Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

The fixed mindset may also play a role in how the victim reacts to bullying. When people feel deeply judged by a rejection, their impulse is to feel bad about themselves and to lash out in bitterness. They have been cruelly reduced and they wish to reduce in return. In our studies, we have seen perfectly normal people—children and adults—respond to rejection with violent fantasies of revenge.

Highly educated, well-functioning adults, after telling us about a serious rejection or betrayal, say and mean “I wanted him dead” or “I could easily have strangled her.”

When we hear about acts of school violence, we usually think it’s only bad kids from bad homes who could ever take matters into their own hands. But it’s startling how quickly average, everyday kids with a fixed mindset think about violent revenge.

We gave eighth-grade students in one of our favorite schools a scenario about bullying to read. We asked them to imagine it was happening to them.

It is a new school year and things seem to be going pretty well. Suddenly some popular kids start teasing you and calling you names. At first you brush it off—these things happen. But it continues. Every day they follow you, they taunt you, they make fun of what you’re wearing, they make fun of what you look like, they tell you you’re a loser—in front of everybody. Every day.

We then asked them to write about what they would think and what they would do or want to do.

First, the students with the fixed mindset took the incident more personally. They said, “I would think I was a nobody and that nobody likes me.” Or “I would think I was stupid and weird and a misfit.”

Then they wanted violent revenge, saying that they’d explode with rage at them, punch their faces in, or run them over. They strongly agreed with the statement: “My number one goal ould be to get revenge.”

They had been judged and they wanted to judge back. That’s what Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the Columbine shooters, did. They judged back. For a few long, terrible hours, they decided who would live and who would die.

In our study, the students with the growth mindset were not as prone to see the bullying as a reflection of who they were. Instead, they saw it as a psychological problem of the bullies, a way for the bullies to gain status or charge their self-esteem: “I’d think that the reason he is bothering me is probably that he has problems at home or at school with his grades.” Or “They need to get a life—not just feel good if they make me feel bad.”

Their plan was often designed to educate the bullies: “I would really actually talk to them. I would ask them questions (why are they saying all of these things and why are they doing all of this to me).” Or “Confront the person and discuss the issue; I would feel like trying to help them see they are not funny.”

The students with the growth mindset also strongly agreed that: “I would want to forgive them eventually” and “My number one goal would be to help them become better people.”

Whether they’d succeed in personally reforming or educating determined bullies is doubtful. However, these are certainly more constructive first steps than running them over.

Brooks Brown, a classmate of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, was bullied from third grade on. He suffered tremendously, yet he didn’t look for revenge. He rejected the fixed mindset and the right of people to judge others, as in “I am a football player, and therefore I’m better than you.” Or “I am a basketball player … pathetic geeks like you are not on my level.”

More than that, he actively embraced a growth mindset. In his own words, “People do have the potential to change.” Even maybe Eric Harris, the more depressed, hostile leader of the shootings. Brown had had a very serious run-in with Eric Harris several years before, but in their senior year of high school, Brown offered a truce. “I told him that I had changed a lot since that year … and that I hoped he felt the same way about himself.” Brooks went on to say that if he found that Eric hadn’t changed, he could always pull back. “However, if he had grown up, then why not give him the chance to prove it.”

Brooks hasn’t given up. He still wants to change people. He wants to wake up the world to the problem of bullying, and he wants to reach victims and turn them off their violent fantasies. So he’s worked for the filmmaker Michael Moore on Bowling for Columbine and he’s set up an innovative website where bullied kids can communicate with each other and learn that the answer isn’t to kill. “It’s to use your mind and make things better.”