Praise the process: what growth mindset really is and where it works

The Short Version

Every source here agrees on the core finding: praising the process (effort, strategy, persistence, how someone analyzed a mistake) works better than praising talent or intelligence, which leads people to pick easier problems, perform worse and even lie about their scores [2][3]. But psychologist David Yeager, one of the field's leading researchers, insists growth mindset is widely misunderstood. It is not try hard and you can do anything; it is the belief that ability can change under the right conditions with the right support [1]. Short interventions can have effects lasting years, but only when they are delivered respectfully, paired with a healthier reading of stress, and followed by environments that actually let people grow, such as teachers who combine high standards with real support and schools that offer harder courses [1][2]. Without those conditions, just try harder can backfire, and as Alpha School's Joe Liemandt puts it, no amount of mindset lets you pass a test on material you were never taught [1][4].

Table of contents

What They Said

David Yeager: the real definition, and why the popular one fails

Yeager, a psychology professor at the University of Texas at Austin and author of 10 to 25: The Science of Motivating Young People, defines growth mindset as simply the belief that your abilities or your potential in some domain can change [1]. He calls the biggest confusion the idea that if you try hard, you can do anything. The actual claim is narrower and more demanding: under the right conditions with the right support change is possible [1]. That matters because the opposite belief, that you are static and nothing about you can change, is itself very stressful [1]. He and Andrew Huberman both credit Carol Dweck as the field's originator [1].

His strongest evidence is a 2019 study in Nature, a collaboration with Dweck, Greg Walton, Angela Duckworth and others [1]. Ninth graders did a short program of two sessions of about 25 minutes each. Eight or nine months later they were earning better grades and were more likely to be in harder math classes by tenth grade; unpublished results, he says, show effects four years later on graduating with college-ready courses [1]. The study was built to answer skeptics: a third party processed the data, schools were a random sample, and the analyses were pre-registered [1].

But the same study showed the limits. Growth mindset helped low-achieving students most, and it lasted only where the environment supported it: schools with supportive classroom cultures and, in the four-year results, schools that offered advanced courses [1]. If a student wants pre-calculus and the school doesn't offer it, the mindset can't do much [1]. Yeager describes collaborating with sociologists who were skeptical of psychology, and concludes that the answer is to combine structural resources with psychology [1]. He calls growth mindset asset-based rather than deficit-based: it assumes people already want to learn and removes the barrier of being made to feel dumb for struggling [1].

His favorite mechanism study, by David Nussbaum and Dweck, shows what the mindset actually changes [1]. Undergraduates all did poorly on a task. Those in a fixed mindset repaired their self-esteem by looking down at people who scored even worse; those in a growth mindset looked up at the top performers to learn their strategies [1]. Both groups recovered their self-esteem, but only one got better. That openness to self-improvement, Yeager says, is the mindset he wants his own kids to have [1].

Why "try harder" backfires: effort beliefs

The central misunderstanding, in Yeager's account, concerns effort. Dweck describes effort beliefs: the belief that if it's hard it means you're doing the wrong thing [1]. This is the default interpretation, Yeager says, and it is why simplified growth mindset messages fail. If someone believes effort signals a lack of ability and you tell them to try harder, you are effectively telling them they have no potential [1]. This, he says, has led to many misapplications of Dweck's work [1]. Huberman frames the same problem with exercise: burning lungs signal adaptation, but in learning we read confusion as a sign we are doing it wrong [1].

How short "wise interventions" actually work

A 25-minute session, Yeager explains, has to do two things: persuade people to think differently without making them feel talked down to, and arrive at a moment when it can set off a "recursive process," a snowball over time [1]. He jokes about a statistician who spent 25 minutes telling his son everything he was doing wrong, only for the boy to forget it five minutes later; lecturing, condescending messages don't stick [1].

Wise interventions, a term from Greg Walton, usually have three parts [1]. First, new scientific information, such as the metaphor that the brain is like a muscle that gets stronger when challenged. Second, stories from people like the participant, such as older students who once felt dumb and grew, which researchers call descriptive norms. Third, participants write their own story about a time they struggled and then remembered people can change, known as saying-is-believing, based on the finding that one of the best ways to change someone's mind is to ask them to persuade somebody else [1]. Yeager describes stories as theories in motion: a simple narrative of struggle, taking steps and improving gives people a hypothesis they then test in their own lives [1].

