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Notes -
The whole "growth mindset" bundle of ideas trades a lot on this motte-and-bailey.
Motte: All else being equal, someone who believes that hard work matters and innate talent does not will perform better than someone who believes the opposite.
Bailey: It is actually the case that hard work matters and innate talent does not.
My understanding is that the studies focus on supporting the motte - to the extent that there is good science here, it supports the motte. (It's social science so of course that extent is very little.) But most of the discussion around growth mindset acts as if the bailey was proven, which the studies don't even attempt to prove.
It's interesting because it's hard to know how self-consciously this substitution is made. Is it done intentionally by people who believe the motte and therefore wish to convince people of the bailey for their own good? Is it simple confusion? Is it bad faith twisting of social science to support a politically desired conclusion (the blank slate hypothesis)?
I suspect that a large component is that believers in the motte want to resolve cognitive dissonance when it comes to acting on the motte. They are convinced that it will be good for others if they are persuaded of the bailey. But this holds whether the bailey is true or not! And trying to convince people of something that's not true for their own good is the kind of thing bad guys do, and they are not bad guys, so the bailey must be true.
Definitely a conundrum. I personally find a 'growth mindset' to make me more effective, but agree that the science does not bear it out. Cognitive dissonance is necessary to function well in the modern world.
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