Growing beyond growth: Why multiple mindsets matter for consumer behavior

In this commentary, we reflect on several important issues and questions provoked by Murphy and Dweck's target article. First, we define a mindset as a frame of mind that affects the selection, encoding, and retrieval of information as well as the types of evaluations and responses an individual gives. As such, we suggest that while studying fixed versus growth mindsets is important, it is critical to explore and understand how a variety of mindsets affect consumer behavior, including regulatory focus, construal level, implementation versus deliberation, and power. Second, we argue that it is necessary to understand if a hierarchy exists among this variety of mindsets, with some mindsets being more foundational and more important than others. Finally, we raise questions about whether matching effects, where information matches a mindset, always produce more persuasion, or whether cases might exist where mismatches, or complementarity, are better.