What Studies Found About Identity and Mindset

By Laura Lurns · Reviewed by Philip Weaver · Last reviewed 2026-10-03

What the identity and mindset research we hold covers

This page opens one of the ten areas in our research section. It reports what the studies we hold found, as strongly as they found it.

This page covers how children see themselves and how they do at school, and labels. It also covers praise, expectations, and picturing a future self. Last, it covers famous findings that were tested again.

Read what a study does not show before you read what it found.

How children see themselves, and how they do at school

This part covers studies of self-view and how children do at school.

One direction is not seriously disputed. Children who do better at school come to think of themselves as better at school. The other direction is disputed in print. That is whether changing how a child sees themselves raises what they go on to achieve. Sorjonen and colleagues (2024) reanalyzed studies that followed students over time. They argued the apparent effect could come from the statistics alone. Marsh and colleagues (2025) replied that it holds. So whether building confidence raises grades is not settled.

Gibby-Leversuch, Hartwell and Wright (2019) reviewed studies of children with literacy difficulties. Those children may be at greater risk of a negative picture of themselves as learners. That greater risk was not found for their whole sense of worth. Other studies we hold report lower self-esteem in children with learning difficulties.

Labels and how children see themselves

This part covers more from the same review, and one article about the dyslexia label.

Gibby-Leversuch, Hartwell and Wright's review found something else. Some children felt that others saw them as unintelligent or idle. For them, a diagnosis led to a more positive view of themselves. It gave them another picture of themselves. The name displaced "lazy" and "stupid."

The review calls that benefit of a diagnosis a possible trade-off. The better overall picture may come with a drop in how the child sees themselves as a learner. It may also come with a tendency to see the difficulty as beyond their control. Whether an intervention can reduce that is "as yet, unclear," in the authors' words.

Knight (2025) wrote a position article on the dyslexia label, with no data of its own. She describes research that finds both benefits and costs of the label.

These are findings about groups of children. They are not a checklist for one child.

Praise and mindset

This part covers studies of praise and of mindset programs.

Mueller and Dweck (1998) ran six lab experiments with fifth graders. Some children were praised for being smart. Some were praised for their effort. Some got no praise. Then they all got a second set of problems they were told they had done poorly on.

In Mueller and Dweck's studies, smart-praised children then stuck with the task less than effort-praised ones. They also enjoyed the task less. That was measured minutes after a failure the researchers set up. It was in a lab, in one grade. We hold no study of praise from parents at home.

Whether praising effort changes school results is a separate question, and it is disputed. Sisk and colleagues (2018) pooled the studies of mindset programs. They found the effect on school results small on average. It was larger for children who were already struggling. Two reviews in 2023 disagree about how to read this work. They are Macnamara and Burgoyne (2023) and Burnette and colleagues (2023).

One national experiment tested a mindset program in 65 US schools (Yeager and colleagues, 2019). It included 6,320 lower-achieving ninth graders. Their grades rose a little. That gain showed up only in schools where classmates supported taking on challenges.

Teachers' expectations

This part covers one review of teacher expectations.

Jussim and Harber (2005) reviewed 35 years of work on teacher expectations. In their review, the effects do occur, and they are typically small. In their review, the effects do not build up over time, and they may fade.

Picturing a future self

This part covers one theory and one school trial.

In an encyclopedia entry, Lee and Oyserman describe a theory called possible selves. It is about who a child believes they might become. On their account, difficulty read as proof that a child cares keeps them working. On the same account, difficulty read as evidence to withdraw effort is a reason to stop.

On Lee and Oyserman's reading, past failure may make success harder to picture. Past failure may also make it harder to name a step toward success, on their reading.

Lee and Oyserman also say that imagining who a child wants to be can raise their hopes. On the same account, that is not enough on its own to change what a child does. In their account, the picture has to be tied to concrete steps.

The account is a theory, set out in an encyclopedia entry. Oyserman's school program on a related idea is called Pathways to Success. Most of its students were low-income. The trial did not study learning difficulties. Students were not assigned to it at random. Its own authors say an experiment is still needed.

Famous findings, tested again

This part covers three well-known findings that were repeated.

A 2010 study tested a short writing exercise about personal values. It reported a smaller gap between women and men in a college physics course. Gutmann and Stelzer (2021) repeated it with great care at another university. They could not reproduce the result. They advise against using it as a broad intervention. We know the 2010 study only through their paper.

A small study gave a goal-setting exercise to 85 struggling college students (Morisano and colleagues, 2010). It reported better grades. We could read only its summary. A later randomized trial gave a similar exercise to about 1,400 first-year university students (Dobronyi, Oreopoulos and Petronijevic, 2017). Two years on, it found no effect on grades or on staying in college.

