---
title: "Growth Mindset Interventions: For Whom They Work"
description: A 2023 meta-analysis of 53 randomised samples found small, variable
  growth mindset effects, larger for targeted groups. What that means for
  leaders.
url: https://linusmurphy.com/news/growth-mindset-interventions-for-whom-and-why/
language: en-GB
type: article
author: Linus Murphy
author_url: https://linusmurphy.com/about/
published: 2026-10-12
modified: 2026-10-12
---

[News](https://linusmurphy.com/news/)

# Growth mindset interventions: for whom they work, and why

By [Linus Murphy](https://linusmurphy.com/about/) • 12 October 2026

![Row of seedlings at different heights in terracotta pots on a sunlit windowsill](https://linusmurphy.com/images/news/growth-mindset-interventions-for-whom-and-why.webp)

A 2023 meta-analysis of 53 randomised samples testing growth mindset interventions found small average effects that varied widely, and were larger when well-delivered interventions reached the people expected to benefit. For leaders, the lesson is precise: a belief about ability is a weak lever on its own. Who hears it, and how faithfully it is delivered, matters more.

The study is [Burnette and colleagues’ systematic review and meta-analysis of growth mindset interventions](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36227318/), published in *Psychological Bulletin* by Jeni Burnette, Joseph Billingsley, George Banks, Laura Knouse, Crystal Hoyt, Jeffrey Pollack and Stefanie Simon. The full article sits behind a paywall, so the figures below come from the official abstract, and where I describe its methods in more detail I say whose account I am relying on.

## What did Burnette and colleagues set out to test?

They asked for whom, how and why growth mindset interventions work, rather than simply whether they work. The review covered randomised trials published from 2002, the year of the first mindset intervention, to the end of 2020.

A growth mindset intervention teaches people that abilities can be developed rather than being fixed. Most are short. Many are delivered online to students.

To be included, an article had to report an effect for a growth mindset intervention, use a randomised design and measure at least one qualifying outcome. The search produced 53 independent samples testing distinct interventions.

The team reported effects at several stages: on mindsets themselves, on motivation, on behaviour and on end results. They focused on three end results: academic achievement, mental health and social functioning. That breadth matters. Most of the public argument about growth mindset is about school grades, and this review deliberately looked wider.

## What did the meta-analysis find?

Effects were small on average and varied a great deal. Where interventions reached the groups expected to benefit and were delivered as designed, the abstract reports positive effects on achievement and larger ones on mental health.

The numbers, all from the abstract, are expressed as *d*, a standardised effect size. A *d* of 0.14 means the average person in the treated group moved about a seventh of a standard deviation relative to the control group.

| End result | Effect for targeted, high-fidelity interventions | 95% prediction interval |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Academic achievement | d = 0.14 (95% CI 0.06 to 0.22) | −0.08 to 0.35 |
| Mental health | d = 0.32 (95% CI 0.10 to 0.54) | 0.07 to 0.57 |
| Social functioning | d = 0.36 average (95% CI 0.03 to 0.68), too few studies to test moderators | −0.50 to 1.22 |

The prediction interval is the column I would read first. It estimates the range of effects to expect from the next intervention, not the precision of the average. For achievement, it crosses zero. A new programme could help modestly, do nothing or do slight harm.

The authors put it plainly: their results “highlighted the extensive variation in effects to be expected from future interventions.”

Is 0.14 large or small? It depends on the yardstick. Tipton and colleagues, in the commentary I come to below, [compare it with education benchmarks](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10495100/): a year of ninth-grade maths learning tends to raise test scores by about 0.22 standard deviations. Against that, a brief, cheap intervention producing a seventh of a standard deviation for the right students is not trivial. Against the promises made on conference stages, it is modest.

## Why does “for whom” matter more than the average?

Because an average across very different people can hide a real effect in one group and no effect in another. Burnette and colleagues built their analysis around that variation instead of treating it as noise.

Their first moderator was what they called subsamples expected to benefit most. In practice, that usually meant the group the original researchers had singled out in advance as likely to gain, often students who were struggling or at risk.

A large US trial shows why. In 2019, David Yeager and colleagues reported in *Nature* that [a short online growth mindset intervention, under an hour long, improved grades among lower-achieving students](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31391586/) in a nationally representative sample of secondary school students. It also increased enrolment in advanced mathematics.

