A person’s mindset can affect their beliefs, including whether they believe intelligence is fixed or malleable. Those with a fixed mindset belief about intelligence subscribe to the idea that intelligence is just something you are born with and it cannot be increased or developed (Claro et al., 2016; Dweck, 2000). In contrast, those who have a growth mindset believe that people can increase their intelligence with effort and practice. While it is common to ascribe each individual as having a fixed or a growth mindset, in actuality there exists a continuum between fixed and growth mindsets and people may find themselves at different points on the continuum at different times (Yeager & Dweck, 2020). Mindsets of both students and faculty can affect students’ academic performance.

Student Mindset

Multiple large-scale studies which have between tens-of-thousands and hundreds-of-thousands of student participants found sizable correlations between having a growth mindset and higher academic performance (Yeager & Dweck, 2020). One study which recruited 555,458 participants from 74 different nations found that a growth mindset was positively correlated with academic achievement in 72 out of the 74 nations that were surveyed (OECD, 2019). Growth mindset was positively correlated with academic achievement in 72 out of the 74 nations that were surveyed. Students who adopt a growth mindset are more likely to overcome challenges, strive for improvement, achieve high grades and test scores, and exhibit resilience, while those with a fixed mindset are more likely to avoid challenges, have lower academic achievement, and exhibit helplessness in challenging circumstances (Blackwell et al., 2007; Dweck & Yeager, 2019; Yeager et al., 2019). The association between mindset and academic performance is strongest for those who are struggling or are facing academic difficulties (Claro et al., 2016; Yeager & Dweck, 2020). A person’s mindset also is associated with a person’s mental health and wellbeing (Burnette et al., 2020) and associations between fixed mindset beliefs and the “fear of failure” may be a precursor to mental health issues or psychological distress (Yeager & Dweck, 2020).

Instructor Mindset

While growth mindset professors tend to encourage students and teach them improved studying or problem-solving strategies, fixed mindset professors often view their classes as ‘filter-classes’ meant to ‘weed-out’ the ‘bad’ students. Fixed mindset professors also may encourage students to drop a course or tell them that ‘not everyone is meant for a science career’ after they perform poorly on a single exam. A 2019 study that examined the performance of 15,000 undergraduate students concluded that AHN students in classrooms with fixed mindset instructors had lower course performance and were also less motivated to do their best work (Canning et al., 2019). Faculty fixed mindset beliefs appear to be especially detrimental to the performance of AHN students (Canning et al., 2019).