Adding stress: the synergistic version

Yeager says growth mindset research didn't always deal with the visceral feeling of stress, like a racing heart before an audition, as with his 13-year-old daughter before a cello audition [1]. So his team combined it with Alia Crum and Jeremy Jamieson's work on stress [1]. Crum calls the common belief that arousal is always harmful the "stress is debilitating" mindset, which leads to "being stressed about being stressed" [1]. The alternative is to read a racing heart as the body sending oxygenated blood to brain and muscles, and to think "this is actually a sign that I'm preparing to optimize my performance" [1]. In their studies, changing people's mindset about stress changed their stress physiology [1].

He distinguishes the stressor (the demand), the appraisal of it, and the response [1]. A threat response happens when you judge the demand to be more than you can handle: the body prepares for damage and defeat and releases cortisol [1]. Arousal alone can't tell a good state from a bad one: in Jamieson's example, a strong skier and a terrified novice atop a double black diamond both have high arousal, but one is excited and the other expects to crash, and wearable stress trackers can't tell the difference either [1]. The key is not the perfect level of difficulty but matching the demand with a belief that you have the resources to meet it, whether confidence, time, training or a friend [1]. Because resources are appraised by the mind, interventions can shift people from threat to challenge [1].

The mentor mindset: where praise and standards meet

For Yeager, what surrounds a person matters as much as what they believe. Drawing on Geoffrey Cohen and Claude Steele, he describes the mentor's dilemma: it is hard to criticize someone's work and motivate them at the same time [1]. The research solution pairs a very high standard with an assurance the person can meet it with support. His analogy is the roller coaster sign: saying you have to be this tall and walking away isn't reassuring, but stating the standard and saying you believe they can reach it is [1]. In small studies, seventh graders were about twice as likely to use a teacher's critical feedback on their essays when it came with this brief message [1].

He names two failure modes: the enforcer mindset, with high standards and no support, and the protector mindset, caring but lowering standards to spare someone stress [1]. The mentor mindset takes the best of both, and he warns it is not about magic words but the experience of being taken seriously, with dignity and respect, at a vulnerable moment by someone with power over you [1]. His positive model is physicist Keivan Stassun's lab at Vanderbilt, whose Fisk-Vanderbilt bridge program admits students regardless of GRE scores; about 85% go on to the PhD program, and weekly lab meetings involve everyone critiquing a trainee's work, very demanding but always from belief in the student's potential [1].

Yeager also adds domain limits and cultural limits. Growth mindsets in different areas are somewhat related, but domain-specific mindsets predict behavior best: to know whether someone will quit the cello, ask about their cello mindset [1]. When a topic makes people defensive, a more general message can work better; he cites a study where a general message that groups can change made both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict more open to a peace process, and a research assistant who offended a woman at a party by telling her she could have been better at math [1]. And organizational culture matters: drawing on Mary Murphy's Cultures of Growth, he describes how a culture of genius leads people to trash others and hide mistakes, citing Satya Nadella's call to move from know-it-alls to learn-it-alls [1].

Finally, Yeager argues that purpose fuels effort. Students told that tedious math would help them build skills to contribute to others learned more deeply, persisted longer and earned higher grades [1]. He quotes Viktor Frankl: "the person who knows the why for their existence is able to bear any how" [1]. Effort for yourself that fails feels like shame, but effort for others feels noble [1]. His caveat: purely selfless appeals didn't work; the winning message combined personal benefit with contribution [1]. Huberman responded, "I think this is one of the most important concepts frankly ever discussed on this podcast" [1].

Andrew Huberman: the praise studies and the brain mechanism

In a solo episode, Huberman walks through the classic evidence for praising process [2]. He uses Alia Crum's definition of a mindset, "a mental frame or lens that selectively organizes and encodes information," and stresses that mindsets carry identity narratives we rarely notice [2].

The key study is the 1998 paper by Claudia Mueller and Carol Dweck, "praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance." [2]. More than 100 children received intelligence feedback (you are so smart, so talented), effort feedback (you tried hard, you persisted, you kept going after a wrong answer), or no specific praise [2]. Offered a choice, intelligence-praised children picked problems they knew they could solve to keep earning praise; effort-praised children chose harder problems that could teach them more [2]. On a second problem set, the control group performed about the same, the intelligence-praised group dropped significantly, and the effort-praised group rose significantly [2]. Intelligence-praised children attempted fewer problems and were more likely to lie about their scores to other kids, inflating them even when they had done well [2]. Huberman notes a 1996 survey found 85 percent of parents believed intelligence was fixed [2].

