Support for the domain specificity of implicit beliefs about persons, intelligence, and morality

Lay perspectives on emotion: past, present, and future research directions

Empirical research has demonstrated that individuals vary widely in how they view their emotions. We call the viewpoints that individuals have towards their emotions emotion perspectives. While many subdisciplines of psychology, such as social psychology and clinical psychology, have studied this topic, research thus far can be siloed, despite overlap in terms and constructs. The goal of the current special issue and this introduction is to describe the state of research on emotion perspectives, highlight common themes in streams of emotion perspective research, and present future directions for investigation. The first portion of this introduction to the special issue provides a basic review of emotion perspective research, spotlighting topics such as emotion beliefs, emotion mindsets, lay theories of emotion, and attitudes toward emotion. The second portion of the introduction presents themes that cut across papers in the special issue, with a discussion of future research directions throughout. The goal of this introduction and special issue is to serve as a guide for greater integration in emotion perspective research and to provide a roadmap for emotion perspective research moving forward.

Links Between Adolescents' Moral Mindsets and Narratives of their Inconsistent and Consistent Moral Value Experiences

Past work on moral mindsets has largely overlooked the adolescent developmental period, a time when adolescents are navigating the complexities of moral life and experiencing tensions between important moral principles and their own actions. This study investigated how moral incrementalism and essentialism are linked to how adolescents construct meanings about their moral experiences. The sample included 96 Canadian adolescents (12-15-years of age; M = 13.5 years). Adolescents generated written narratives of times when they acted inconsistently and consistently with a moral value, and completed a vignette-based measure of moral mindsets. Moral incrementalism was associated with references to the psychological and emotional facets of experiences and engaging in meaning-making processes in narratives. Adolescents who endorsed incrementalism disengaged less only when narrating a self-discrepant experience, indicating some context-specificity across moral event types. Overall, results contribute to scholarship on moral mindset and narrative identity construction. Findings illuminate how individual differences in youth's views of moral traits and behavior may be associated with important aspects of moral identity development such as delving into the psychological and emotional aspects of their experiences and engaging in meaning-making processes.

Reduced growth mindset as a mechanism linking childhood trauma with academic performance and internalizing psychopathology

BACKGROUND

Despite the high prevalence of childhood adversity and well-documented associations with poor academic achievement and psychopathology, effective, scalable interventions remain largely unavailable. Existing interventions targeting growth mindset-the belief that personal characteristics are malleable-have been shown to improve academic achievement and symptoms of psychopathology in youth.

OBJECTIVE

The present study examines growth mindset as a potential modifiable mechanism underlying the associations of two dimensions of childhood adversity-threat and deprivation-with academic achievement and internalizing psychopathology.

PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING

Participants were 408 youth aged 10-18 years drawn from one timepoint of two longitudinal studies of community-based samples recruited to have diverse experiences of childhood adversity.

METHOD

Experiences of threat and deprivation were assessed using a multi-informant, multi-method approach. Youth reported on growth mindset of intelligence and symptoms of anxiety and depression. Parents provided information about youths' academic performance.

RESULTS

Both threat and deprivation were independently associated with lower growth mindset, but when accounting for co-occurring adversities, only the association between threat and lower growth mindset remained significant. Lower growth mindset was associated with worse academic performance and greater symptoms of both anxiety and depression. Finally, there was a significant indirect effect of experiences of threat on both lower academic performance and greater symptoms of anxiety through lower growth mindset.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings suggest that growth mindset could be a promising target for efforts aimed at mitigating the impact of childhood adversity on academic achievement and psychopathology given the efficacy of existing brief, scalable growth mindset interventions.

Mindsets and Neural Mechanisms of Automatic Reactions to Negative Feedback in Mathematics in Elementary School Students

Neuroscientific research regarding mindsets is so far scarce, especially among children. Moreover, even though research indicates the importance of domain specificity of mindsets, this has not yet been investigated in neuroscientific studies regarding implicit beliefs. The purpose of this study was to examine general intelligence and math ability mindsets and their relations to automatic reactions to negative feedback in mathematics in the Finnish elementary school context. For this, event-related potentials of 97 elementary school students were measured during the completion of an age-appropriate math task, where the participants received performance-relevant feedback throughout the task. Higher growth mindset was marginally associated with a larger P300 response and significantly associated with a smaller later peaking negative-going waveform. Moreover, with the domain-specific experimental setting, we found a higher growth mindset regarding math ability, but not general intelligence, to be associated with these brain responses elicited by negative feedback regarding errors in math. This suggests that it might be important to address domain-specific and even academic-domain-specific beliefs in addition to general mindsets in research and practice.

