Healthy scepticism
The human condition can rarely be reduced to a binary system and we should be wary of any theories or models that suggest it can. But not so wary that we throw out good ideas.
It’s no secret that academic psychology has been taking a hard look at itself recently. A recent attempt to reproduce the results from 100 well known psychology papers resulted in just 36% of them replicating successfully. Psychological findings that worked their way into the mainstream have been found wanting on further examination.
From the outside, it can seem the whole discipline is in crisis and its foundations are being eaten away under scrutiny.
But my view is that this, in the grand scheme of things, is a positive sign. Testing original findings to establish whether they were a statistical fluke or the result of flawed methodologies is exactly what science is about. It’s how we find out whether a finding or hypothesis is a good idea or not. One of the reasons why evolution or general relativity are held in high regard in the physical sciences is precisely because they have been tested so thoroughly over the last century or so.
The current “replication crisis” in the psychological sciences is simply a sign of growing pains. It’s what happens when a science grows up.
It’s good to be sceptical. Scepticism is part of what sorts the intellectual wheat from the chaff. But in the current climate of “debunking”, it can be too easy to go too far the other way and accept critiques of concepts or findings or ideas without digging deeper to establish whether the criticisms themselves hold up. Sometimes, perhaps even often, they do. However, as with many things, it’s not always so cut and dry.
This is where we come to the recent criticism of the concept of “growth mindset” that was published in Buzzfeed: A Mindset “Revolution” Sweeping Britain’s Classrooms May Be Based On Shaky Science. The article outlines some critiques of “mindset theory” which essentially postulates that people who respond to failure with the belief it resulted from a lack of fixed, inherent talent are less likely to succeed in the long term than those who believe they are able to develop those talents through effort, guidance and practice.
Or to put it another way, people who tell themselves “I just one of those people who aren’t good at maths” when they fail a test don’t do as well as those who respond by saying “I’m just going to have to work harder to do better next time”.
Many of the criticisms of mindset theory in the Buzzfeed article are justified and the journalist did seek out opinions from solid, well regarded sources. Some claims about the impact of instilling a “growth mindset” appear to be overblown. There have been statistical errors in some papers examining the effects of mindset theory. But the article told a somewhat one-sided story.
Since the original research carried out by Carol Dweck there has been a considerable volume of follow up research. So much so that a meta-analysis of 113 studies looking at the link between performance and mindset was published in 2012.
That didn’t stop various people from proclaiming the growth mindset phenomenon dead, but by far the most interesting contribution to the debate came from the New York Magazine’s Science of Us column which initially took a stance more supportive of the Buzzfeed view but then published a more nuanced take which, in my opinion, is more reflective of the current state of the concept. Here’s an excerpt:
So it could be argued that mindset theory, like so many other ideas in pop psychology, has sometimes been oversimplified and overhyped, and/or that there appear to be some holes in it here or there. But it’s not fair to level such critiques, or to amplify them as I did, without also addressing the other side of the ledger: There is a decent quantity of published evidence which at least partially supports Dweck’s ideas.
So, where does that leave us with mindset theory? I’d suggest that it’s neither the silver bullet suggested by some proponents nor the basket case of bad science others would have you believe. There’s enough reasonable research to suggest that it’s still worth investigating further, particularly outside of the education setting that appears to have been the main focus of the research to date.
There’s no reason to abolish it from your toolkit of mental models, it certainly doesn’t seem to cause harm. However, we shouldn't oversell it and it’s still worth keeping an eye on further developments. Any model that suggests an aspect of the human condition can be divided into one state or another is probably overly simplistic.
There is a problem with mindset-based initiatives being run in schools and organisations involving serious time and money without proper controls. Initiatives based on mindset theory should be subject to controlled trials and further research rather than blindly taken on faith that it works. It is a relatively new idea that has a seductively simply explanation for success or failure. Alarm bells should always ring at that but you don’t throw out an idea just because its simple. Healthy scepticism is more than just delighting in debunking.
