stress under

conditions where one believes that

stress can be enhancing can be anabolic

it can be pro-testosterone pro-estrogen

it can be

pro-cortisol regulation in ways that

allow you to focus your cognition and so

on and so forth now that's exciting but

I do realize that for some people it

might be sufficiently vague to make you

wonder well how do I know if I'm getting

the right response from stress or the

wrong response and the simple answer

there is the more that you can learn

about how stress can enhance performance

and the more that you place yourself

into safe I want to underscore it safe

yet stressful adaptive circumstances

these are going to be circumstances

where you stand to learn or grow in some

positive way not circumstances where you

stand to hurt yourself or others of

course

the more that you can place yourself

into conditions of stress and then to

cognitively just tell yourself ah this

elevated heart rate this um quaking of

my hands this you know sweating Etc this

is my body mobilizing resources and the

more that you can tell yourself that

that's actually affording you an

advantage in being able to allocate your

attention to specific things maybe why

you made an error and analyzing that or

maybe why you succeeded at something and

thinking about the steps that led to

that success the more that you can link

that back to the processes that are

taking you in the directions that you do

and don't want to go and thinking about

them because indeed that's what stress

can allow you to do

the more that you are shifting your mind

away from thinking about just the raw

uncomfortable sensations of stress

you're putting a cognitive appraisal on

a physiological process you are thinking

about stress in a way that is changing

what that stress is doing and you're

taking your brain and body from a

negative State just to put a little bit

of subjective valence on it negative

right nobody wants to have the bad

stress response to a positive State and

when you develop a stresses enhancing

mindset you not only are going to feel

more comfortable under conditions of

stress but you're also developing the

perfect tool to plug into the whole

process of building up your growth

mindset in a way that allows those two

things growth mindset and stress is

enhancing mindset to synergize and to

dramatically improve performance in the

short and long term and that's not just

a statement that I'm making that's what

the research tells us so let's take a

look at that research so now I'd like to

shift our discussion to some very recent

findings about growth mindset and how

growth mindset combined with the

stresses enhancing mindset can

powerfully change outcomes for the

better and can do so in a huge variety

of real world contexts and the work that

I'm referring to is the work of a person

named David Yeager Dr David Yeager is a

professor at the University of Texas

Austin he did his graduate work with

Carol dweck at Stanford and he now has

his own laboratory in Austin and both

when he was a graduate student with

Carol and in his own laboratory he's

been doing very impressive large-scale

studies meaning many thousands of

subjects so that itself is important and

using subjects from diverse areas rural

urban Etc different levels of affluence

lack of affluence and finding

essentially that when students are

taught about a growth mindset what it is

how it's different than a fixed mindset

and when those same students are also

taught about what a stress is enhancing

mindset is and cultivating that again

simply through information tutorial

watching a video about growth mindset

watching a video about stress is

enhancing

mindsets and then

confronted with stress

confronted with Tess confronted with

opportunities to embrace hard challenges

or easier paths across the board the

results show up again and again as

students who are taught about a growth

mindset and are taught that stress is

enhancing perform better now jaegering

colleagues have shown that across a huge

number of different experiments in fact

there's a paper published quite recently

this was about a year ago in July of

2022 in the journal Nature so Apex

Journal published as a full article in

Nature and Science and elsewhere they

have letters and shorter formats like

reports and then there are the Articles

which correspond to major major findings

so they published The Following results

as an article in nature in July of 2022

the title of the paper is a synergistic

mindsets intervention protects

adolescents from stress and what I

absolutely love about this paper is that

it includes a lot of different kinds of

experiments so for instance

they looked at high school students who

simply anticipated a stressful event and

had been instructed on growth mindset or

stress's enhancing mindset or both or

control

conditions where they weren't informed

of those mindsets right It's always

important to have control experiments

where you're getting the same amount of

information but it's not the same

information and what they found was that

anticipatory stress right the stress

that we feel in anticipation of

something that we think is going to

happen is reduced when we are educated

about growth mindset and we are educated

about a stress's enhancing mindset and

the basic takeaway from that experiment

was yes indeed being educated on what a

growth mindset is and how it differs

from a fixed mindset which you now have

been educated on

definitely buffers you against stress in

addition being educated on how stress

can enhance performance can buffer you

against anticipatory stress

but it is clearly the case that when one

is educated on both of those things

growth mindset and stresses enhancing

mindsets that one observes the greatest

buffering or offset of the stress

response in ways that can improve

performance now that is but one

experiment of the six yes six

experiments included in this single

Paper now I'm not going to go through

each of those six experiments in detail

and just as a side note I've invited Dr

David Yeager to be a guest on this