He adds two practical details. Timing doesn't rescue talent praise: identity praise before a test or after a strong result lowers later performance, while effort praise before or after raises it [2]. And the praise must be genuine: telling someone they worked hard when they coasted doesn't work, because we know when we are being lied to [2]. His framing is verbs, not labels. Rather than saying he has a great memory, he describes what he does: listens, reads, writes down, highlights, whiteboards, repeats and teaches [2]. Rather than being a bad musician, he never practiced much, failed early and stopped [2]. Labels tied to performance leave you vulnerable when you slip; effort verbs belong to you and travel into any new domain [2].

Huberman's explanation of why process praise works comes from a study by Mangels and colleagues with Dweck as senior author, "Why do beliefs about intelligence influence learning success? A social cognitive neuroscience model." [2]. Participants wore EEG caps while answering trivia questions and learning whether they were right [2]. People with a fixed view of intelligence showed a larger error-related signal over the front part of the anterior cingulate cortex, linked to emotional and bodily responses; in people with a growth mindset, the error signal leaned toward areas of cognitive appraisal [2]. Growth-minded people direct attention to understanding why they erred; fixed-minded people mostly feel the sting [2]. He contrasts this concrete process with advice like "set your ego aside," which offers nothing to do [2].

He also covers the synergy research from Yeager's side. The July 2022 Nature paper, "A synergistic mindsets intervention protects adolescents from stress," included six experiments; either mindset alone helped buffer stress, but both together produced the strongest effect [2]. In the Trier Social Stress Test, where participants give a speech to a frowning audience and then do hard arithmetic aloud, students who learned both mindsets showed better peripheral blood flow, cortisol changes and a shift toward seeing stress as a challenge [2]. This was a single 30-minute online intervention [2]. Huberman filled out excerpts himself; one line reads "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." [2]. Reported results included about a 40 percent improvement in self-regard and a 14 percent improvement in passing particularly challenging courses [2]. Crum's own work showed that on hard tasks, only those taught that stress can enhance performance improved significantly, without extra practice, which Huberman stresses is not a placebo and involves no lying [2].

Huberman offers five tools: teach the mindsets to both teachers and students; use verbs, not labels, especially after success; seek help and ask others why you fell short and why you succeeded; write a letter to the next learner explaining growth mindset and how stress can help, a technique from Yeager's studies; and rethink the "mind is like a muscle" analogy [2]. On that last point he departs from the standard metaphor: resistance training gives an immediate pump, but learning gives no preview; while learning you feel worse, confused and frustrated, and that strain is what triggers the change, consolidated during recovery and sleep [2].

Josh Waitzkin: the brittleness of "prodigy" and the danger of empty process talk

Former chess prodigy and martial arts champion Josh Waitzkin describes the talent-label trap from the inside [3]. He rejects the prodigy label; from about age six he was always playing people as good or better and had to work relentlessly [3]. "people who have identity and being a prodigy Develop a brittleness often because they associate their level of mastery With talent with something innate," he says, connecting this to Dweck's entity theory of intelligence [3]. As a result "one doesn't take risk one doesn't expose oneself" [3]. He recalls Dweck's early papers describing how students without a growth mindset, who held so much of their ego in their performance, were at "a significantly greater tendency to lie about their performance when they didn't do well to themselves and to others," and adds that "the lying to oneself is the really interesting part" [3]. In competition, he says, you can feel where such a player's energy stops and break them [3].

Waitzkin also supplies the most pointed warning about the misunderstood version. He regrets how The Art of Learning's process-versus-outcome message was used: parents told young players that results don't matter, and kids saw through it [3]. You have to care enough to be shattered for the process to work; the skill is to be inside the rupture while also holding the perspective your future self will have [3]. His most heartbreaking losses "were the greatest moments of my life in retrospect," but only because he eventually studied them honestly, as with a world championship loss he couldn't bear to review for two and a half months [3]. He tries to live at max stretch without snapping, noting that if you are succeeding all the time you're not pushing hard enough [3]. And he frames fear the same way: "Fearlessness isn't a thing. It's how one works with fear" [3].

