Using Design Thinking to Improve Psychological Interventions: The Case of the Growth Mindset During the Transition to High School

A small shift, a major leap: Changing gender-role attitudes among adolescents across two ethnic groups

INTRODUCTION

The current study examined a growth mindset intervention designed to promote egalitarian gender role attitudes among adolescents during a pivotal stage of their development, as these attitudes may have important implications for their identity development, well-being, and future life decisions.

METHODS

A sample of 181 eighth-grade students (61% female, Mage = 13.14, SD = 0.42) from six Israeli schools participated in the study. The sample consisted of 49% Jewish and 51% Arab adolescents, including both Muslims and Christians. Adolescents engaged in a two-session intervention that included videos and reflective writing tasks. Pre-and postintervention, they completed self-administered questionnaires assessing their gender-role mindsets, attitudes toward women, and sexism. The data collection and intervention process took place from late 2021 to early 2023.

RESULTS

After the intervention, there was an increase in growth mindsets and egalitarian attitudes towards women among adolescents, and a reduction in benevolent sexism and fixed gender-role mindsets. Hostile sexism, however, remained unchanged. No significant sex or ethnic differences were found in the effectiveness of the intervention. Gender-role mindsets mediated the association between the intervention and egalitarian attitudes, but not the association between the intervention and benevolent sexism.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings demonstrate the potential of brief and targeted growth mindset interventions in promoting favorable changes adolescents' attitudes towards gender roles. According to this study, despite prolonged gender-role socialization, adolescents from diverse ethnic backgrounds can move towards more egalitarian attitudes and flexibility in gender roles through a rather targeted process. This finding is promising especially in adolescence, when stereotypes are often intensified.

Case study in using value stream mapping in online graduate education

Given the rise in demand for online, graduate degree programs there is a need to guide program planning and evaluation professionals within institutions of higher education to utilize continuous quality improvement (CQI) strategies. Using principles of design thinking and CQI, the purpose of this case study was to describe a CQI project that sought to develop a better understanding of adult students' experience progressing through their plan of study in an online doctoral program. As part of the CQI project, value stream mapping (VSM) was used to gain visibility and perspective on the actions required by faculty and staff to guide students through their plan of study. The VSM process provided information that led to conversations that furthered the CQI efforts and led to changes in the adult education program that would benefit all students. Improvement processes that lead to better quality and more positive experiences for users are valuable. This case study demonstrates the processes, challenges, lessons, and future directions in the use of VSM to better understand online graduate programs designed for adult learners.

Mindsets, contexts, and college enrollment: Taking the long view on growth mindset beliefs at the transition to high school

Socioeconomic disparities in academic progress have persisted throughout the history of the United States, and growth mindset interventions-which shift beliefs about the malleability of intelligence-have shown promise in reducing these disparities. Both the study of such disparities and how to remedy them can benefit from taking the "long view" on adolescent development, following the tradition of John Schulenberg. To do so, this study focuses on the role of growth mindsets in short-term academic progress during the transition to high school as a contributor to longer-term educational attainment. Guided by the Mindset × Context perspective, we analyzed new follow-up data to a one-year nationally representative study of ninth graders (National Study of Learning Mindsets, n = 10,013; 50% female; 53% white; 63% from lower-SES backgrounds). A conservative Bayesian analysis revealed that adolescents' growth mindset beliefs at the beginning of ninth grade predicted their enrollment in college 4 years later. These patterns were stronger for adolescents from lower-SES backgrounds, and there was some evidence that the ninth-grade math teacher's support for the growth mindset moderated student mindset effects. Thus, a time-specific combination of student and teacher might alter long-term trajectories by enabling adolescents to develop and use beliefs at a critical transition point that supports a cumulative pathway of course-taking and achievement into college. Notably, growth mindset became less predictive of college enrollment after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which occurred in the second year of college and introduced structural barriers to college persistence.