podcast and he has agreed so when he's a

guest on this podcast I'm sure he will

detail all the intricacies of those

experiments in order to inform us about

exactly what was done and how so that we

can benefit from that information but

just by way of example another

experiment in this paper

use what was called the trigger social

stress test and the reason I'm going to

highlight this a little bit is because I

think it relates to a lot of things that

many of us have experienced and that

will experience that are considered

stressful and of course we would all

like ways to buffer ourselves against

stress and or leverage that stress to

improve our performance

as well as adopt a growth mindset so the

try our social stress test is a kind of

standard mode of stressing people out in

the laboratory or in the classroom where

basically a subject comes in you tell

them to wait a little bit of time then

you measure their stress response at

rest you're looking at their heart rate

their blood pressure you might have them

spit into a little tube and use that

saliva to measure cortisol because

that's how you measure cortisol

then you're going to tell them that

they're going to prepare a speech for

presentation in front of a small group

of actual people then they actually have

to deliver that speech in front of that

audience during that speech sometimes

the people who are observing it are

giving feedback like frowns crossed arms

Etc

then there's a pop quiz where they get a

hard arithmetic test in front of that

audience and when they get answer is

wrong they're told they're wrong in

front of that audience this all might

seem kind of playful and silly to you

but most people do not experience this

as playful and silly almost everybody

who goes into one of these experiments

as a subject

feel some level of stress especially

those that don't like public speaking

especially those that don't see

themselves as very proficient in

arithmetic or that don't like to work

out problems in real time in front of

people you can see how this would be

stressful and all the while measures of

psychological and physiological

reactivity are being measured peripheral

blood flow the thing we talked about

earlier among those what I just

described is pretty extensive but I

provide all that as a backdrop

so that you can understand what happened

before which was people were simply

educated on growth mindset how it

differs from fixed mindset and or stress

enhances performance mindset or not

so basically what we have here is a

condition in which people are just

getting information right there's no

pill there's no treadmill there's no

going home and doing a bunch of problem

sets and what they observe in this

experiment and all the other experiments

contained within this quite massive

paper

is that the mere learning about growth

mindset and stresses enhancing mindsets

allows these students to shift their

physiology

so enhance peripheral blood flow changes

in hormone secretion like cortisol n

shifts in their psychology such that

when they feel stressed they start to

see that and experience that as an

opportunity for Challenge and to lean

into that challenge and where they are

told that they got the wrong answer

where they are told that they are not

performing well they are able to think

about that and to allocate their mental

resources such that they do start to

perform better and the major takeaway

from the study is that across the board

in all six experiments in Imagine stress

in real stress laboratory stress actual

classroom stress and in embracing future

challenges

just the learning about what stress can

enhance your performance mindset is

allowed students to do just that now

another really interesting feature of

this study put out by Jager and

colleagues was that the interventions

were one time and relatively brief or we

could even say extremely brief whereas a

lot of previous experiments had looked

at growth mindset interventions that

were on the order of you know four to

six to eight tutorials lasting anywhere

from 30 minutes to an hour each this

experiment employed just one 30-minute

intervention

so when I heard about these results and

read the paper I got very excited I

wanted to know what is this magic

intervention exactly and I'm sure you're

thinking the same so I contacted Dr

Yeager and he was gracious enough to

provide me some examples of what's

contained within this tutorial so that I

could give you those examples in real

time during this episode so basically

the tutorial starts off with a question

about stress it actually has a little

field where you can fill in an answer to

the following question

can you recall a time when you

experienced stress and what was that

stress related to and here I'm

paraphrasing so what I put in response

to this because I actually filled out

the form itself was when I was a postdoc

which by the way is the four to six year

period of time that comes after your PhD

training

I wrote when I was a postdoc

I was under a lot of competitive

pressure to try and finish my projects I

was working under a diminished income

meaning I wasn't getting paid very much

relative to the cost of living in the

area I lived at the time and I was also

socially isolated from a lot of my

friends that previously I had lived very

close to that was a stressful time that

I could recall in fact no other time in

my life as I recall was as stressful as

being a postdoc which is not to say that

I didn't enjoy being a postdoc I

delighted in doing the science I did and

being surrounded by the people I was

surrounded by but it was very very

stressful for those and additional

reasons so that's how this tutorial

starts off and I believe that the reason

that they asked that question at the

beginning of the tutorial is to kind of

cue up cognitive mechanisms that

surround one's own understanding of

stress and then as you click through the

tutorial

it starts to explain of all things

neuroscience and neuroplasticity it says

research from Neuroscience tells us that

through effort our brain can change it

