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
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
Brooks, like me, does not see the shooters as people who are a world apart from everyone else. His friend Dylan Klebold, he says, was once a regular kid from a fine home with loving, involved parents. In fact, he warns, “We can just sit back and call the shooters ‘sick monsters, completely different from us.’ … Or we can accept that there are more Erics and Dylans out there, who are slowly being driven … down the same path.”
Even if a victim doesn’t have a fixed mindset to begin with, prolonged bullying can instill it. Especially if others stand by and do nothing, or even join in. Victims say that when they’re taunted and demeaned and no one comes to their defense, they start to believe they deserve it. They start to judge themselves and to think that they
Bullies judge. Victims take it in. Sometimes it remains inside and can lead to depression and suicide. Sometimes it explodes into violence.
Individual children can’t usually stop the bullies, especially when the bullies attract a group of supporters. But the school can—by changing the school mindset.
School cultures often promote, or at least accept, the fixed mindset. They accept that some kids feel superior to others and feel entitled to pick on them. They also consider some kids to be misfits whom they can do little to help.
But some schools have created a dramatic reduction in bullying by fighting the atmosphere of judgment and creating one of collaboration and self-improvement. Stan Davis, a therapist, school counselor, and consultant, has developed an anti-bullying program that works. Building on the work of Dan Olweus, a researcher in Norway, Davis’s program helps bullies change, supports victims, and empowers bystanders to come to a victim’s aid. Within a few years, physical bullying in his school was down 93 percent and teasing was down 53 percent.
Darla, a third grader, was overweight, awkward, and a “crybaby.” She was such a prime target that half of the class bullied her, hitting her and calling her names on a daily basis—and winning one another’s approval for it. Several years later, because of Davis’s program, the bullying had stopped. Darla had learned better social skills and even had friends. Then Darla went to middle school and, after a year, came back to report what had happened. Her classmates from elementary school had seen her through. They’d helped her make friends and protected her from her new peers when they wanted to harass her.
Davis also gets the bullies changing. In fact, some of the kids who rushed to Darla’s support in middle school were the same ones who had bullied her earlier. What Davis does is this. First, while enforcing consistent discipline, he doesn’t judge the bully as a person. No criticism is directed at traits. Instead, he makes them feel liked and welcome at school every day.
Then he praises every step in the right direction. But again, he does not praise the person; he praises their effort. “I notice that you have been staying out of fights. That tells me you are working on getting along with people.” You can see that Davis is leading students directly to the growth mindset. He is helping them see their actions as part of an effort to improve. Even if the change was not intentional on the part of the bullies, they may now try to make it so.
Stan Davis has incorporated our work on praise, criticism, and mindsets into his program, and it has worked. This is a letter I got from him.
Dear Dr. Dweck:
Your research has radically changed the way I work with students. I am already seeing positive results from my own different use of language to give feedback to young people. Next year our whole school is embarking on an initiative to build student motivation based on [growth] feedback.
Yours,
Stan Davis
Haim Ginott, the renwned child psychologist, also shows how teachers can point bullies away from judgment and toward improvement and compassion. Here is a letter from a teacher to an eight-year-old bully in her class.
