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Carol S. Dweck (born October 17, 1946) is a professor at Stanford University and a social psychologist. She graduated from Barnard College in 1967 and earned a Ph.D. from Yale University in 1972. She taught at Columbia, Harvard University, and the University of Illinois before joining the Stanford faculty in 2004.

Her key contribution to social psychology relates to implicit theories of intelligence. According to Dweck, individuals can be placed on a continuum according to their implicit views of where (intellectual) success comes from. Some believe their success is based on innate ability; these are said to have a "fixed" implicit theory of intelligence. Others, who believe their success is based on hard work and learning, are said to have a "growth" or an "incremental" theory of intelligence. (It is not necessarily the case that individuals will be able to state clearly their own beliefs on the subject, but they can be discerned from answers to simple survey questions, such as "Do you think it is more likely that a student would do well on a test because they are smart, or because they studied hard?")

This is important because (1) individuals with a "growth" theory are more likely to continue despite setbacks and attempt to develop their skill sets even when met with initial failure, and (2) individuals' theories of intelligence can be affected by subtle environmental cues. For example, children given praise such as "good job, you're very smart" are much more likely to develop an innate theory, whereas if given compliments like "good job, you worked very hard" they are likely to develop a growth theory. In other words, it is possible to encourage students, for example, to persist despite failure by encouraging them to think about learning in a certain way.

Sources

• Stanford News Service press release: Fixed versus growth intelligence mindsets: It's all in your head, Dweck says
• Lisa Trei, "New study yields instructive results on how mindset affects learning", Stanford Report, Feb. 7, 2007
• Indiana University Human Intelligence project profile
• Carol Dweck's home page
• Columbia University curriculum vitae
• Dweck, C.S., & Bempechat, J. (1983). Children’s theories of intelligence: Implications for learning. In S. Paris, G. Olson, and H. Stevenson (Eds.) Learning and motivation in children. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
• Dweck, C. S., Chiu, C., and Hong, Y. (1995). Implicit theories: Elaboration and extension of the model. Psychological Inquiry, 6, 322-333.

• Living people
• 1946 births
• Barnard College alumni
• Yale University alumni
• Columbia University faculty
• Harvard University faculty
• University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign faculty
• Stanford University faculty
• American psychologists
• Social psychologists