can form new connections that we call

synapses so of course I was delighted to

see all that information I'm very

familiar with that type of information

It also says things like and here I'm

reading directly from the tutorial

difficulty struggle and frustration when

you're learning something are not signs

that you've reached your limits they're

signs that you're expanding your limits

okay then you go to the next field and

it says

let's hear from a scientist Urie

triceman is one of the top calculus

professors here's what he tells us

students on the first day of class

quote everyone in this class will

struggle no matter who you are questions

are going to be flying at you that you

cannot answer and when that happens

you're going to experience stress and if

you don't understand that stress you'll

think it means oh no I don't belong here

but in fact that stress is an indicator

that your understanding is deepening

it's not a sign that you're not learning

it's a sign that you are learning okay

so I could read this entire tutorial for

you but that would take up far too much

of our time but I think you get the

essence of it which is that with each

slide within the tutorial you're being

told that the thing that you're

experiencing that could potentially feel

negative because it means negative

things you're not learning you're

suffering you're suffering health-wise

you're suffering performance wise

is reappraised it's telling you no the

frustration the agitation the thought

that you're not capable and you're not

capable of getting better it's actually

the opposite so what this tutorial

really is is it's an information based

tutorial it tells you something about

the brain's capacity to change it gives

you some True by the way mechanistic

information about how synapses can

change and brain circuits can change

because indeed they can

and it's telling you that the negative

somatic bodily and cognitive

thought-based experiences of stress that

those represent you getting better

that's simply what it is and despite it

being simple in its specific message

that message turns out to be incredibly

powerful how can we say that it's truly

powerful well we could turn to

essentially any page in this study that

Jaeger and colleagues did and see that

for instance the intervention again this

is the combination of learning about

growth mindset and learning that stress

can be performance enhancing

led to 40 Improvement in self-regard so

self-regard is something that can be

measured we can have very negative or

very positive self-regard 40

improvements in self-regard there was a

14 Improvement in passing of courses

that were of the particularly

challenging type and there was also a

significant Improvement in passing of

courses that were less challenging in

addition to that people who watched and

engaged in this 30 minute tutorial also

took on additional hard challenges in

the future long after the intervention

had ceased now there are a number of

other features of the David Yeager work

that I think are especially important to

consider but rather than go into the

specifics of those experiments

I'm going to frame them in the context

of some very specific tools that I've

spelled out for sake of this episode

based on the scientific literature that

you can use in order to build a growth

mindset and in order to build the stress

enhances performance mindset now in some

sense all of our discussion during this

episode up until now has served as a

tutorial about growth mindset and about

stress enhances performance and how

those two things can be combined in

order to get a synergistic positive

effect nonetheless I do think that it's

useful especially when thinking about

cognitive tools which are often less

concrete and clear to people how they

can Implement them compared to say

exercise tools like you know get two 100

minutes of Zone 2 cardio per week or get

six sets of resistance exercise per

major muscle group per week Etc all of

that stuff in the physical domain is

very concrete whereas stuff that relates

to tools in the cognitive domain

sometimes can feel a little bit abstract

so for that we reason I'm just going to

take a couple of minutes and list off

some of the key elements to building up

a growth mindset and a stress enhances

performance mindset that are gleaned

from the literature that I've talked

about now and related literature the

first tool is that whenever possible if

both the teacher and the student can

adopt a growth mindset and a stress

enhances performance mindset that's the

best case scenario this has been shown

in the classroom and it's been shown in

other contexts as well and again it

simply means learning about what growth

mindset is and how it differs from fixed

mindset it also ideally means learning

how stress can enhance performance now

if that means

spending some time with the discussion

that we had around Dr Alia crum's data

that would be great if it also means

just thinking about the stress response

and understanding that that stress

response indeed is mobilizing resources

it's focusing your vision more narrowly

right you sort of lose the forest

through the trees and yet that allows

you to really analyze carefully whatever

it is that you choose to focus your

attention on well then that's going to

be performance enhancing again these

tools are purely cognitive but they are

well supported by the data and the data

also tell us that when teachers and

students both adopt this mindset the

teachers are viewing the students as

less fixed in their abilities and the

students are viewing themselves as less

fixed in their abilities the next tool

which is a really fundamental one to

everything we're talking about was

actually mentioned at the beginning of

the episode which is whenever giving

praise or giving feedback of any kind to

others or to yourself perhaps even

especially to yourself

make the effort to make that feedback

about verbs not labels okay to really

think about

praising or in some cases maybe giving

feedback about how effort could have

