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Relating Dweck to Lukianoff and Haidt Dweck’s TED talk and Lukinaoff and Haidt’s article seem to all surround this idea of a “fixed mindset.” Dweck explains this term through her experience with elementary students. As an example, when facing a math problem that they cannot solve, kids who have a fixed mindset tend to instantly give up, thinking “I can’t do this and I never will!” Kids who practice using a growth mindset understand that although they cannot solve the…

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Critical Thinking Lukianoff and Haidt mention the term “critical thinking” in their article many times in relation to microaggressions and offensiveness on college campuses. To define it they write: “critical thinking requires grounding one’s beliefs in evidence rather than emotion or desire, and learning how to search for and evaluate evidence that might contradict one’s initial hypothesis.” They suggest that to think critically one should think objectively without bias; similar to using the scientific method. This is very hard for…

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Political Correctness Then and Now Political correctness is a very hot topic among society today, especially in universities across America. “The Coddling of the American Mind” by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt touches upon the causes and effects of this social movement. In the 1980s and ’90s, political correctness was discussed in relation to restricting hate speech and “challenged the literary, philosophical, and historical canon, seeking to widen it by including more-diverse perspectives.” In that era, the main idea was…

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Growth v. Fixed Mindset When learning new skills and information, there are two basic mindsets: fixed and growth-oriented. What differs between the two is that in a fixed mindset, if one doesn’t complete an answer correctly, “you think, I’m nothing, I’m nowhere.” (00:07) In a growth mindset, upon completing an answer incorrectly, you have not failed, “you understand that you’re on a learning curve. It gives you a path into the future.” (00:07) Though seemingly simple, studies have shown that…

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