Theory of Mind Following the Violation of Strong and Weak Prior Beliefs

Recent work in psychology and neuroscience has revealed differences in impression updating across social distance and group membership. Observers tend to maintain prior impressions of close (vs. distant) and ingroup (vs. outgroup) others in light of new information, and this belief maintenance is at times accompanied by increased activity in Theory of Mind regions. It remains an open question whether differences in the strength of prior beliefs, in a context absent social motivation, contribute to neural differences during belief updating. We devised a functional magnetic resonance imaging study to isolate the impact of experimentally induced prior beliefs on mentalizing activity. Participants learned about targets who performed 2 or 4 same-valenced behaviors (leading to the formation of weak or strong priors), before performing 2 counter-valenced behaviors. We found a greater change in activity in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC) and right temporo-parietal junction following the violation of strong versus weak priors, and a greater change in activity in DMPFC and left temporo-parietal junction following the violation of positive versus negative priors. These results indicate that differences in neural responses to unexpected behaviors from close versus distant others, and ingroup versus outgroup members, may be driven in part by differences in the strength of prior beliefs.

How strongly do moral character inferences predict forecasts of the future? Testing the moderating roles of transgressor age, implicit personality theories, and belief in karma

Three studies (total N = 1486) investigated how inferences about a person's current moral character guide forecasts about that person's future moral character and future misfortunes, and tested several plausible moderating variables. Inferences about current moral character related (very strongly) to forecasts about future moral character and also (less strongly) to forecasts about future misfortunes. These relationships were moderated by two variables: Relations between inferences and forecasts were somewhat weaker when perceivers made judgments about children, compared to judgments about adults, and relations between character inferences and forecasts about misfortunes were somewhat stronger among perceivers who more strongly believed in karma. In contrast, results provided no evidence of any moderating effects due to perceivers' beliefs about the stability of moral dispositions (i.e., implicit personality theories). These results show how dispositional inferences, moral judgments, and beliefs about karmic justice interact to shape forecasts about the future.

Mindsets in the clinic: Applying mindset theory to clinical psychology

Beliefs about the malleability of attributes, also known as mindsets, have been studied for decades in social-personality psychology and education. Here, I review the many applications of mindset theory to clinical psychology and psychotherapy. First, I review social psychological and cognitive neuroscience evidence that mindsets and mindset-related messages are, to a large extent, focused on emotional tolerance. Specifically, the growth mindset, or the belief that attributes are malleable, encourages confronting and tolerating anxiety, frustration, and disappointment in healthy and adaptive ways that promote resilience, whereas the fixed mindset and related messages discourage the experience of these emotions and often leads to helplessness. Second, I review the emerging research on the anxiety mindset and discuss its relevance to clinical work. A model is proposed illustrating connections between mindsets, emotion regulation strategies, treatment preferences, and outcomes. Case examples are used to illustrate practical applications. I conclude that mindsets can inform psychotherapy, research, and public policy.

The development of grit and growth mindset during adolescence

Individual differences in grit and growth mindset predict effort and achievement in the face of challenges, but little is known about how the two traits influence each other during adolescence. In the current investigation, we analyzed data on grit and growth mindset collected from 1667 adolescents and their teachers on four occasions over 2 academic years. In autoregressive cross-lagged models, grit predicted rank-order increases in growth mindset and growth mindset predicted rank-order increases in grit. These findings suggest that during adolescence, grit and growth mindset are distinct but mutually reinforcing.

Dementia as Fixed or Malleable: Development and Validation of the Dementia Mindset Scale

Background and Objectives

Care professionals differ in how they experience and respond to dementia caregiving. To explain such differences, we developed a new measure: the Dementia Mindset Scale. This scale captures the extent to which care professionals view dementia as stable and fixed (akin to the biomedical perspective) or as flexible and malleable (akin to the person-centered approach).

Research Design and Methods

We conducted four studies to develop the scale. We tested items for comprehensibility, assessed the scale's factorial structure and psychometric properties, and investigated its predictive validity for care professionals' well-being.

Results

A new scale with a two-factor structure-distinguishing a malleable dementia mindset from a fixed dementia mindset-was developed. Results showed good convergent and divergent validity. Moreover, the dementia mindsets predicted aspects of job-related well-being in care professionals.

Discussion and Implications

The scale allows for the assessment of individual differences in how care professionals see dementia. This insight can be used to improve interventions aimed at enhancing care professionals' well-being and quality of care.

