Carol Dweck Recipient of 2018 SAGE-CASBS Award

Renowned for the study of motivations and self-conceptions that guide human behavior, the Stanford psychologist will deliver a public award lecture in March 2019 at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

SAGE Publishing and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University are pleased to announce Carol Dweck as winner of the 2018 SAGE-CASBS Award.

Established in 2013, the SAGE-CASBS Award recognizes outstanding achievement in the behavioral and social sciences that advance our understanding of pressing social issues. It underscores the role of the social and behavioral sciences in enriching and enhancing public policy and good governance. Past winners of the award include psychologist and Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, sociologist and education rights activist Pedro Noguera, political scientist and former U.S. Census Bureau director Kenneth Prewitt, and William Julius Wilson, the noted sociologist of poverty, inequality, and race.

Carol Dweck is one of the most influential and pioneering social science scholars of the past three decades, with work spanning the fields of social psychology, developmental psychology, and personality psychology. In 2004 she joined Stanford University, where she currently is the Lewis and Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology. Previously she held posts at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the University of Illinois. She is most associated with launching a body of research collectively showing that individuals possess implicit theories of intelligence that reside on a continuum from “fixed mindset” to “growth mindset” – now widely-used concepts that Dweck defined and elucidated. Individuals holding a growth, rather than fixed, mindset, believe natural abilities and innate talents do not necessarily translate to predetermined success; rather, they are starting points for further development and learning through effort, help-seeking, and trying-out new strategies, enabling improved performance over time.

At the experimental level, most mindset experiments have occurred in education environments to help foster student achievement, though recent applications in business and health settings show substantial promise.

In addition to edited volumes and dozens of peer review journal articles, Dweck explores mindset research in two books. The first, Self-theories: Their Role in Motivation, Personality, and Development (1999), is an academic treatment that was awarded Book of the Year by the World Education Federation. She is widely known and acclaimed, however, for Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (2006), a book written for a mainstream audience and which thrust her into a public, global spotlight. Twelve years after its publication, Mindset remains a bestseller and has been translated into 20 languages. Dweck’s 2014 TED Talk based on the book has been viewed more than eight million times.

“Dr. Dweck’s work on mindset has been embraced enthusiastically in scholarship by thought leaders across the social and behavioral sciences and in practice by schools around the world,” said SAGE Publishing founder and executive chairman Sara Miller McCune. “Her commitment – both personal and professional – to ensuring equitable learning outcomes by empowering a growth mindset parallels SAGE’s commitment to improving education to promote social justice. I believe that there is still much to learn from Dr. Dweck and we are delighted to honor her with the SAGE-CASBS award.”

Dweck served as a CASBS consulting scholar during the 2014-15 year, during the incubation at CASBS of a project, supported by the Raikes Foundation, aimed at advancing scientific understanding of students’ beliefs about learning and school in order to improve student outcomes and expand educational opportunities. The group coalesced and formally launched in 2015 as the Mindset Scholars Network. Now a thriving organization that includes Dweck, the network spun-off from CASBS in 2017, leveraging momentum generated in part at the Center. Dweck and network colleagues recently completed a nationwide study – the largest to date – examining where mindset interventions work best and how they can be made better.

Exciting new research results coauthored by Dweck, published in Psychological Science in 2018, show that people with growth mindsets are more apt to actively develop new interests outside their existing interests in a sustained manner, and as a result are more likely to reach and make connections across disciplines in the process.

“Thanks to Carol Dweck’s foundational and continuing research, mindset science will remain a growing field that exerts a profound impact on people’s lives – including empowerment to overcome achievement inequalities,” said CASBS director Margaret Levi. “Extensions of her research program into additional domains is already generating new ways of thinking and problem solving that will influence research for some time to come. The finding that a growth mindset is disposed to reaching across disciplinary boundaries aligns fully with our core vision and mission. Carol’s work is embedded in the Center’s DNA.”

Dweck is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the Academy of Political and Social Science, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among the many honors she has received are the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from the American Psychological Association, the James McKeen Cattell Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for Psychological Science, the Thorndike Career Achievement Award in Educational Psychology from the American Psychological Association, and the Donald Campbell Career Achievement Award in Social Psychology from the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.

CASBS and SAGE disseminated a public call for award nominations in early 2018. Dweck was selected as the winner from a stellar group of nominated candidates after a thorough selection process. The SAGE-CASBS Award selection committee consisted of Sara Miller McCune; Margaret Levi; Anthony Bryk, president of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and former CASBS fellow (2002-03); Jennifer Crocker, the Ohio Eminent Scholar in Social Psychology at Ohio State University and a 2017-18 CASBS fellow; Renu Khator, chancellor of the University of Houston System and president of the University of Houston; Manuel Pastor, Turpanjian Chair in Civil Society and Social Change and professor of sociology and American studies & ethnicity at the University of Southern California; and William Julius Wilson, the Lewis P. and Linda L. Geyser University Professor at Harvard University, former CASBS fellow (1981-82), and winner of the 2017 SAGE-CASBS Award.

SAGE Publishing is proud funder of the award. In addition to a cash prize, Dweck will deliver an award lecture on March 14, 2019, at CASBS. The event will be free and open to the public. CASBS will release event details in January 2019.

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Sara Miller McCune founded SAGE Publishing in 1965 to support the dissemination of usable knowledge and educate a global community. SAGE is a leading international provider of innovative, high-quality content publishing more than 1,000 journals and over 900 new books each year, spanning a wide range of subject areas. Our growing selection of library products includes archives, data, case studies, and video. SAGE remains majority owned by our founder and after her lifetime will become owned by a charitable trust that secures the company’s continued independence. Principal offices are located in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington D.C., and Melbourne. sagepublishing.com

Founded in 1954, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University is renowned as a place where deep thinkers from diverse disciplines and communities come together to confront critical issues of our time. At CASBS, boundaries and assumptions are challenged and cross-disciplinary thinking is the norm. The Center has hosted generations of distinguished scholars and scientists who, in the spirit of collaboration, form an enduring community that advances our understanding of the full range of human beliefs, behaviors, interactions, and institutions. casbs.stanford.edu