Optimism, Growth Mindset and Uncertainty
The following is an essay I wrote for one of my classes in college. I still sometimes think about this piece in terms of how it can be applied to every aspect of living. I have no formal education in psychology and philosophy, so I’m glad to be pointed out the injustices done to the authors mentioned. I hope you get something out of reading this.
Optimism is often a celebrated attitude to life. Optimism is not only useful for social activities, where a more optimistic person tends to project more energy in social circumstances, it also strengthens one’s willpower when faced with difficult challenges, preventing the person from withdrawing to safety prematurely. But optimism also gets its fair share of criticism. It is often accused of promoting unrealistic overestimation of one’s capability. Following these criticisms, the concept of realistic optimism is developed. Realistic optimism promotes an optimistic outlook while encouraging reality checking to prevent self-overestimation. It has a strong tie to the concept of growth mindset, and their similarity also resonate with the philosophy of uncertain truths and scientific falsifiability developed by the 20th-century philosopher Karl Popper. This paper is set out to argue for the philosophical consistency of these three ideas and their necessary conclusion about the nature of knowledge.
In her paper In Search of Realistic Optimism: Meaning, Knowledge, and Warm Fuzziness, Sandra L. Schneider defines realistic optimism as optimism with limits, “…realistic optimism is the tendency to maintain a positive outlook within the constraints of the available ‘measurable phenomena situated in the physical and social world’” (Schneider 253). Realistic optimism can be roughly separated into its attitude towards the past and towards the future. Similar to regular optimism, realistic optimism encourages positive interpretation of past events. In regard to thinking about the past, Schneider argues that we should be “lenient in our evaluation of past events” (Schneider 253). Where realistic optimism draws its line from regular optimism is its attitude towards the future, Schneider argues that a realistically optimistic person should interpret their optimistic outlook as a source of aspiration rather than a declarative stance about the result, “the mobilizing effects of aspirations (‘I can do it’), as opposed to the unrealistic sense of control in expectations (‘It will happen’), may drive many of the benefits associated with an optimistic outlook” (Schneider 258). Schneider argues that realistic optimism strives for a fine balance between affirmation and declaration. Affirmation draws its focus to the process while declaration draws its focus to the result. As one will never know the future results, affirmation is the best method to maximize one’s chances to achieve the desired goal without cultivating self-deception.
This difference between affirmation and declaration is also evident in the difference between the fixed mindset and the growth mindset. Fixed and growth mindsets are two different psychological attitudes towards one’s own capability. As their names suggest, the fixed mindset believes one’s capability is static and cannot be changed, while the growth mindset believes that one’s capability is malleable. In Messages that motivate: How praise molds students’ beliefs, motivation, and performance, Carol S. Dweck applies these two mindsets to the theory of intelligence. She discovers that students who think intelligence is malleable believe that “effort is what powers their ability and allows them to use it to the fullest” (Dweck 45), while students who think intelligence is fixed believe that “if you are really smart at something, you shouldn’t have to work hard at it…working hard is direct evidence of being dumb” (Dweck 43). Similar to realistic optimism, growth mindset focuses on the process in that effort affirms their potential, while fixed mindset, similar to self-deceptive optimism, focuses on the result in that their current ability declares their outcome. The amount of effort involved is irrelevant.
The consequence of the differences between emphasizing process and emphasizing result is two very different relationships with outside information. According to Schneider, the key difference between realistic optimism and self-deception is reality checks. Realistic optimism engages constantly with the outside environment in search for information that helps course-correction, “realistic optimism relies on regular reality checks to update assessments of progress, fine-tune one’s understanding of potential opportunities, refine causal models of situations, and re-evaluate planned next steps” (Schneider 257); while self-deception lacks such engagement: “self-deception relies on an exclusively confirmatory approach to information processing and may even involve an active attempt to avoid information inconsistent with desired beliefs” (Schneider 257). The emphasis on process leads to the desire to progress, and the desire to progress implies that more work is to be done and new information is necessary. Similar relationship to new information is also presented in the growth mindset. Dweck shows that students who believe in malleable intelligence believe that “mistakes are simply a natural part of learning, and give you information about what to do next…failure, although never welcome, is also a signal to do something” (Dweck 44). The underlying assumption of the growth mindset is that engagement with the outside environment is constant, and new information is just indicative of the effectiveness of the current method of engagement. The fixed mindset does not assume the constancy of engagement, but it chooses to engage only when new information confirms already-established believes.
