This book sheds light on how people work-why sometimes they function well and sometimes they behave in ways that are self-defeating or destructive. Toward this end, Carol Dweck presents her groundbreaking research on adaptive and maladaptive cognitive-motivational patterns, showing: how these patterns originate in people's self-theories; their consequences for the person-for achievement, social relationships, and emotional well-being; their consequences for society, from issues of human potential to stereotyping and intergroup relations; the experiences that create them. Throughout, Dweck shows how examining people's self-theories illuminates basic issues of human motivation, social cognition, personality, the self, mental health, and development.