Applying a synergistic mindsets intervention to an esports context

Affective responses during stressful, high-stakes situations can play an important role in shaping performance. For example, feeling shaky and nervous at a job interview can undermine performance, whereas feeling excited during that same interview can optimize performance. Thus, affect regulation-the way people influence their affective responses-might play a key role in determining high-stakes outcomes. To test this idea, we adapted a synergistic mindsets intervention (SMI) (Yeager et al. 2022 Nature 607, 512-520 (doi:10.1038/s41586-022-04907-7)) to a high-stakes esports context. Our approach was motivated by the idea that (i) mindsets both about situations and one's stress responses to situations can be shaped to help optimize stress responses, and (ii) challenge versus threat stress responses will be associated with improved outcomes. After a baseline performance task, we randomly assigned gamers (n = 300) either to SMI or a control condition in which they learned brain facts. After two weeks of daily gaming, gamers competed in a cash-prize tournament. We measured affective experiences before the matches and cardiovascular responses before and throughout the matches. Contrary to predictions, gamers did not experience negative affect (including feeling stressed), thus limiting the capacity for the intervention to regulate physiological responses and optimize performance. Compared with the control participants, synergistic mindsets participants did not show greater challenge responses or improved performance outcomes. Though our adaptation of Yeager et al.'s SMI did not optimize esports performance, our findings point to important considerations regarding the suitability of an intervention such as this to different performance contexts of varying degrees of stressfulness.

An experimental manipulation of the value of effort

People who take on challenges and persevere longer are more likely to succeed in life. But individuals often avoid exerting effort, and there is limited experimental research investigating whether we can learn to value effort. We developed a paradigm to test the hypothesis that people can learn to value effort and will seek effortful challenges if directly incentivized to do so. We also dissociate the effects of rewarding people for choosing effortful challenges and performing well. The results provide limited evidence that rewarding effort increased people's willingness to choose harder tasks when rewards were no longer offered (near transfer). There was also mixed evidence that rewarding effort increased willingness to choose harder tasks in another unrelated and unrewarded task (far transfer). These heterogeneous results highlight the need for further research to understand when this paradigm may be the most effective for increasing and generalizing the value of effort.

Helping students to face academic failures: Evaluation of a growth mindset intervention among primary school students in China

Students commonly struggle with academic failure. Innovative interventions aimed at improving the essential components of academic success are therefore needed. The aim of this study was to test whether teaching a growth mindset of intelligence (the belief that intelligence is malleable and can be developed) could improve students' attitudes towards failure and academic outcomes. In particular, we explored whether students' perceived parental beliefs about failure influenced the effect of a growth mindset intervention. We tested the 8-session growth mindset intervention in a sample of 1766 Chinese primary school students (age M = 10.61; SD = .99). Measures of mindset of intelligence, failure belief, positive strategies, and academic achievement were completed at baseline (T1) and 3-month follow-up (T2). In comparison to the control group, students in the intervention group reported a stronger growth mindset of intelligence at 3-month follow-up, which in turn indirectly increased their positive failure belief and inclinations of positive strategies when facing failures. Moreover, these beneficial effects of the growth mindset intervention were sustained only when students perceived relatively more supportive parental beliefs about failure. Additionally, the growth mindset intervention to some extent protected students' academic achievement from a downward trajectory at follow-up. Collectively, the findings highlight the promising effects of a growth mindset intervention on students' academic-related outcomes.

Effects of three prophylactic interventions on French middle-schoolers' mental health: protocol for a randomized controlled trial

Adolescence is a strategic developmental stage in terms of preventing later difficulties and ensuring good mental health. Prophylactic interventions, which are conducted before the onset, prolongation, or worsening of difficulties, and aim to prevent or reduce symptoms or to promote wellbeing, therefore appear particularly appropriate for adolescents. However, existing prophylactic interventions conducted with adolescents have several weaknesses, including sparse theoretical frameworks, ambivalent evidence of their efficacy, and implementation and dissemination difficulties. In addition, no data are currently available on the effectiveness of such interventions in France. To fill this gap, a four-arm randomized controlled trial will be performed to assess the effectiveness of three prophylactic interventions targeting reactive, proactive and interpersonal adaptation in fourth-grade middle-school students, together with participants' experience and perception of the interventions. Based on existing knowledge about adolescents, their learning mechanisms, and field constraints, these three interventions have been designed to promote their learning and receptiveness to interventions. Compared with baseline (i.e., before the intervention), we expect to observe a significant decrease in the level of distress (anxiety and depressive symptoms, functional impairment, and psychosocial difficulties) and a significant increase in the level of wellbeing after the intervention, across the three intervention groups, but not in the control group. In addition, we expect to observe post-intervention improvements in the processes targeted by the reactive adaptation intervention (operationalized as coping strategy use and flexibility), those targeted by the proactive adaptation intervention (operationalized as the tendency to engage in committed actions and general self-efficacy), and those targeted by the interpersonal adaptation intervention (operationalized as assertiveness in interactions), but only in the corresponding groups, with no change in any of these processes in the control group. The results of this research will not only enrich our knowledge of the processes involved in adolescents' distress and wellbeing, but also provide clues as to the best targets for intervention. Moreover, the material for these interventions will be freely available in French on request to the corresponding author, providing access to innovative and fully assessed interventions aimed at promoting adolescents' mental health in France.This clinical trial is currently being registered under no. 2023-A01973-42 on https://ansm.sante.fr/ . This is the first version of the protocol.

