Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets: Why We Switch Between Both

Imagine we’re facing a challenge that feels just beyond our current capability. It could be a presentation to senior leadership, a competition where we’re slightly outmatched, or a technical skill we've been trying to master for months. In that moment, something shifts in how we think about our own capacity.

Sometimes we lean into the discomfort, viewing the gap as temporary and solvable through effort. Other times we pull away, treating the limitation as revelatory…as proof of a ceiling we've finally hit. We’re still the same person, but we had a different response depending on the situation. The question here isn't whether we have a growth mindset or a fixed one, likely, we have both. It's understanding why we toggle between them, often within the same day, and what that switching costs us when performance actually matters.

The Framework That Changed How We Think About Ability

Carol Dweck's research on mindsets fundamentally reframed how we understand human capability and development. Her work demonstrated that our beliefs about whether intelligence and ability are fixed traits or developable qualities shape everything from how we respond to failure to which challenges we're willing to tackle in the first place.

In her studies, people with fixed mindsets, defined as those who believe ability is largely innate and unchangeable, avoided challenges that might expose their perceived limitations. They interpreted setbacks as evidence of inadequacy, and effort itself became suspect, viewed as something only necessary when talent falls short. Meanwhile, those with growth mindsets treated ability as malleable. Challenges became opportunities, and setbacks provided information about what to adjust, not evidence that they weren’t capable.

The implications were profound across the board. Students with growth mindsets showed greater academic persistence. Athletes recovered from performance slumps more effectively. Professionals navigated career transitions with more resilience. The framework offers a clear path: cultivate growth mindset thinking, remove fixed mindset beliefs, and watch performance improve.

Dweck masterfully explores the nuances to the model to this in her work, but in many summaries of her studies or cherry-picked advice on fixed vs. growth, there’s a disconnect in how lived experience departs from the simplified version we often hear. Most of us don't actually occupy one mindset or the other consistently. We shift.

Why We Don't Stay in One Mindset

Research demonstrates that mindset isn't a stable trait; it's state-dependent and domain-specific. We might approach technical skills with a growth orientation while simultaneously holding fixed beliefs about our social capabilities or physical attributes. We might start a project with growth mindset energy and then, when progress stalls, slip into fixed thinking about our limitations.

When we're well-resourced, meaning adequate sleep, manageable stress load, some recent wins under our belt, etc. growth mindset thinking comes more naturally. Our prefrontal cortex maintains the executive function needed to reframe setbacks as information rather than verdicts. We’re okay with the longer time horizon that growth thinking requires, but under high load, something changes. Chronic stress, sleep deprivation, or sustained uncertainty all tax the same neural resources that enable growth mindset responses. The prefrontal cortex, which regulates emotional responses and maintains cognitive flexibility, shows reduced activity under prolonged strain.

Our system defaults toward faster, more automatic processing. That often means fixed thinking. It means categorical judgments about our own capability (i.e. “I’m not good enough.” or “I don’t have the talent for it.”) that requires less cognitive effort than the nuanced "I’m not able to yet, but I know I will eventually.” It's not necessarily that we've abandoned our beliefs about growth. It's that maintaining those beliefs requires resources we temporarily lack.

The Performance Cost of Fixed vs. Growth Mindsets

What we often miss in discussions of mindset is how the switching itself between growth and fixed affects performance, independent of which mindset we land in.

When we oscillate between growth and fixed thinking about a specific capability, we're essentially running conflicting programs. Growth mindset says the challenge in front of us is solvable through adjusted effort and strategy. Fixed mindset says this challenge reveals our limitations and shouldn’t be addressed. Both can't be simultaneously true about the same situation, so we toggle, often unconsciously, between frameworks.

This creates a particularly nasty kind of cognitive load. We're not just processing the challenge itself–we're also processing our constantly updating beliefs about whether we're the kind of person who can solve this type of challenge. That meta-level processing consumes working memory and attentional resources that could otherwise go toward actual problem-solving. We're simultaneously trying to perform and trying to determine if we're capable of performing.

The downstream effects compound. Inconsistent mindset creates inconsistent effort. If we believe a skill is developable on Monday but hit our ceiling on Wednesday, we might push hard early in the week and then back off, creating choppy exposure to the very practice needed for adaptation and for us to level-up. The pattern becomes self-reinforcing too, where inconsistent effort produces inconsistent results, which feeds uncertainty about our abilities, which then amplifies mindset switching.

What Drives the Switch

Several factors make fixed mindset thinking more likely to emerge, even in people who generally embrace growth-oriented beliefs. We’ll discuss a few of the main ones.

1. Physiological state matters more than we often acknowledge. Sleep restriction of even 1-2 hours per night for several days reduces activity in brain regions associated with cognitive flexibility and emotional regulation. Under those conditions, the nuanced thinking required for growth mindset responses becomes neurologically more costly, making a fixed approach more attractive. 

