Research on growth mindsets about intelligence-beliefs that cognitive ability can be developed through effort and learning-often highlights benefits such as narrowing achievement gaps.Nonetheless, by emphasizing controllability in the domain of intelligence, growth-mindset messages can also increase blame for intellectual difficulties relative to fixed-mindset frames that portray intelligence as largely innate.Across eight intelligence-focused studies (N = 1,820), we document this cost for judgments of both others and the self: Growth-mindset inductions, compared to fixed-mindset inductions, increased blame and led participants to infer that targets had exerted less effort.The blaming effect diminished when it was clear that the task exceeded what an average person typically achieves.Finally, a coherent "genes-and-growth" message that acknowledged genetic influence while emphasizing epigenetics and neuroplasticity preserved motivation to persist while tempering self-blame.Taken together, these findings argue for more nuanced implementation of growth-mindset messaging about intelligence and motivate field research on the longer term consequences of chronic self-blame and on interventions that pair malleability cues with clear information about task difficulty and genetic constraints. Public Significance StatementSchools, workplaces, and parents often teach that intelligence can grow with effort.Across our experiments, messages that more strongly emphasized effort-based growth were associated with greater blame for reading and math struggles, partly because observers interpreted difficulty as "not enough effort."This study also identifies two correctives: Making task difficulty explicit reduces blame when challenges exceed what most people can accomplish, and a coherent "genes-andgrowth" message-acknowledging genetic differences while emphasizing neuroplasticitypreserves motivation to persist without amplifying self-reproach.These findings suggest simple refinements to growth-mindset communications used in schools and beyond: pair malleability messages with clear information about typical challenge levels and with realistic guidance about when to adjust strategies or goals to reduce stigmatizing blame and support healthier, more sustainable learning.
Ahn et al. (Thu,) studied this question.