Beware False Growth Mindset: Building Growth Mindset in Medical Education Is Essential but Complicated

ABSTRACT

Mindset theory aims to explain how learners' beliefs about intelligence and learning affect how they perceive effort, react to failure, and respond to feedback in challenging learning contexts. Mindset theory distinguishes between growth mindset (the belief that human capacities can be developed over time) and fixed mindset (the belief that human capacities are inherent and unchangeable). Efforts to develop growth mindset in learners have shown a wide range of benefits, including positive effects on students' resilience, commitment to lifelong learning, and persistence in a field of study, with notable impacts on learners who are struggling, learners from minoritized groups, and women in scientific fields. In recent years, mindset theory interventions have caught the interest of medical educators hoping to engage learners as partners in their own learning and progression to competence. Educators hoping to apply this theory to educational programs and learner-teacher interactions in ways that promote growth mindsets would benefit from awareness of the concept of false growth mindset , a term coined by Carol Dweck to refer to common pitfalls in the theory's application. In this article, the authors highlight important findings from mindset interventions in medical education, identify common pitfalls of false growth mindset in the context of medical learners, and offer suggestions for how educators and institutions can better instigate changes to promote growth mindsets within medical education.

Creating a psychosocial intervention combining growth mindset and implementation intentions (GMII) to reduce alcohol consumption: A mixed method approach

This work aimed at creating a psychosocial intervention based on growth mindset theory and implementation intention strategies, in order to reduce alcohol consumption among users in the general population, and the clinical population of individuals with alcohol use disorder. A mixed method approach was used, combining qualitative and quantitative research methods among both populations. Four focus groups were first conducted to extract arguments in favor of a malleable view of alcohol consumption (study 1A), situations that trigger the desire to drink alcohol, as well as strategies used by people to counteract this need (study 1B). Data were analyzed using reflective thematic analysis in line with the scientific literature on alcohol consumption. The results were used to create a questionnaire scoring the relevance of each argument, situation and strategy (study 2). The 20 best scored arguments, situations and strategies were selected to create the intervention. The created intervention consisted in a popularized scientific article describing alcohol consumption as malleable, including the selected arguments and followed by two internalization exercises. Then, a volitional help sheet included the selected situations and solutions was presented, allowing forming up to three plans. The discussion focused on the added value of the created material compared to pre-existing tools in the literature, and presents plans to test the intervention in a future study.

Exploring a Gaming-Based Intervention for Unemployed Young Adults: Thematic Analysis

BACKGROUND

Promoting positive psychologies that promote resilience such as a growth mindset could be beneficial for young, unemployed adults, as many lack the self-esteem and self-efficacy to cope with job search adversity. These young people may be reached at scale through the web-based delivery of self-administered positive psychology interventions. However, past studies report unsatisfying user experiences and a lack of user engagement. A gaming-based experience could be an approach to overcoming these challenges.

OBJECTIVE

Our research objective was to explore how young, unemployed adults experience a positive psychology intervention designed as a game to extract learning and principles for future intervention research and development.

METHODS

To respond to the research question, a team of researchers at the University of Stavanger worked with designers and developers to conceptualize and build a gaming-based intervention. Feedback from the users was collected through formative usability testing with 18 young adults in the target group. Retrospectively, recordings and notes were transcribed and subjected to thematic analysis to extract learnings for the purposes of this paper.

RESULTS

A total of 3 themes were identified that pinpoint what we consider to be key priorities for future gaming interventions for unemployed young adults: adaptation to user preferences (eg, need for responding to user preferences), empathic player interaction (eg, need for responsiveness to user inputs and a diverse set of interaction modes), and sensemaking of experience and context (eg, need for explicit presentation of game objectives and need for management of user expectations related to genre).

