After exploring mindsets, the worldviews these perspectives create, and the consequences each one has on real people, Dweck dives into where the mindsets come from and why some people might have a growth mindset when others cling to a fixed one. She views the social world as steeped in both fixed- and growth-mindset messages.

Praise is a source of one type of messaging, and Dweck cites her series of seven experiments on children before concluding that praising the fixed trait of intelligence actively harms motivation and performance. She points out that this also happens to be the kind of praise children like most, because it gives them a short-term confidence boost; it is also the type of praise parents and teachers give most often. Dweck notes that this praise is tied to the short-term, highly visible moment or performance, not the longer, less-visible process of getting there. The best remedy, she says, is to replace praise that focuses on talent, ability, or intelligence with affirmation of new or creative strategies and honest effort. She also suggests tempering children’s need for praise altogether by encouraging them to seek out challenges and commit to learning in all that they undertake.