The role of growth mindset in motivating novice persistence: how experts bounce back after failure

Abstract

Experts become experts partly because of their willingness to engage in thousands of hours of deliberate practice. What motivates this persistence despite constant failure? This question was addressed in a study replicated from Chase (2013) of experts in the domains of mathematics and English literature enrolled at a U.S. university (N = 40, 23 mathematics and 17 English experts). We investigated their persistence when tackling challenging tasks in their domain of expertise and the domain in which they were novices. Different patterns in experts’ verbalized failure attributions for their in-domain task and their out-domain task were explained by the implicit theory of intelligence individuals held. These findings indicate experts’ failure attributions and growth mindset may bolster persistence when tackling challenging problems in their domains. Future research might explore whether interventions encouraging a growth mindset may motivate novices to persist even after repeated failures on the path to expertise.