CONCLUSIONS

Feedback from end users in usability-testing sessions was vital to understanding user preferences and needs, as well as to inform ongoing intervention design and development. Our study also shows that game design could make interventions more entertaining and engaging but may distort the intervention if the game narrative is not properly aligned with the intervention intent and objectives. By contrast, a lack of adaptation to user needs may cause a less motivating user experience. Thus, we propose a structured approach to promote alignment between user preferences and needs, intervention objectives, and gameplay.

The relationship of school performance with self-control and grit is strongly genetic and weakly causal

The non-cognitive skills self-control and grit are often considered predictors of school performance, but whether this relationship is causal remains unclear. We investigated the causality of this association using a twin design. Specifically, we evaluated the direct impact of self-control and grit on school performance, while controlling for genetic or environmental influences common to all three traits (i.e., confounding). Teachers of 4891 Dutch 12-year-old twin pairs (of which 3837 were complete pairs) completed a survey about school performance (school grades), self-control (ASEBA self-control scale), and the perseverance aspect of grit. Our analysis aimed to determine the direct impact of self-control and grit on school performance, while simultaneously controlling for genetic or environmental confounding. Establishing the regression relationship corrected for confounding supports the interpretation of the regression relationship as causal. In all analyses, we corrected for sex, rater bias of the teachers, and parental socioeconomic status. Initially, in the standard regression, self-control, and grit explained 28.4% of the school performance variance. However, allowing for genetic confounding (due to genetic pleiotropy) revealed that most of this association could be attributed to genetic influences that the three traits share. In the presence of genetic pleiotropy, the phenotypic regression of school performance on self-control and grit accounted for only 4.4% (i.e., the effect size association with the causal hypothesis). In conclusion, self-control and grit predict school performance primarily due to genetic pleiotropy, with a much smaller causal effect (R2 = 4.4%). This suggests that interventions targeting self-control and grit alone may yield limited improvements in school performance.

Psychological grit moderates the relation between lifetime stressor exposure and functional outcomes among HIV-seropositive and HIV-seronegative adults

The ability to maintain functional independence throughout the lifespan may be diminished among medically compromised and chronically stressed populations. People living with HIV are more likely to demonstrate functional impairment and report greater exposure to lifetime and chronic stressors than their seronegative counterparts. It is well-known that exposure to stressors and adversity is associated with functional impairment outcomes. However, to our knowledge, no studies have examined how protective factors such as psychological grit mitigate the negative effects of lifetime and chronic stressor exposure on functional impairment, and how this association differs by HIV-status. To address this issue, we studied associations between lifetime and chronic stressor exposure, grit, and functional impairment in 176 African American and non-Hispanic White HIV-seropositive (n = 100) and HIV-seronegative (n = 76) adults, aged 24-85 (M = 57.28, SD = 9.02). As hypothesised, HIV-seropositive status and lower grit, but not lifetime stressor exposure, were independently associated with more functional impairment. Moreover, there was a significant three-way interaction between HIV-status, grit, and lifetime stressor exposure, b = 0.07, p = 0.025, 95% CI [0.009, 0.135]. Specifically, lifetime stressor exposure was related to more functional impairment for HIV-seronegative-but not HIV-seropositive-adults who reported low levels of grit. These findings suggest that the protective effects of grit may differ across populations at risk for functional impairment.

Mindsets and self-efficacy beliefs among individuals with type 2 diabetes

Growth mindsets and self-efficacy beliefs have been known to predict and promote resilience, challenge seeking, and improved outcomes in areas such as education and intelligence. However, little is known about the role of these two potentially influential beliefs in the context of type 2 diabetes (T2D), specifically in terms of whether and in which domains (i.e., beliefs toward general life, general health, or condition-specific domains) these beliefs-or lack thereof-is prevalent among individuals with T2D. Given the lifelong challenges that individuals with diabetes often encounter with managing their disease, many may slip into a conceding negative belief that their diabetes is "too difficult to control" or simply "out of their hands," inhibiting proactive self-management efforts. Results from our study (n = 893) revealed that individuals with T2D had a significantly lower growth mindset towards their blood glucose level and lower self-efficacy towards their general health, blood glucose, and cholesterol levels compared to those without T2D. Among participants with T2D, further analyses showed a pattern of higher HbA1c among those with lower growth mindsets and self-efficacy toward their general health or blood glucose level. These findings identify the belief-domains that may pose barriers to necessary self-care behaviors, informing future interventions to promote improved diabetes care and management.