A later commentary in the same journal, by Elizabeth Tipton, Christopher Bryan, Jared Murray, Mark McDaniel, Barbara Schneider and David Yeager, explains the design. The national study expected benefits only for lower-achieving students, because [students who already have straight A grades cannot get higher grades](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10495100/), whatever they believe. Several of the commentators worked on that study, which is worth knowing when weighing their view.

Blend those two groups into one number and the effect shrinks. Model them separately and a pattern appears. That is the logic of the Burnette review. By Tipton and colleagues’ account, it reported an overall average effect of 0.09 standard deviations, with larger effects among targeted groups.

## What does delivery quality have to do with it?

A great deal. The second moderator was implementation fidelity: whether the intervention was delivered as it was designed to be. The headline effects in the abstract are for interventions that were both targeted and delivered with high fidelity.

That should be familiar to anyone who has watched a corporate programme lose its shape between the design room and the twentieth cohort. The content survives. The conditions that made it work do not.

The Yeager study adds a further condition. It found the intervention changed grades where peer norms aligned with its message. In other words, the context had to let people act on the belief. A message that ability can grow, delivered into a room that punishes visible effort, has little to work with.

## Why might growth mindset interventions work at all?

The authors specified a process model and reported outcomes at four stages: mindsets, motivation, behaviour and end results. Read in that order, the stages describe a chain. A changed belief only matters if it changes what people try, and how they respond when it goes badly.

The abstract gives figures only for the end results, so I will not put numbers on the earlier links. What I take from the model is the sequence. A belief that does not show up in behaviour has no route to results.

The mental health result deserves its own note. An effect of 0.32 for targeted, well-delivered interventions is larger than the achievement effect, and its prediction interval stays above zero. That is still a small body of research, and none of it is about executives. But it points at something leaders recognise: how a person interprets a setback shapes how much it costs them.

One boundary belongs next to that finding. A mental health effect in a trial is not a licence to treat strain as an attitude problem. If someone is struggling in a way that looks like a health matter, the right response is professional care, not a reframing exercise.

## What are the limits of this evidence?

Three matter most for a senior reader. The research is mostly on students, the effects vary widely, and a second meta-analysis in the same journal and issue read the field far more sceptically.

That second review, by Brooke Macnamara and Alexander Burgoyne, examined [63 studies with 97,672 students and found a small overall effect on academic achievement that was not significant after correcting for possible publication bias](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36326645/). They concluded that apparent effects were likely due to inadequate study design, reporting flaws and bias. I set out why two careful teams reached such different conclusions in [my companion piece on why the growth mindset meta-analyses disagree](https://linusmurphy.com/news/growth-mindset-meta-analyses-disagree/).

Burnette and colleagues themselves close their abstract with “a discussion of heterogeneity and the limitations of meta-analyses.” They do not claim a universal effect. The honest summary is narrow: modest benefits, for some groups, when delivery is good.

There is also no direct evidence here on senior leaders. Any translation to a boardroom is my judgement, not the study’s finding.

## What is Linus Murphy’s take?

My take is that the research is right to ask “for whom?”, and leaders should ask the same question of every development programme they fund. A belief about ability is a small lever. Targeting, delivery and the surrounding culture decide whether it moves anything.

This sits in [the “Know yourself first” cluster of my Executive Coaching Methodology](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/#know-yourself-first). The work there is about what happens inside a leader before it shows up in the room. Two parts of the 30-part series carry most of it.

The first is [Winning is an inside job](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/leadership-from-the-inside-out/winning-is-an-inside-job/). I treat mental preparation as specific drills, not positive thinking. The Burnette findings support that stance from a different angle: a general message about growth does little, while a targeted, well-practised routine has a chance.

The second is [Self and team awareness](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/leadership-from-the-inside-out/self-and-team-awareness/). “For whom” is an awareness question. Before anyone prescribes a mindset fix, you need clean data on where a leader or a team is actually stuck. In my [7-step coaching process](https://linusmurphy.com/services/impactful-leadership-7-step-executive-coaching-process/), that is step two, Awareness, where we identify mindset or capability gaps rather than assume them.

Fidelity is the bridge to [Your personal development plan](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/the-price-tag-of-leadership/your-personal-development-plan/). A plan with one theme, practised in real work and reviewed weekly, is a high-fidelity intervention. A competency list in a drawer is not. Step five of my process, Improvement, runs the same observe, adjust, advance loop on live decisions.

