“Common sense suggests that ability inspires self-confidence. And it does for a while—so long as the going is easy. But setbacks change everything. Dweck realized—and, with colleague Elaine Elliott soon demonstrated—that the difference lay in the kids’ goals. ‘The mastery-oriented children are really hell-bent on learning something,’ Dweck says, and ‘learning goals’ inspire a different chain of thoughts and behaviors than ‘performance goals.’”

By Marina Krakovsky, discovered via Boing Boing.