Cognitive perspectives on maintaining physicians' medical expertise: V. Using a motivational framework to understand the benefits and costs of testing

We apply a motivational perspective to understand the implications of physicians' longitudinal assessment. We review the literature on situated expectancy-value theory, achievement goals, mindsets, anxiety, and stereotype threat in relation to testing and assessment. This review suggests several motivational benefits of testing as well as some potential challenges and costs posed by high-stakes, standardized tests. Many of the motivational benefits for testing can be understood from the equation of having the perceived benefits of the test outweigh the perceived costs of preparing for and taking the assessment. Attention to instructional framing, test purposes and values, and longitudinal assessment frameworks provide vehicles to further enhance motivational benefits and reduce potential costs of assessment.

A longitudinal person-centered representation of elementary students' motivation: Do perceptions of parent and teacher achievement goals matter?

This study utilized a longitudinal person-centered approach to investigate how children's achievement goals combine with the goals held for them by their parents and teachers to form unique achievement goal profiles among a sample of 619 elementary school students (Mage = 9.782; 52.5% female; 79.2% first- and second-generation immigrants) from low SES ethnically diverse neighborhoods. Our results revealed four distinct profiles that proved to be identical from one school year to the next: (a) Low on all Goals, (b) High on all Goals, (c) Mastery-Oriented, and (d) Low Mastery Goals. Students' membership in these profiles was moderate to highly stable over time. Moreover, all profiles were marked by a correspondence between student, parent, and teacher goals, suggesting that elementary students may come to develop a global understanding of the various goal-related messages present in their environment. Higher perceived competence in core academic subjects was associated with membership into profiles characterized by high levels of mastery goals. The Mastery-Oriented profile fared best in terms of academic achievement and anxiety, whereas the Low Mastery Goals profile fared the worst. This Low Mastery Goals profile was unique to our study and represented the largest profile, which could be related to the socioeconomic status of our sample. Our findings provide information regarding the nature and stability of achievement goal profiles among elementary school students and offer new insights into how children interpret goal-related messages in their environment.

Shifting the mindset culture to address global educational disparities

Educational outcomes remain highly unequal within and across nations. Students' mindsets-their beliefs about whether intellectual abilities can be developed-have been identified as a potential lever for making adolescents' academic outcomes more equitable. Recent research, however, suggests that intervention programs aimed at changing students' mindsets should be supplemented by programs aimed at the changing the mindset culture, which is defined as the shared set of beliefs about learning in a school or classroom. This paper reviews the theoretical and empirical origin of the mindset culture and examines its potential to reduce group-based inequalities in education. In particular, experiments have identified two broad ways the mindset culture is communicated by teachers: via informal messages about growth (e.g., that all students will be helped to learn and succeed), and formal opportunities to improve (e.g., learning-focused grading policies and opportunities to revise and earn credit). New field experiments, applying techniques from behavioral science, have also revealed effective ways to influence teachers' culture-creating behaviors. This paper describes recent breakthroughs in the U.S. educational context and discusses how lessons from these studies might be applied in future, global collaborations with researchers and practitioners.

Using Reappraisal to Improve Outcomes for STEM Teachers and Students

The many stressors associated with teaching can take a toll, resulting in high levels of burnout among teachers and reduced motivation and academic performance among students. This is especially true in the context of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) subjects. Despite the efficacy of emotion regulation interventions in pedagogical settings in general and in STEM teaching in particular, there is a lack of suitable interventions. We applied the process model of emotion regulation to STEM teaching and proposed a framework, STEM-Model of EmotioN regulation: Teachers' Opportunities and Responsibilities (STEM-MENTOR), to elucidate how the high demands of STEM teaching and contextual factors (e.g., culture, reforms, teacher-student interactions) may lead to intensified negative emotions and deficits in executive functioning and emotion regulation implementation. Teacher emotions, in turn, shape students' STEM-related achievements and epistemic emotions. Thus, teachers' emotion regulation skills have pervasive effects on teaching outcomes for both teachers and students. We illustrate how at each level of our framework, steps could be taken to improve teachers' emotional trajectory. Our proposed STEM-MENTOR framework has implications for theoretical understanding and may help to shape future interventions that focus on cognitive-emotional processes in STEM education.