The emphasis on the process of engagement and course-correction in both realistic optimism and growth mindset seems to draw parallel with philosopher Karl Popper’s idea of the importance of falsifiability in scientific inquiries. According to Popper, it is impossible to assert whether a theory or hypothesis is correct: “We can never justify our scientific theories, for we can never know whether they will not turn out to be false” (Popper 54). All that we know about our current scientific theories are that they follow all the facts that we have currently observed. But we cannot assert that they will be correct for all future facts that will become observable to us. It is precisely for this reason that we cannot claim that our current scientific theories are correct, but only that our current theories are yet to be falsified. And it is this attitude that allows us to open our scientific theories to critical examinations and to the potential for course correction: “One of the most important procedures is to take a critical attitude towards our own theories and, in particular, to look for contradictions between our theories and observations” (Popper 49). With this theory of scientific inquiry, Popper goes on to claim that we cannot possess any knowledge with absolute certainty, “Knowledge is the search for truth; and it is perfectly possible that many of our theories are in fact true. But even if they are true, we can never know this for certain” (Popper 38). Ultimately our senses and our toolset, as versatile and useful as they may be, are always limited compared to the vastness of our reality and hence our “knowledge can only be finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite” (Popper 50).
The focus on the process and on the constancy of engagement with the outside world are perfect practical applications of Popper’s idea of uncertain knowledge and the principle of falsifiability. There are also examples that demonstrate the failure of realizing these principles. Schneider demonstrates this failure by assessing that negative stereotyping such as racism “is likely to involve self-deceptive processes in which judgements about the group in question are based on insufficient and biased information from the environment, replacing leniency and appreciation with hard criteria such as intolerance and depreciation” (Schneider 257). Schneider introduces the concept of “fuzzy knowledge”, synonymous to Popper’s uncertain knowledge, as one of the causes of self-deception — when they start seeing their own lack of experience in interacting with out-groups as certain knowledge, they shut off engagement and become caught in prejudice. Dweck also demonstrates the failure of this principle in students who believe in fixed intelligence, “although they believe intelligence is fixed, intelligence is an invisible internal thing that cannot be observed directly, so they just have to guess its level from their performance” (Dweck 42). These students put certainty on intelligence — a concept that no one can claim to understand absolutely, and this wrongful certainty leads to incorrect measurement of their own capabilities and to a destructively fatalistic interpretation of the self. All these examples claim certainty on territories where they are arguably quite ignorant of and therefore, they block themselves from the process of critical examination and course correction and fall into dogmatism and pessimism.
All these lessons can simply be summarized as a case for open-mindedness. This open-mindedness is not only consistent with the scientific mindset, but also absorbs the benefit of optimism without falling to self-deception. This open-mindedness asks us to focus on the present moment and to make an effort to strive for success and also to make an effort to detach from success so that one can be even more energized by the absence of it. This open-mindedness asks us to dwell on neither what was nor what will be, but what is and what can be. All it asks for is a small belief that can be quite elegantly summarized by Socrates, “I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.”
Bibliography
Schneider, Sandra L. “In Search of Realistic Optimism: Meaning, Knowledge, and Warm Fuzziness.” American Psychologist, vol. 56, no. 3, 2001, pp. 250–263., doi:10.1037/0003–066x.56.3.250.
Dweck, Carol S. “Messages that motivate: How praise molds students’ beliefs, motivation, and performance (in surprising ways).” Improving academic achievement. 2002. 37–60.
Popper, Karl R. In Search of a Better World: Lectures and Essays from Thirty Years. Routledge, 1992.