been better but ideally you're saying

great effort it was great that when you

missed that shot on goal that you ran

back to your side of the field it was

great that when you didn't perform well

on that math exam

that you went back to those problem sets

and that you conversed with other

students about why they had performed a

certain way and you really dug through

it and figured out why you got things

wrong now a key aspect of this tool of

focusing on verbs not labels is that it

is especially important to do this when

you've performed well I talked about the

reasons a little bit earlier but I

cannot emphasize this enough when you've

performed well if you tell yourself or

you tell somebody else that they're just

a great athlete they're just a great

student they're talented they're

brilliant I promise you you are

undermining their future performance

when they inevitably encounter challenge

if however you give yourself or the

other person feedback that's really

grounded in effort and persistence in

problem solving you are absolutely going

the right direction now if you are going

to give feedback about errors either to

yourself or to somebody else

the question really is do you paint that

with rose-colored glasses do you try and

make it seem like the errors weren't

that bad that's not actually what we're

talking about we're not talking about

what do they say putting lipstick on a

pig what we're talking about is

looking at those errors and thinking

about what led up to those errors and

trying to put more of our cognitive

attention on the verbs the things that

led to those errors and less of our

attention on the emotions related to

those errors we really need to be

analytic about those errors and

admittedly

we often need to take a day or two or

maybe even longer before we can do that

process effectively right nothing that

I've said thus far has said that we have

to do all of this immediately after an

error or immediately after a poor

performance sometimes we are so caught

up in the emotional experience of having

performed not as well as we would have

liked that there's simply no way that we

can allocate our mental resources toward

error analysis ideally we can but

oftentimes we can so we have to be how

do they say gentle with ourselves and

allow ourselves to move through that

process and then get back to error

analysis that's absolutely key but we

really want to focus on the verbs

leading to those errors not putting

labels on the stupid ridiculous silly

fill in your blank with whatever

negative label you might happen to come

up with okay so verbs verbs verbs for

analyzing why we did well and verbs

verbs verbs for analyzing why we did

poorly now you may have noticed that a

few minutes ago I mentioned that

oftentimes it's beneficial that when we

make errors that we seek out others who

either performed well

ideally but also those who performed

poorly in order to get some

understanding as to why we did not

perform as well as we wanted and that

raises another key tool there are a lot

of data now to support the fact that one

of the key ways to analyze our errors is

to get help and this is one of the

things that really differentiates the

high performers from the low performers

over time and yes there I just used a

label well I guess I could have said the

high effort which leads to Performance

people versus the low effort which leads

to low performance people but in any

case you get the idea people who perform

well over time

regardless of labels that we place on

them tend to be people who seek help in

order to understand why they didn't

perform well so this is a core component

of not just trying and building a growth

mindset but really solidifying a growth

mindset and a stress can enhance

performance mindset so seek help from

others in understanding where you didn't

perform as well as you like and I would

say Seek input from others as to what

were the verbs that you think might have

led to your heightened performance

because we like to think that we have

really good Optics on why we did well oh

yeah it was because I spent X number of

hours practicing but oftentimes those

around us have additional perspectives

that we can't access and learning about

those perspectives of why we've

performed poorly but also why we

performed well

in the context of these verbs not labels

is also tremendously beneficial the

other thing that's clear from the

literature on growth mindset and stress

can enhance performance mindset

is that

all of that stuff all those tutorials

are most effective when both teachers

and students Embrace those mindsets now

that's a wonderful situation if teachers

and students are both available and

willing to learn those mindsets however

for many of us we don't have a teacher

we don't have a mentor we're doing all

of this on our own

and so what's fortunate is that there

are also data in the literature showing

that under conditions where either the

teacher or the mentor is not there or is

not embracing a growth mindset or stress

enhances performance mindset we actually

can serve as our own teacher

by using a simple tool and the simple

tool that was actually the same tool

that was used in one of the Jaeger

studies is to take maybe a three by five

card or an eight and a half by eleven

sheet of paper and write out a letter

as if you're writing a letter to the

next person coming along trying to get

good at the thing that you're trying to

get good at and explain to them what

growth mindset is and how it differs

from a fixed mindset explain to them

what the stress enhances performance

mindset is how to adopt it and how it

can amplify performance

that simple exercise of writing a letter

which is essentially to oneself but

you're sort of pretending that the

letter is for somebody else although I

suppose you could and perhaps should

give it to somebody else so they can

benefit that simple exercise has been

shown to improve one's own performance

and to do so in dramatic ways not just

in the immediate term but also in the

future now the final tool I'd like to