Carol Dweck’s TED talk “The power of believing you can improve” and Lukianoff and Haidt’s article “The Coddling of the American Mind” have many similarities regarding how we think as humans in today’s rapidly developing society. Dweck discusses the benefits of using a “growth mindset” in school which embraces the process of a problem rather than being discouraged when you don’t get it the first time. Lukianoff and Haidt challenge the idea of restricting our speech to prevent emotional discomfort for those around us. Both surround the usage of what Dweck calls a “fixed mindset” which causes people to avoid problems they don’t think they can solve, prevents them from thinking critically, and creates division among society. 

An important aspect of having a growth mindset is the ability to think critically. Lukianoff and Haidt talk about this many times in their article and define it as “grounding one’s beliefs in evidence rather than in emotion or desire, and learning how to search for and evaluate evidence that might contradict one’s initial hypothesis.” This is essential when talking about controversial or sensitive topics because when allow yourself to think objectively you are using the rational part of your brain rather than the emotional part which creates unnecessary unhappiness. Both Dweck and Lukianoff and Haidt are seeing critical thinking replaced by emotional reasoning. In “The Coddling,” the authors describe how emotional reasoning is increasingly being seen as objective rather than subjective. If a professor were to say something offensive, it is acceptable to use your feelings as evidence in a file against that professor. These kinds of instances represent what it is like to have a fixed mindset. Dweck presents this through two pictures that show electrical activity in the brain: “on the left, you see the fixed-mindset students. There’s hardly any activity. They run from the error. They don’t engage with it. But on the right, you have the students with the growth mindset, the idea that abilities can be developed. They engage deeply. Their brain is on fire with yet.” (1:51) In one study, it was shown that “after a failure, [students with a fixed mindset] looked for someone who did worse than they did so they could feel really good about themselves.” This is what we see when students file complaints on professors for something seemingly illegitimate. Instead of looking at the situation from an objective standpoint, they shut down and act out of fervor. Because kids and adults alike are refusing to think critically about controversial topics, they are strengthening the very thing that is instigating this phenomenon: division.