The test falls in front of you, a neat little packet of all the things you didn’t study, all the lectures you slept through, and all the homework you didn’t do. But it’s alright, you tell yourself, you’re smart, you’re passing. So you laugh it off, and joke that you’re ready to bomb the test as you dive into the questions, packed full of information you vaguely recognize, yet can’t quite recall.

When you get back the grade, you are unsurprised to find a low seventy or even a sixty, but it’s not really important. After all, you will still pass, and that’s what matters. But many people do not realize that the damage may already be done, and not just to their grades, but to their frame of mind.

When it comes to intelligence, people generally see themselves and others in one of two ways. The first is that they have a set level of intelligence, and no matter how hard they try they can never advance their intellect farther than their natural level. The second is that their intelligence is based solely on hard work and dedication.

The question is, which is the superior mindset? This is a question taken into account by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, who conducted an experiment using hundreds of children to learn more of the two mindsets.

The experiment began with two groups of students, each given a simple and similar IQ test. The two groups were then given two kinds of praise, one group was told, “you did very well, you must be very smart,” promoting the fixed mindset. The other, “you did very well, you must have worked very hard on this,” promoting the growth mindset. The differences in praise were minimal, yet the effects were quite notable.

When they were given harder problems, the growth mindset kids saw these as a challenge, and an opportunity to improve, while the students with fixed mindsets became discouraged when they did not do as well. “If success had meant they were intelligent, than less-than-success meant they were deficient,” said Dweck.

Even more jarring, while the growth mindset children became better at the questions, the fixed mindset children got progressively worse as they became less and less confident.

The students were then asked what they would like to do next, move on to harder questions, or return to some easier ones. Over 90% of the work praised students opted to move on, while only 5% of the ability children chose to move on. The ability based children had to stay with what they knew in order to remain confident in themselves.

The last step in the experiment was simple, but probably the most surprising. When released to talk to their fellow classmates about the tests, the growth mindset kids talked about their scores openly and freely. The fixed mindset kids, to the dismay of scientists, actually lied about their scores, making them higher than they were. This behavior wasn’t much different from the student in high school who jokes and laughs about his or her score, or subverting to blame to protect his ego.

In the end, students who believe they have a set level of intelligence tend to study less, and thus fail more exams, and place the blame on other things, such as lack of time or a bad teacher. While growth mindset kids study more, improve more, and see their failures as opportunities to learn rather than proof of their flaws.

While it is true that students can skirt by on talent alone in some phases of life, eventually they will be faced with more difficult challenges. This is where the fixed mindset truly begins to make an impact, so it is important that the change is made early.

Keep in mind that the mindset of the children in the experiment was steered in one direction by only using a simple phrase, so it’s not too late to change your own. All one needs to do to change a mindset is to recognize the signs of each mindset and make an active effort to change it.