In 'Psyched Up', we find out what’s wrong with the pop psychology fads we love.

In the latest installment of Bollywood’s fixation with the struggle trope, Manoj from 12th Fail is a tragedy-stricken-village-simpleton who, by way of his unrelenting spirit, scales the mountain of struggle to become an IPS officer. Through the film, Chopra inadvertently proffered the multi-billion dollar motivational industry its latest hashtag, “restart” – enthusiastically adopted by netizens and even some online educators.

How did this character reignite hustle culture syndrome and the tech-bro rhetoric? It could have to do with the fact that the narrative neatly dovetails with the mythos of the “growth mindset” – where perseverance is touted as the key to success. The actual point of the film notwithstanding, such an interpretation bears scrutiny.

Since the re-emergence of the concept, the idea of the “growth mindset” has snowballed, escaping classrooms and sliding into conference rooms. Several corporations now openly endorse ‘growth mindset’ as part of their company culture in their mission statements and new talent acquisition charters. In an article in Harvard Business Review, Kathleen Hogan, Chief People Officer and executive vice president of Human Resources at Microsoft, and Carol Dweck, psychologist and author of the book ‘Mindset’ state, “The company is already seeing the benefits in the form of more-innovative ideas and products — and employees are developing leadership skills in unexpected places, at every level”.The piece shared Microsoft’s productive outcomes from implementing the theory. A key aspect of their strategy is encouraging their workers to take risks and reward the ones which “propel the business forward”. Such an undue emphasis on optimal performance at the workplace reinforces the pursuit of an idealized self – not just as a trend or personal hobby – but as one required by economic forces. This myopic view coupled with its oversight of systemic barriers to individual success such as structural inequalities, access to resources, and institutional discrimination creates a doctrine for the capitalist zeitgeist. It tells people they can achieve anything if they just get themselves in the right ‘headspace’ for it.

But for all its self-mythologizing, does the growth mindset theory actually somewhat work despite all the systemic issues? Let’s go back to where it all began. An American Psychologist B. F. Skinner in the 1930s invented ‘operant conditioning’ for school goers. Conceptualized as positive and negative reinforcement tools for behavior modification, Skinner’s metacognitive theory sprouted several offshoots over the years: the Pygmalion effect by Rosenthal and Jacobsen in 1968, the Galatea effect of 1982 and the 2000s Growth Mindset.

Straddling psychology and philosophy, this concept took a quasi-religious turn. “Any popular idea in education gets spread way ahead of how ready the science is”, says psychologist David Yeager of the University of Texas at Austin. As yet another belief system theory it was easily bought into by the public with a little help from its proponents. And there’s more: the “growth-mindset” theory evolved out of the public fallout over another popular movement in popular psychology: “The concept of mindsets was a direct response to the self-esteem movement”, Lydia Denworth noted in Scientific American,

“The flawed yet infectious notion that, in order to thrive, people need to be treated with unconditional positivity first gained traction in the late 80s. Since then, the self-esteem movement has helped transform the way we raise our children – prioritizing their feelings of self-worth, telling them they are special and amazing, and cocooning them from everyday consequences”, wrote Will Storr, an investigative journalist in The Guardian. However, once the trend established its iron grip on American society of then, things went downhill. The self-love movement, since vectored through the arduous efforts of a born-again-Christian politician in California, enlisted researchers at the University of California to conduct studies proving its efficacy. However, replication tests of the study failed to furnish any substantial results besides minor correlations and thus, following a public fallout, the trend petered away, only to be replaced by a new iteration.

For a while, there was no blockbuster theory which captivated the pop psych industry. Then, in 2013, Angela Duckworth, an Ivy League-bred Professor of Psychology, gave a TED Talk. In it, she shared her theory of “grit” as a predictor of success in the world. Since then, the video of her talk has been viewed over 31 million times. Duckworth's subsequent book, "Grit" (2016)set in motion a rediscovery of ideas that had lain dormant for several years: Carol Dweck’s theory of the ‘growth mindset’ in her book. Dweck’s earlier book ‘Mindset: The New Psychology of Success,’ was cited as an actionable set of instructions, and it took hold of the milieu yet again.

In the book, Dweck suggests this simple test to assess a person’s mindset. Pick a statement you agree with:

1. Your intelligence is something very basic about you that you can’t change very much.
2. You can learn new things, but you can’t really change how intelligent you are.
3. No matter how much intelligence you have, you can always change it quite a bit.
4. You can always substantially change how intelligent you are.

Depending on what you chose, your response can determine whether you have a fixed or ‘growth’ mindset. If you happen to agree with the first two and disagree with the latter two, you have a fixed mindset. However, if your response is just the reverse of it, congratulations, you have yourself a growth mindset.

Piggybacking on this theory, Duckworth explains, “The growth-oriented people assume that it’s possible, for example, to get smarter if you’re given the right opportunities and support and if you try hard enough and if you believe you can do it.” On the other hand, “with a fixed mindset, you’re likely to interpret setbacks as evidence that, after all, you don’t have “the right stuff”—you’re not good enough” she writes. Speaking to Aeon, Carl Hendrick author of How Learning Happens (2020) writes, “The notion of intelligence as something innate and fixed has been supplanted by the idea that intelligence is instead something malleable; that we are not prisoners of immutable characteristics and that, with the right training, we can be the authors of our cognitive capabilities”. Indeed, like most ideas this one too has existed for several decades, getting recast with minor alterations to the mostly steady foundation.

Critics – like Hendrick – have pointed out the problems with this theory. For one, it can lead to a major case of ‘analysis paralysis’. Arm-twisting oneself into a dogged pursuit of growth that deems any halt in momentum – one imperative for reflection – as stagnancy is a slippery slope leading straight to burnout, despair and dejection.