For teams, the closest fit is [Attitude: what difference does it make?](https://linusmurphy.com/guide/building-winning-teams/attitude-what-difference-does-it-make/). There I argue that attitude shows most in how a leader explains a setback. That is the behaviour a mindset is supposed to change, and it can be heard in the minutes of a meeting.

A pattern I see often is a company buying a mindset workshop for everyone, measuring attendance and calling it culture. The research suggests the opposite design. Pick the people for whom the belief is the real constraint. Deliver the work properly. Then fix the system around them.

## What should a leader do with this research?

Treat mindset as one input to a system, not as the system. Target it, deliver it well and check whether behaviour changes.

Four practical moves follow.

1.  **Name the group.** Ask who, specifically, is held back by a belief that their ability is fixed. A new manager after a first public miss is a different case from a seasoned director who is simply overloaded.
2.  **Protect delivery.** If a programme works in its pilot, keep the conditions that made it work as it scales: the facilitator, the follow-up, the time to practise.
3.  **Check the culture’s message.** Elizabeth Canning, Carol Dweck, Jennifer Chatman and colleagues surveyed more than 500 employees at seven Fortune 1000 companies. Those who saw their employer as endorsing a fixed view of talent [reported less collaboration, innovation and integrity, and less trust and commitment](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31502926/). Promotions, post-mortems and what leaders say after a miss carry that message more loudly than any workshop.
4.  **Measure behaviour, not belief.** Look for a better next attempt after a setback, not a higher score on a mindset questionnaire.

This is also why I rarely recommend generic programmes to senior people. I explain the wider argument in [why CEO coaching beats generic leadership training](https://linusmurphy.com/articles/why-ceo-coaching-beats-generic-leadership-training/). The growth mindset research is a clean example of the same principle: the right message, aimed at the wrong person or delivered badly, does very little.

If you want to work out where a belief is genuinely limiting you or your team, [personal development coaching](https://linusmurphy.com/services/personal-development-coaching/) is where I start that work, one leader at a time.

## Questions I am asked

**Do growth mindset interventions work?**

Sometimes, for some people, and modestly. A 2023 meta-analysis of 53 randomised samples by Jeni Burnette and colleagues found small average effects that varied widely, with larger effects when interventions were well delivered to the groups expected to benefit most.

**How big were the effects in the Burnette et al. meta-analysis?**

For targeted groups receiving well-delivered interventions, the abstract reports d = 0.14 for academic achievement and d = 0.32 for mental health. The 95% prediction interval for achievement ran from −0.08 to 0.35, so some future interventions could do nothing or slightly worse.

**Who benefits most from a growth mindset intervention?**

The groups the original researchers expected to benefit, which were often students who were struggling or at risk. Burnette and colleagues treated these as focal subsamples, and the effects were stronger the more an intervention or analysis was aimed at them.

**Should a company run growth mindset training for its senior team?**

I would not buy a one-off workshop on the strength of this evidence. Almost all of it comes from students, the effects are small and variable, and they depend on who receives the message and how faithfully it is delivered.

**Does this research mean mindset is irrelevant for executives?**

No. It means the belief alone is a weak lever and the surrounding system does the heavy lifting. Separate research by Elizabeth Canning and colleagues found that employees who saw their company as holding a fixed view of talent reported less trust and commitment.

## Sources

1.  [A systematic review and meta-analysis of growth mindset interventions: For whom, how, and why might such interventions work?](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36227318/) — Psychological Bulletin (PubMed), 13 October 2022
2.  [Do growth mindset interventions impact students' academic achievement? A systematic review and meta-analysis with recommendations for best practices](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36326645/) — Psychological Bulletin (PubMed), 3 November 2022
3.  [Why meta-analyses of growth mindset and other interventions should follow best practices for examining heterogeneity: Commentary on Macnamara and Burgoyne (2023) and Burnette et al. (2023)](https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10495100/) — Psychological Bulletin (PubMed Central), March 2023
4.  [A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31391586/) — Nature (PubMed), 7 August 2019
5.  [Cultures of Genius at Work: Organizational Mindsets Predict Cultural Norms, Trust, and Commitment](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31502926/) — Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin (PubMed), 10 September 2019

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**[Linus Murphy](https://linusmurphy.com/about/)**

Elite executive coach