Joe Liemandt: mindset can't replace missing knowledge

Liemandt, principal of Alpha School, draws explicitly on Yeager. "Dr. Yeager was actually, you know, his book, 10 to 25, the science of motivating kids, is all about high standards and high support," he says; Yeager "created our guide training," and all Alpha's adults follow the mentor mindset program [4]. Most parents, he says, are either high standards, low support, or low standards, high support, where "I never want my kid to have stress. That's bad too. And the real answer is you do both" [4]. His summary: "The key to developing a child is that they struggle and fail on their road to success supported by a caring adult" [4].

He gives the clearest illustration of Yeager's "right conditions" caveat. "If you gave me an MCAT, I don't know the words on the page. You can tell me to have grit or growth mindset or you can tell me whatever you want. I'm not going to pass that test," he says; "you need to roll me back to freshman bio" and build up from there [4]. The problem in schools, he argues, is delivering eighth-grade content to eighth graders who need seventh, sixth or even third-grade material [4]. His signature example: a student stuck in the low 700s on SAT math, making "careless" errors, went back and memorized her multiplication tables and scored a 790, because facts memorized to fluency don't consume working memory slots [4].

Huberman, interviewing him, adds a critique of a familiar phrase: telling kids "do the best you can" "Sounds like support, sounds like high standards, but it kind of avoids both" [4]. And he describes the opposite error of over-support: "I'm going to climb the rock for you. I'm going to do your homework for you" [4].

Liemandt also sees the adult's job as finding and removing each child's blocks, such as "I'm not a math person," and measuring schools on growth rate rather than raw achievement [4]. Here he goes somewhere the mindset researchers do not: he pays kids to break through. His daughter, who didn't see herself as a math-and-science kid, reached the top 1% after he bet her $1,000, and later said it changed how she saw herself [4]. His program paid seventh graders $100 for each perfect state test score going back to third grade [4]. He believes paying for a breakthrough can create intrinsic motivation afterward, though he acknowledges it is controversial and some Alpha parents object [4].

Where They Agree, and Where They Don't

Everyone agrees that talent praise backfires and process praise helps. The Mueller and Dweck results [2], Waitzkin's account of prodigies growing brittle and lying to themselves [3], Yeager's fixed-mindset students looking down at worse performers instead of up at better ones [1], and Liemandt's goal of dissolving "I'm not a math person" [4] all point the same way.

They agree that growth mindset without support is hollow. Yeager's high standards plus high support [1], Liemandt's adoption of the same framework [4], Huberman's point that "do the best you can" avoids both [4], and Waitzkin's regret about parents saying results don't matter [3] converge. Yeager and Liemandt specifically warn that a mindset can't substitute for opportunity or prerequisite knowledge: no pre-calculus course, no benefit [1]; no freshman biology, no passing the MCAT [4].

They agree struggle is part of learning, but differ on how much to seek it. Huberman argues "without errors, there's no struggle, and therefore, without struggle, there's no learning" [4], and that learning feels bad while it happens [2]. Waitzkin wants to live at max stretch and believes painful losses seed breakthroughs [3]. Liemandt's view, by contrast, is that if something can be taught without suffering, it should be, and that people struggle willingly for goals they care about [4]. The difference is partly emphasis: all agree struggle should be purposeful and supported, not manufactured.

They differ on the muscle metaphor. Yeager's wise interventions use the brain-is-like-a-muscle metaphor as their scientific information [1]. Huberman thinks the analogy misleads, because learning, unlike lifting, gives no immediate pump and instead feels like failure while it works [2]. The two are compatible if the metaphor is updated: the brain does get stronger with challenge, but you shouldn't expect to feel stronger during the effort.

They differ on extrinsic rewards. Yeager's motivational levers are belief, stress appraisal, respectful mentoring and purpose, with self-interest combined with contribution [1]. Liemandt uses cash to break mental blocks and believes intrinsic motivation can follow [4]. None of the sources tests paying kids against process praise, and Liemandt's results are presented as Alpha's own experience, with independent trials with MIT's Blueprint Labs still underway [4].

They differ on how general the effect is. Huberman presents effort verbs as portable into any domain [2], and Waitzkin believes principles transfer across arts through "thematic interconnectedness" [3]. Yeager is more cautious: mindsets in different areas are only somewhat related, and domain-specific mindsets predict behavior best [1].

Why It Works

Attention after errors. Huberman's EEG evidence shows the fixed mindset turns an error into an emotional sting, while the growth mindset turns it into analysis [2]. Process praise trains attention onto what can be changed, which is why effort-praised kids chose harder problems and improved [2].

