everyday kids with a fixed mindset think about violent revenge.
We gave eighth-grade students in one of our favorite schools a scenario about bullying to
read. We asked them to imagine it was happening to them.
It is a new school year and things seem to be going pretty well. Suddenly some popular kids start
teasing you and calling you names. At first you brush it off—these things happen. But it
continues. Every day they follow you, they taunt you, they make fun of what you’re wearing,
they make fun of what you look like, they tell you you’re a loser—in front of everybody. Every
day.
We then asked them to write about what they would think and what they would do or
want to do.
First, the students with the fixed mindset took the incident more personally. They said, “I
would think I was a nobody and that nobody likes me.” Or “I would think I was stupid and weird
and a misfit.”
Then they wanted violent revenge, saying that they’d explode with rage at them, punch
their faces in, or run them over. They strongly agreed with the statement: “My number one goal
would be to get revenge.”
They had been judged and they wanted to judge back. That’s what Eric Harris and Dylan
Klebold, the Columbine shooters, did. They judged back. For a few long, terrible hours, they
decided who would live and who would die.
In our study, the students with the growth mindset were not as prone to see the bullying
as a reflection of who they were. Instead, they saw it as a psychological problem of the bullies, a
way for the bullies to gain status or charge their self-esteem: “I’d think that the reason he is
bothering me is probably that he has problems at home or at school with his grades.” Or “They
need to get a life—not just feel good if they make me feel bad.”
Their plan was often designed to educate the bullies: “I would really actually talk to
them. I would ask them questions (why are they saying all of these things and why are they
doing all of this to me).” Or “Confront the person and discuss the issue; I would feel like trying
to help them see they are not funny.”
The students with the growth mindset also strongly agreed that: “I would want to forgive
them eventually” and “My number one goal would be to help them become better people.”
Whether they’d succeed in personally reforming or educating determined bullies is
doubtful. However, these are certainly more constructive first steps than running them over.
Brooks Brown, a classmate of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, was bullied from third
grade on. He suffered tremendously, yet he didn’t look for revenge. He rejected the fixed
mindset and the right of people to judge others, as in “I am a football player, and therefore I’m
better than you.” Or “I am a basketball player... pathetic geeks like you are not on my level.”
More than that, he actively embraced a growth mindset. In his own words, “People do
have the potential to change.” Even maybe Eric Harris, the more depressed, hostile leader of the
shootings. Brown had had a very serious run-in with Eric Harris several years before, but in their
senior year of high school, Brown offered a truce. “I told him that I had changed a lot since that
year... and that I hoped he felt the same way about himself.” Brooks went on to say that if he
found that Eric hadn’t changed, he could always pull back. “However, if he had grown up, then
why not give him the chance to prove it.”
Brooks hasn’t given up. He still wants to change people. He wants to wake up the world
to the problem of bullying, and he wants to reach victims and turn them off their violent