Writing for the Harvard Business Review, Carol Dweck herself states, “ ‘Growth mindset’ has become a buzzword in many major companies, even working its way into their mission statements. But when I probe, I often discover that people have a limited understanding of the idea”. Fraught with catchphrases like ‘reprogram’, ‘transformation’ and ‘self-discovery’ the industry built upon the rather flakey pillars of the growth mindset has mushroomed innumerable startups, all hinged on a culture of ceaseless climbing. YouTube hosts an absurdly high number of channels offering ‘online training’ and certification courses to walk you to your life purpose as a ‘life coach’. Mindvalley, a channel with 2.34 million subscribers has a video titled, ‘How To Become A Successful Mindset Coach In 3 Simple Steps’, while hundreds of self-proclaimed gurus are making claims about ‘disciplined routines’ to help us attain six-figure salaries. In recent years, the abstract concept of a ‘growth mindset’ has gone a step further to metamorphosis as an ‘abundance mindset’ aiming to procure tangible results. Popular podcasters like BeerBiceps, Jay Shetty and Mel Robbins sprinkle words like brainwash or hacking your brain for success, giving the narrative a scientific hue for enhanced realism.

Growth mindset rhetoric has also seeped into education. “Millions of dollars have gone into funding mindset research. If it turns out this doesn’t work, that’s a massive lost opportunity,” says psychologist Timothy Bates of the University of Edinburgh, senior author of a study conducting the replication test of Dweck’s study. The growth mindset’s propounder Dweck herself speaking to Scientific American says, “Pinning a poster about growth mindset on the wall of a classroom does not help if the teacher creates an environment where kids are afraid of making a mistake”. She highlights, “The environment has to support the belief change and the behaviors that come with it.”

As Hendrick points out, “In many cases, growth mindset theory has been misrepresented and miscast as simply a means of motivating the unmotivated through pithy slogans and posters”. “If one student is playing with a weaker hand, is it fair to tell the student that she is just not making enough effort? A growth mindset – like its educational-psychology cousin ‘grit’ – can have the unintended consequence of making students feel responsible for things that are not under their control: that their lack of success is a failure of moral character”, Hendrick adds.

So far, studies have not been able to attest to any positive results through substantial testing techniques, all available results showing improvement in learning have been based on circumstantial and subjective analysis of test subjects. In the realm of education, the idea that mere perseverance and effort can overcome all challenges has come under scrutiny over questionable statistical methods to the possibility of a confirmation bias of researchers. Critics argue that the mindset method of success oversimplifies the complexities of learning, neglecting factors like structural inequalities, varied learning styles, and diverse socioeconomic backgrounds that influence educational outcomes. To assume that a growth mindset can be a cure-all is compelling us to chase the proverbial carrot.

Furthermore, the relentless pursuit of growth— the unwavering dedication to long-term objectives—may inadvertently cultivate a culture of overwork and set one up for disillusionment. Even prominent figures like Cal Newport, renowned for his work on productivity such as "Deep Work," advocate for "slow productivity" as a sustainable alternative to the prevailing sense of overwhelm. The relentless push from a culture fixated on growth mindset, promoting shock-and-awe methods that glorify ceaseless labor, can be seen as symptomatic of a psychological crisis permeating popular culture.

The resonant words of Eric Thomas, "When you want to succeed as bad as you want to breathe, then you'll be successful," or Steve Jobs' famous mantra, "stay hungry, stay foolish," lay bare the pervasive glorification of achievement ideology, contributing to a culture of unrealistic expectations and objectives. In this narrative, perpetual insatiability is revered, risk-taking is hailed as wisdom, and the refusal to confine oneself or limit horizons becomes central to self-concept.

“In a consumerist society, we are not meant to buy one pair of jeans and then be satisfied”, Cederström and Spicer write, authors of ‘The Wellness Syndrome’. “We are being sold on the need to upgrade all parts of ourselves, all at once, including parts that we did not previously know needed upgrading. There is a great deal of money to be made by those who diagnose and treat our fears of inadequacy” they comment, adding that the self-improvement industry rings in ten billion dollars a year. “We are under pressure to show that we know how to lead the perfect life”.

According to the British journalist Will Storr, “People are suffering and dying under the torture of the fantasy self they’re failing to become”. This “aspirational narcissism” which plagues our culture makes “survival in the hypercompetitive, globalized economy, where workers have fewer protections and are more disposable than ever” even more demanding of us, in terms of speed and yield. What was initially an incidental response to the capitalism-led transformations in our society, marked by the rise of industrial societies and then the ‘corporate culture’, has now become second nature. We’ve learnt that we must fight the inertia because anything less than our maximum is not enough anymore. Yet like a bad penny, the ethos of this spectacle keeps turning up, reinvented every decade.

“Self-help advice tends to reflect the beliefs and priorities of the era that spawns it,” observes, Alexandra Schwartz, on the impulse to keep improving ourselves. In the era of hustle culture and accelerated capitalism, growth mindset is it.

Today, armed with the genius of technology, the same industry sells us quantifiable metrics instead of wishy-washy scripts. January arrives, and we find ourselves bombarded with productivity challenges, from the latest "#75harddays" regimen to the "#100daysofproductivity" trend. We're subtly coerced into embracing a heightened self-awareness centered around productivity, with technology offering us tantalizing glimpses of our potential future selves.The emphasis leans heavily on progress and output, sidelining the intrinsic value of the process itself. We are both Pavlov and his dog, conditioning ourselves through (self)praise because the harmless and episodic ‘progress-update post’ is a wellspring for our waning motivation. Caught in this cycle, we resemble the dog chasing its tail—exhausted from the pursuit of ever-elusive targets yet unable to break free.