Domain Specificity or Generality: Assessing the Chinese Implicit Theories Scale of Six Fundamental Psychological Attributes

Implicit theories have been widely studied in different domains; however, it is still debatable whether these theories are domain-specific or domain-general. Using the Implicit Theories Scale (ITS) about six fundamental psychological attributes, i.e., intelligence, personality, cognition, feeling, behavior, and emotion, we examined domain specificity versus generality using a factor analytic approach; in addition, we investigated associations between implicit theories about these domains and related psychological attributes. In four sequential studies, we translated a Chinese version of the ITS (Study 1), tested inter-item correlations within and between subscales (Studies 1-4), and conducted exploratory factor analysis (Studies 2 and 3) and confirmatory factor analysis (Studies 3 and 4). We tested associations between implicit theory domains and coping, resilience, grit, and school performance (Studies 3 and 4). Results showed that the six ITS subscales were independent, while the implicit theories about cognition, feeling, behavior, and emotion shared a common component. The implicit theories of intelligence and personality were independent and did not share a common component. The six domains presented different patterns of association with psychological variables. Overall, our results suggest that implicit theories are both domain-specific and domain-general. Future studies are needed to examine the mechanism underlying the domain specificity and generality of implicit theories.

Viewing Sexual Desire as Stable Versus Fluid: The Impact of Implicit Beliefs on Women's Coping With Sexual Desire Problems

Our goal was to examine how implicit theories can be applied to understanding women's coping responses to sexual problems. The belief that sexual desire changes over time is a type of incremental theory, while the belief that sexual desire is stable is a type of entity theory (Dweck, 2012 ). We examined how different implicit theories of sexual desire influence how women cope with sexual desire challenges. Also, we sought to determine whether women's perceptions of experiencing a sexual desire challenge moderate the relationship between their implicit beliefs and their coping responses. We randomly assigned women to read an article designed to induce either an entity or incremental theory about sexual desire. We further asked them to indicate how true it is that they have experienced, or are likely to experience, a sexual desire problem (1 = not at all true to 4 = very true). They then completed a measure of coping with desire problems, the Modified Cope Inventory. Results from both studies showed that women primed with entity theories who expected to experience a sexual desire issue reported significantly more negative coping than women primed with incremental theories. Implications of this research and future directions are discussed.

The Dark Side of Malleability: Incremental Theory Promotes Immoral Behaviors

Implicit theories drastically affect an individual's processing of social information, decision making, and action. The present research focuses on whether individuals who hold the implicit belief that people's moral character is fixed (entity theorists) and individuals who hold the implicit belief that people's moral character is malleable (incremental theorists) make different choices when facing a moral decision. Incremental theorists are less likely to make the fundamental attribution error (FAE), rarely make moral judgment based on traits and show more tolerance to immorality, relative to entity theorists, which might decrease the possibility of undermining the self-image when they engage in immoral behaviors, and thus we posit that incremental beliefs facilitate immorality. Four studies were conducted to explore the effect of these two types of implicit theories on immoral intention or practice. The association between implicit theories and immoral behavior was preliminarily examined from the observer perspective in Study 1, and the results showed that people tended to associate immoral behaviors (including everyday immoral intention and environmental destruction) with an incremental theorist rather than an entity theorist. Then, the relationship was further replicated from the actor perspective in Studies 2-4. In Study 2, implicit theories, which were measured, positively predicted the degree of discrimination against carriers of the hepatitis B virus. In Study 3, implicit theories were primed through reading articles, and the participants in the incremental condition showed more cheating than those in the entity condition. In Study 4, implicit theories were primed through a new manipulation, and the participants in the unstable condition (primed incremental theory) showed more discrimination than those in the other three conditions. Taken together, the results of our four studies were consistent with our hypotheses.

Evaluating the Domain Specificity of Mental Health–Related Mind-Sets

Mind-sets are beliefs regarding the malleability of self-attributes. Research suggests they are domain-specific, meaning that individuals can hold a fixed (immutability) mind-set about one attribute and a growth (malleability) mind-set about another. Although mind-set specificity has been investigated for broad attributes such as personality and intelligence, less is known about mental health mind-sets (e.g., beliefs about anxiety) that have greater relevance to clinical science. In two studies, we took a latent variable approach to examine how different mind-sets (anxiety, social anxiety, depression, drinking tendencies, emotions, intelligence, and personality mind-sets) were related to one another and to psychological symptoms. Results provide evidence for both domain specificity (e.g., depression mind-set predicted depression symptoms) and generality (i.e., the anxiety mind-set and the general mind-set factor predicted most symptoms). These findings may help refine measurement of mental health mind-sets and suggest that beliefs about anxiety and beliefs about changeability in general are related to clinically relevant variables.