   
   

2. Domain familiarity plays a major role in shaping how stable our mindset is. In areas where we have deep experience and a track record of improvement, growth mindset thinking tends to be more robust to stressors. In novel domains or with new experiences, especially those that intersect with identity or social comparison, fixed thinking often emerges more readily. 

   
   

3. Social context provides constant feedback about our standing. Dweck's work highlighted how environments that emphasize talent over effort cultivate fixed mindsets. When we're in competitive environments where our performance is constantly ranked or compared, our system is prone to treat relative standing as information about fixed capacity. Even if we deeply believe in growth, the repeated signal of "you're currently worse than this other person,” or flip it as “this person is better than you,” gets processed as evidence about our fundamental capability in that domain.

   
   

4. The timeline matters. Growth mindset thinking requires holding a longer time horizon. Put another way, it requires the belief that our current limitations are temporary states, not permanent traits. Under pressure, especially time pressure, that future orientation becomes harder to maintain. We collapse our assessment to the present, often framing it as "Can I do this now?" rather than "Can I develop the capacity to do this?"

The Under-discussed Angle: Peak Performance States

An area of fixed vs. growth that is less addressed is the relationship between mindset and acute performance states (i.e. how we show up in the moment).

Many mindset discussions focus on development over time, that is, how our beliefs about capability shape our willingness to improve our skills and self. That's incredibly important, but there's also an underlying question. What mindset serves us best when we need to perform at our peak with our current capabilities?

While we might default to saying growth, the more accurate answer isn't straightforward. In flow states or peak performance moments, we're not thinking about development at all. We're not evaluating whether our capabilities are fixed or growable. We're executing with our current ability and fully absorbed in the task itself. The meta-cognition that both mindsets require (i.e. "am I the kind of person who can develop this" or "am I the kind of person who has this ability") pulls us out of this kind of performance state.

Some of the highest level, most impressive people across domains seem to hold both mindsets simultaneously, and they do it in a specific way. It’s as if they have a fixed mindset about their current capability in the moment of performance, and a growth mindset about their long-term developmental trajectory. During competition or high-stakes execution, they're not questioning whether they can develop the needed skills; they're assuming they already have them and executing accordingly. The growth orientation emerges in training, in preparation, in the periods between performances where development actually happens.

This suggests something that’s not often said. Growth mindset, for all its benefits in supporting long-term development, can actually undermine peak performance if it shows up at the wrong time. If we're in the middle of a presentation or a race or a critical negotiation and we're thinking "I can develop the ability to do this better," we’re not fully present with what’s at hand, and we’ve already sacrificed peak performance. We're in our head about capability rather than executing with what we have.

What This Implies

We rarely have one mindset. We have context-dependent beliefs about who we are and what we’re capable of that shift based on a multitude of factors. The general fixed vs growth mindset model is incredibly valuable, but it also pays to remember that it’s not necessarily a binary. Dweck is quite clear about this, but it’s often lost in translation. Our beliefs about whether ability is fixed or developable shape our behavior in major, measurable ways, but living it requires more nuance than we often expect.

When it comes to high-pressure performance, the message here is to recognize when each mindset serves us and when it doesn't. Growth orientation enables the long-term persistence and strategic adjustment that development requires. In moments of peak performance though, it pays to set aside questions about our developmental capacity and fully commit to executing with our current capabilities.

Seen this way, becoming more effective isn't about eliminating fixed mindset thinking entirely. It's more about living our lives in the growth mindset, but turning a fixed framing into a specialty tool we can utilize with intention when our situation demands it. We can embrace growth thinking in training and preparation while trusting our current capabilities during performance. 

It's not that we need to believe we can always develop every capability. It's that we need to believe we can develop in the right contexts, perform with what we have in the right moments, and recognize when to switch between the two.

References

1. Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Random House.

2. Dweck, C. S., & Leggett, E. L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological Review, 95(2), 256-273.

3. Yeager, D. S., & Dweck, C. S. (2012). Mindsets that promote resilience: When students believe that personal characteristics can be developed. Educational Psychologist, 47(4), 302-314.

4. Arnsten, A. F. (2009). Stress signaling pathways that impair prefrontal cortex structure and function. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 10(6), 410-422.

5. Crum, A. J., Salovey, P., & Achor, S. (2013). Rethinking stress: The role of mindsets in determining the stress response. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(4), 716-733.

6. Burgoyne, A. P., et al. (2020). How firm are the foundations of mind-set theory? The claims appear stronger than the evidence. Psychological Science, 31(3), 258-267.

7. Sherman, D. K., & Cohen, G. L. (2006). The psychology of self-defense: Self-affirmation theory. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 183-242.