About

Carol Dweck is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford University and a professor, by courtesy, of Education. Her work bridges developmental psychology, social psychology, and personality psychology, focusing on the self-conceptions people use to structure the self and guide their behavior. Her research examines the origins of these self-conceptions, their role in motivation and self-regulation, and their impact on achievement and interpersonal processes. Dweck's academic career includes appointments at Columbia University, the University of Illinois, and Harvard University, with her current position at Stanford since 2004. She has received numerous awards, including the Book Award for Self-Theories from the World Education Federation, the Donald Campbell Career Achievement Award in Social Psychology, and the James McKeen Cattell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Psychological Science. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Herbert Simon Fellow of the Academy of Political and Social Science. Her research has contributed significantly to understanding how beliefs about ability influence motivation, learning, and achievement. She has explored the development and structure of ability concepts in children, the motivational significance of early beliefs about ability, and the role of mindsets in education and motivation science. Her work also extends to contemporary topics such as the use of large language models in psychology and addressing global educational disparities through mindset culture interventions.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Psychology
• Political Science
• Sociology
• Artificial Intelligence
• Pedagogy
• Social psychology
• Social Science
• Epistemology
• Public relations
• Mathematics education
• Medicine
• Management
• Medical education
• Knowledge management
• Data science
• Marketing
• Economics
• Business
• Developmental psychology
• Engineering ethics
• Engineering

Selected publications

• À retenir…

  Cairn.info · 2026-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

• Children’s ability concepts: Their development, content, and consequences

  Advances in child development and behavior · 2025-01-01 · 2 citations

  book-chapter
  PublisherDOI

• Illness mindsets in health and disease: development and validation of the Illness Mindset Inventory (IMI)

  Journal of Behavioral Medicine · 2025-10-16 · 1 citations

  articleOpen access

  Being diagnosed with a chronic illness is a life-altering experience that can be shaped, for better or worse, by psychological factors. How patients think about their illness-their core beliefs about what it means and what it might bring such as whether it is catastrophic, manageable, or even an opportunity-can influence how they respond and adapt. This research introduces the concept of illness mindsets and presents the initial validation of the Illness Mindset Inventory (IMI), a new tool designed to assess these beliefs and their implications for health and well-being. Study 1 examines the factor structure, internal reliability, and discriminant validity of the 9-item IMI in N = 201 healthy participants and N = 200 participants with cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and/or chronic pain. Study 2 investigates cancer patients (N = 463) with different degrees of illness severity and tests the pre-registered hypothesis that the IMI will account for variability in functioning over and above measures of illness severity. In Study 1, illness mindsets were associated with between 5.7 and 12.1% additional variance in physical, social, and emotional functioning, above and beyond disease status. In Study 2, illness mindsets accounted for between 6.9 and 12.0% additional variance in physical functioning, social functioning, and emotional distress in people diagnosed with cancer above and beyond cancer stage, cancer status, trait optimism, and self-efficacy. Illness mindsets may help account for variance in individual functioning beyond disease status and disease severity. Future research can probe the IMI's utility in supporting patient care; in predicting functioning before, during, and after a diagnosis; and as a potential target for intervention.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• The structure and motivational significance of early beliefs about ability.

  Developmental Psychology · 2025-01-13 · 9 citations

  article

  = 231; 116 girls, 112 boys, three gender nonbinary children; predominantly White and Asian children from relatively high-income backgrounds). We assessed five beliefs: (a) growth mindsets (malleability), (b) universal mindsets (distribution), (c) brilliance beliefs (necessity for success), and beliefs about ability's (d) innateness and (e) responsiveness to intervention. Even among the youngest children, these beliefs were empirically distinguishable and also largely coherent, in that they related to each other in expected ways. Moreover, the five beliefs assessed here were differentially related to children's learning (vs. performance) goals, preference for challenging tasks, and evaluative concern (i.e., concern that mistakes will lead others to evaluate the self negatively). Even when adjusting for age, children with growth mindsets were oriented toward learning goals and preferred challenging tasks; children who believed ability has innate origins preferred performance goals; and younger (but not older) children who thought success required brilliance expressed more concern over being evaluated. These findings speak to the multifaceted nature of children's concepts of ability and highlight their significance for children's achievement-related attitudes and behavior in the early school years. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• A Scalable, Theory-Based Intervention to Influence Teachers’ Student Engagement Practices Improves Academic Performance in a State-Wide Sample

  Research Square · 2025-12-17

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Trust Mindsets - An Awareness of Self-Fulfilling Prophecies Builds Trust

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2025-01-01

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• A strategic mindset enhances children’s generation of effective strategies and delay of gratification across tasks.

  Developmental Psychology · 2025-01-21 · 2 citations

  articleSenior author

  = 237), 5- to 6-year-old children who read the strategic mindset storybook with an experimenter (vs. a control storybook) waited significantly longer to receive desirable treats (Experiments 1 and 2) and to watch an appealing YouTube video (Experiment 2). Moreover, they were able to wait longer because they spontaneously generated and applied a greater number of effective waiting strategies. Going beyond classic research that taught children specific strategies to delay gratification, our results suggest that our new "metacognitive" approach can empower children's self-regulation. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

  PublisherDOI

• Personal perspectives on mindsets, motivation, and psychology.

  Motivation Science · 2024-02-26 · 14 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Motivation and Achievement

  2024-01-01 · 149 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Index of Names

  2024-05-17

  otherOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

Frequent coauthors

• David S. Yeager

  The University of Texas at Austin

  32 shared

• Gregory M. Walton

  29 shared

• Catherine Good

  23 shared

• Jennifer A. Mangels

  The Graduate Center, CUNY

  21 shared

• Aneeta Rattan

  London Business School

  20 shared

• Ying‐yi Hong

  19 shared

• James J. Gross

  17 shared

• Chi‐yue Chiu

  17 shared

Education

• Ph.D.

  Yale University

  1971

• M.S.

  University of Illinois

• B.A.

  University of Illinois

Awards & honors

• Book Award for Self-Theories, World Education Federation (20…
• Donald Campbell Career Achievement Award in Social Psycholog…
• Award for Innovative Program of the Year, “Brainology” (2008…
• Ann L. Brown Award for Research in Developmental Psychology,…
• Klingenstein Award for Leadership in Education, Klingenstein…