Watts, Duncan and Quan (2018) repeated a famous study of how long four-year-olds could wait for a treat. They studied children whose mothers had not finished college. Children who waited longer did somewhat better at school at age 15. The link was much smaller than first reported. The study then took account of family background, early thinking skills and home life. About two thirds of the link went away. We could read only its summary.

A later paper in the same journal compares the two studies directly (Falk, Kosse and Pinger, 2020). We could not get it, so we do not know what it concludes.

What the identity and mindset research we hold does not show

This part covers the limits of the studies on this page.

No study of any Learning Success program exists.

We hold no study of praise from parents at home.

The praise, mindset and expectation studies on this page did not pick children with learning difficulties.

We hold no brain-scan study of mindset or of how children see themselves.

Our rule is that no page says how your child will change by a given week or month.

Does Learning Success build on this?

Partly. We use one point from this page. In Mueller and Dweck's studies, smart-praised children then stuck with the task less than effort-praised ones. That was measured minutes after a failure the researchers set up. Whether praising effort changes school results is a separate question, and it is disputed.

Our programs coach parents to praise effort, not only results. That is our design choice, not a tested result.

In no case do we claim a study's result for our program.

No study of any Learning Success program exists.

Questions we plan to answer on later pages

Later pages in this area are planned. None of them is written yet.

• How do children's views of themselves and their school results affect each other?
• What does a label do to how a child sees themselves?
• What did the praise studies find, and what happened when they were repeated?
• Do teachers' expectations change how children do?
• Does picturing a future self help a child keep working?

The studies

• Sorjonen, Ingre, Melin and Nilsonne (2024). Questioning the Reciprocal Effects Model of Academic Self-Concept and Achievement: A Reanalysis of a Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal Studies and a Simulation. SAGE Open. DOI 10.1177/21582440241292826.
• Marsh and colleagues (2025). The Reciprocal Effects Model is Robust to Alternative Modeling Specifications: A Response to Sorjonen et al. Educational Psychology Review. DOI 10.1007/s10648-025-10059-7.
• Gibby-Leversuch, Hartwell and Wright (2021; online 2019). Dyslexia, Literacy Difficulties and the Self-Perceptions of Children and Young People: a Systematic Review. Current Psychology 40:5595–5612. DOI 10.1007/s12144-019-00444-1.
• Knight (2025). British Journal of Special Education 52(2):251–257. DOI 10.1111/1467-8578.70028.
• Mueller and Dweck (1998). Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 75(1):33–52.
• Sisk, Burgoyne, Sun, Butler and Macnamara (2018). To what extent and under which circumstances are growth mind-sets important to academic achievement? Psychological Science 29(4):549–571. DOI 10.1177/0956797617739704.
• Macnamara and Burgoyne (2023). Do growth mindset interventions impact students' academic achievement? A systematic review and meta-analysis with recommendations for best practices. Psychological Bulletin 149(3–4):133–173. DOI 10.1037/bul0000352.
• Burnette and colleagues (2023). A systematic review and meta-analysis of growth mindset interventions: for whom, how, and why might such interventions work? Psychological Bulletin. DOI 10.1037/bul0000368.
• Yeager and colleagues (2019). A national experiment reveals where a growth mindset improves achievement. Nature 573(7774):364–369. DOI 10.1038/s41586-019-1466-y.
• Jussim and Harber (2005). Teacher expectations and self-fulfilling prophecies: knowns and unknowns, resolved and unresolved controversies. Personality and Social Psychology Review 9(2):131–155. DOI 10.1207/s15327957pspr0902_3.
• Lee and Oyserman (c. 2009). Possible Selves Theory. In Psychology of Classroom Learning: An Encyclopedia (Gale Group).
• Pathways to Success, SREE 2018 conference paper. ERIC ED591585.
• Gutmann and Stelzer (2021). Values affirmation replication at the University of Illinois. Physical Review Physics Education Research 17:020121. DOI 10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.17.020121.
• Morisano, Hirsh, Peterson, Pihl and Shore (2010). Setting, elaborating, and reflecting on personal goals improves academic performance. Journal of Applied Psychology.
• Dobronyi, Oreopoulos and Petronijevic (2017). Goal Setting, Academic Reminders, and College Success: A Large-Scale Field Experiment. NBER Working Paper 23738.
• Watts, Duncan and Quan (2018). Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Conceptual Replication Investigating Links Between Early Delay of Gratification and Later Outcomes. Psychological Science 29(7):1159–1177. DOI 10.1177/0956797618761661.
• Falk, Kosse and Pinger (2020). Re-Revisiting the Marshmallow Test: A Direct Comparison of Studies by Shoda, Mischel, and Peake (1990) and Watts, Duncan, and Quan (2018). Psychological Science 31(1):100–104. DOI 10.1177/0956797619861720. We could not get this paper.