Identity at stake. When praise attaches to a trait, every failure threatens identity, so people avoid risk, choose easy tasks and lie, including to themselves [2][3]. Yeager's Nussbaum and Dweck study shows the self-esteem repair that follows: fixed-minded people restore it by comparing down, growth-minded people by learning from those above [1].

Effort beliefs. If hard means wrong, then "try harder" means you lack ability [1]. Reframing difficulty as the sign of expanding limits, as in Yeager's intervention text, changes what effort signals [2].

Stress appraisal. Reading arousal as fuel instead of danger shifts the body from threat to challenge. Huberman lists shorter cortisol release, greater cardiac stroke volume and more peripheral blood flow, and Yeager's studies found changed stress physiology [1][2]. That is why combining the two mindsets beat either alone [2].

Respect and recursion. Short interventions work when they avoid condescension, use peer stories and let people persuade others, then set off a snowball where early successes confirm the new belief [1]. The mentor message works because it signals being taken seriously by someone with power over you [1].

Resources and prerequisites. The belief only pays off if there is a path to act on it: advanced courses, supportive classrooms [1], and fluency in foundations that frees working memory for harder work [4].

Purpose. Effort tied to contributing to others feels noble instead of shameful when it gets hard, so persistence rises [1].

Where It Applies, and Where It Doesn't

Process praise applies broadly: to children after both success and failure, to adults' self-talk, and to teams and organizations [1][2]. The brief-intervention evidence is strongest for adolescents facing challenging coursework, especially low achievers, in schools that offer supportive cultures and advanced courses [1][2].

It doesn't work as a slogan. Telling someone to try harder when they believe effort means inadequacy can backfire [1]. Hollow praise fails because people know when they coasted [2]. Results don't matter is seen through by kids [3]. "Do the best you can" avoids both standards and support [4]. And mindset cannot bridge missing prerequisites or missing opportunities: the student without an available pre-calculus class, or the adult facing an MCAT without biology, needs instruction, not encouragement [1][4].

Lowering standards to spare stress, Yeager's protector mode, also undercuts growth, as does criticism without support, his enforcer mode [1]. In defensive situations, a general message that people can change may land better than a pointed one about someone's specific weakness [1]. And because domain-specific beliefs predict behavior best, a growth mindset about school may not automatically carry into music, relationships or sport [1].

What To Do With It

1. Praise verbs, not labels. Replace you're so smart or you're a natural with what the person did: practiced, persisted after a wrong answer, tried a new strategy, analyzed the error [2]. Do this especially after success, and only when true [2].

2. Describe your own abilities the same way. List the processes behind what you're good at, and the missing practice behind what you're bad at, as Huberman does with his memory and his music [2].

3. Never say just "try harder." First reframe what difficulty means: struggle and frustration are signs you're expanding your limits, not reaching them [1][2].

4. Pair the standard with belief and support. When giving critical feedback, name the high standard and say explicitly that you believe the person can reach it with help, the message that doubled seventh graders' use of essay feedback [1]. Avoid both the enforcer and the protector [1].

5. Reappraise stress out loud. Before a hard event, treat the racing heart as oxygen going to brain and muscles and tell yourself your body is preparing to perform, rather than trying to calm down or distract yourself [1][2].

6. After a failure, look up, not down. Study the strategies of people who did better instead of comparing yourself to people who did worse [1]; analyze errors once you're calm enough, which may take a day or two [2].

7. Check the prerequisites and the path. If someone keeps making "careless" errors or can't progress, look for gaps in fundamentals and roll back to fill them [4]; make sure the next harder course or opportunity actually exists [1].

8. Use saying-is-believing. Write a letter to the next person learning what you're learning, explaining growth mindset and how stress can help; teaching it strengthens it in you [1][2].

9. Connect effort to contribution. Tie hard, tedious work to how it will let the person help others, combined with a personal benefit, not selflessness alone [1].

10. Care about results, and study losses honestly. Don't tell kids outcomes don't matter; let them care, feel the loss, and then review it for the lesson, as Waitzkin did with his defeats [3].

Sources

1. Dr. David Yeager: How to Master Growth Mindset to Improve Performance · Huberman Lab
2. How to Enhance Performance & Learning by Applying a Growth Mindset · Huberman Lab
3. The Art of Learning & Living Life · Huberman Lab
4. Joe Liemandt on Alpha School, AI Tutoring, and Learning Faster Through Mastery and Motivation · Huberman Lab