Beyond Individual Beliefs—Understanding the Three Levels of Mindset
Post #1 in a "Year of Mindset" Series
Year of Mindset Series: We are thrilled to announce the release of Advances in Experimental Social Psychology’s chapter: The evolution of mindset research: Forging connections across individuals, situations, and cultures written by EA’s Dr. Mary Murphy and Dr. Kathy Emerson, along with long time colleagues and mindset experts Dr. Katie Kroeper and Dr. Dorainne Green. In this new publication, they distill how the field of mindset science and decades of research has evolved over time, and explore the future of the field for understanding how to create environments where everyone has the opportunity to learn, grow, and thrive. This research is pivotal to the work we do at EA, and we want to share different aspects of this knowledge, and how you can apply it to your work in a “Year of Mindset” series throughout 2026. More information about specific research studies can be found in the chapter.
When introduced decades ago, mindset was viewed as something that lives in people’s heads: you either believe intelligence is fixed, or you believe it can grow. For many years, this was the prevailing understanding held by both scholars and the general public. Since then, research reveals that mindsets operate at three distinct levels, and understanding these levels is crucial for anyone working to create more equitable learning and working environments.
The Micro-Level: Mindset as Individual Difference
This is the mindset we’re most familiar with. Mindset research started as a way to understand how individuals’ personally-held beliefs guide their experiences and behavior. At the micro-level, people hold mindset beliefs about whether intelligence and ability are fixed traits or can be developed. These beliefs form a meaning system that shapes their goals, motivation, and behavior.
Simply put, individuals with stronger growth mindset beliefs are generally more likely to embrace challenges, see effort as a path to mastery, and persist when things get difficult. Those with fixed mindset beliefs are more likely to avoid challenges, worry about looking smart, and even engage in defensive behaviors like cheating to protect their image.
Over the years, researchers designed programs (e.g., Mindset Works), often delivered directly to students, to teach them about brain science, shift their beliefs toward a growth mindset, and improve their academic outcomes, particularly for students facing academic challenges.
The Meso-Level: Situational Triggers and Interpersonal Dynamics
One thing revealed by these “mindset interventions” is the existence of a meso-level of mindset: that while people may generally hold certain mindset beliefs (what we refer to as a “mindset set point”), their beliefs are not static. They can often move along a continuum between a growth mindset and fixed mindset. This opened the door to new and exciting questions: what impacts whether someone adopts more fixed or growth mindset beliefs? What moves people along the mindset continuum toward a fixed or growth mindset?
To answer these questions, researchers investigated how different contexts and situations influence people’s mindset beliefs. They found that even people with strong growth mindset beliefs can be triggered into a fixed mindset by certain situations. Here are the four most common mindset triggers (situations that are most likely to move people toward a growth or fixed mindset):
Evaluative situations where we anticipate being judged
High-effort tasks that feel impossibly difficult
Critical feedback that feels personal
Others’ success that makes us question our own abilities
What these situations have in common is that they are fundamentally about relationships. How parents respond to children’s failures, how teachers praise effort versus ability, and how managers provide feedback all shape whether people access their growth or fixed mindsets. For example, when parents communicate that failure is debilitating rather than enhancing, children develop more fixed mindset beliefs. When teachers praise ability (”You’re so smart!”) rather than process (”You worked hard on this”), students become more helpless in the face of challenges. And when managers punish mistakes rather than recognize them as learning opportunities, employees are more likely to hide their failure at all costs.
The Macro-Level: Mindset as Culture
In 2010, Mary Murphy and Carol Dweck introduced us to the idea of mindset cultures (originally called organizational lay theories of intelligence). Since then, research on the macro-level of mindset has taken off. And the results are clear: mindset beliefs can be embedded in the structures and institutions around us, including within groups, teams, institutions, and organizations. This is the frontier of mindset research—and potentially the most powerful level for creating change.
Organizations, classrooms, and institutions don’t just contain individuals with different mindsets (micro-level) or situations that trigger a fixed or growth mindset (meso-level). They also can communicate collective beliefs about intelligence and ability through policies, practices, norms, and leadership messages. These mindset cultures, like individual mindset, exist on a continuum from a fixed-minded Culture of Genius (where only naturally talented people can succeed) to a growth-minded Culture of Growth (where everyone can develop with the right support).
The implications are profound. Students perform worse and achievement gaps are larger in classes taught by professors who endorse fixed mindset beliefs. Women and underrepresented minorities anticipate less belonging and more bias in organizations that signal fixed mindset cultures. Even when people personally hold growth mindset beliefs, they struggle in fixed mindset cultures. In contrast, growth mindset cultures communicate that everyone has the potential to succeed with effort, learning, good strategies, persistence, and seeking help from others.
Why This Matters
Understanding these three levels changes everything about how we approach mindset work. It’s not enough to teach individuals to hold growth mindset beliefs if they are trying to learn and grow in environments that signal fixed beliefs at every turn.
The most effective approaches seek to align all three levels. When schools, companies, or teams support individuals in developing growth mindset beliefs, help them successfully navigate situations that trigger fixed mindsets, and—most importantly—build cultures that reinforce growth mindset values through consistent policies and practices, then they create learning and working environments where everyone can truly grow.
Next month, we’ll review the 5 most common misconceptions about mindset, what the research actually shows, and how shifts in our understanding of mindset can ensure that everyone has the opportunity to thrive.
Register for EA’s Creating Growth Mindset Cultures in College Classrooms online course
Ready to create classroom cultures where more students persist, participate, and thrive? EA’s new online course gives higher ed instructors the evidence-based tools to help students feel empowered and motivated, improve persistence and grades, and results in stronger instructor satisfaction.
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