illustrates by citing some remarkable suc-
cesses. After one year focused on devel-
oping growth mindsets, one class of kin-
dergartners in Harlem—many of whom
couldn’t hold a pencil when they started—
scored in the 95th percentile on the Na-
tional Achievement Test. In one year,
fourth-grade students in the South Bronx,
who were significantly behind, became
the top fourth-grade class in the state of
New York on the state math test.
“Before, effort and difficulty made
them feel dumb, made them feel like giv-
ing up,” Dweck said in a TED Talk.
“But now, effort and difficulty, that’s
when their neurons are making stronger
connections. That’s when they’re getting
smarter.”
While insights like these help explain
how to become more successful, they
don’t answer another question about suc-
cess: Does it make people happier? Shawn
Achor, a psychologist, conducted a study
of 1,600 Harvard undergraduates, collect-
ing a wide range of data from grades and
SAT scores to family income, age, gender
and race. His question: Is it possible in
such a population of high-achieving in-
dividuals to predict which of them will
achieve the highest levels of happiness
and success?
“Social support was a far greater pre-
dictor of happiness than any other factor,”
he wrote in The Happiness Advantage.
Most of us assume that reaching cer-
tain accomplishments—a grade, a job, a
sale—will make us happier people. But
Achor found that rather than success
leading to happiness, the reverse is true:
happiness leads to success. When indi-
viduals feel socially connected and sup-
ported, when they feel that their work is
consequential, when they feel more opti-
mistic, and when they come to view stress
not as a threat but as a challenge, their
productivity rises dramatically.
Achor examined the same phenome-
non in an insurance company, where he
found that when the company invested
in employees’ support and social connec-
tions, it led to enhanced performance.
“It’s not that once you hit your sales [tar-
gets], you’ll be happier, but that happi-
ness and optimism and social connection
are exactly what’s going to fuel the sales,”△
Experts suggest that
children praised for
their effort, rather
than just their
abilities, take on
progressively more
challenging tasks.