A Growth Mindset Frame Increases Opting In to Reading Information About Bias

We explore the conditions under which people will opt in to reading information about bias and stereotypes, a key precursor to the types of self-directed learning that diversity and anti-bias advocates increasingly endorse. Across one meta-analysis (total N = 1,122; 7 studies, 5 pre-registered) and 2 pre-registered experiments (total N = 1,717), we identify a condition under which people opt in to reading more about implicit bias and stereotypes. People randomly assigned to read a growth, rather than fixed, mindset frame about bias opted in to read more information about stereotypes and implicit bias (Study 1 and Study 3). The mechanism that drove these effects was individuals' construal of the task as a challenge (Studies 2 and 3). Our findings offer insight into how to promote engagement with information about stereotypes and biases. We discuss how this work advances the study of mindsets and diversity science.

Longitudinal Links Between Parental Failure Mindsets, Helicopter Parenting, and Fixed Mindset of Intelligence in Adolescents

Evidence for the prospective associations among parental failure mindset, helicopter parenting, and children's intelligence mindset is lacking. This three-wave longitudinal study (12 months apart between waves) addressed this research gap by testing whether perceived maternal helicopter parenting mediated the link between perceived maternal failure mindset and intelligence mindset. Participants included 525 Chinese adolescents (47.2% girls, M_age = 15.41 years, SD = 0.22). Random-intercept cross-lagged analysis suggests that mothers with stronger failure-is-debilitating mindsets are more likely to engage in helicopter parenting, which may in turn contribute to stronger endorsements of a fixed mindset of intelligence in their adolescent children. The relation between maternal helicopter parenting and children's intelligence mindset appeared to be reciprocal, i.e., children's fixed mindset may elicit more helicopter parenting over time.

The Role of Student Beliefs in Dual-Enrollment Courses

Access to dual-enrollment courses, which allow high school students to earn college credit, is stratified by race/ethnicity, class, and geography. States and colleges have begun using multiple measures of readiness, including non-cognitive measures of student preparedness, in lieu of strict reliance on test scores in an attempt to expand and equalize access. This practice was accelerated by COVID-19 due to disruptions in standardized testing. However, limited research has examined how non-cognitive beliefs shape students' experiences and outcomes in dual-enrollment courses. We study a large dual-enrollment program created by a university in the Southwest to examine these patterns. We find that mathematics self-efficacy and educational expectations predict performance in dual-enrollment courses, even when controlling for students' academic preparedness, while factors such as high school belonging, college belonging, and self-efficacy in other academic domains are unrelated to academic performance. However, we find that students of color and first-generation students have lower self-efficacy and educational expectations before enrolling in dual-enrollment courses, in addition to having lower levels of academic preparation. These findings suggest that using non-cognitive measures to determine student eligibility for dual-enrollment courses could exacerbate, rather than ameliorate, inequitable patterns of participation. Students from historically marginalized populations may benefit from social-psychological as well as academic supports in order to receive maximum benefits from early postsecondary opportunities such as dual-enrollment. Our findings have implications for how states and dual-enrollment programs determine eligibility for dual-enrollment as well as how dual-enrollment programs should be designed and delivered in order to promote equity in college preparedness.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s11162-023-09740-z.

A prosocial fake news intervention with durable effects

The present online intervention promoted family-based prosocial values-in terms of helping family members-among young adults to build resistance against fake news. This preregistered randomized controlled trial study is among the first psychological fake news interventions in Eastern Europe, where the free press is weak and state-sponsored misinformation runs riot in mainstream media. In this intervention, participants were endowed with an expert role and requested to write a letter to their digitally less competent relatives explaining six strategies that help fake news recognition. Compared to the active control group there was an immediate effect (d = 0.32) that persisted until the follow-up four weeks later (d = 0.22) on fake news accuracy ratings of the young, advice-giving participants. The intervention also reduced the bullshit receptivity of participants both immediately after the intervention and in the long run. The present work demonstrates the power of using relevant social bonds for motivating behavior change among Eastern European participants. Our prosocial approach with its robust grounding in human psychology might complement prior interventions in the fight against misinformation.

Why Meta-Analyses of Growth Mindset and Other Interventions Should Follow Best Practices for Examining Heterogeneity: Commentary on Macnamara and Burgoyne (2023) and Burnette et al. (2023)

Meta-analysts often ask a yes-or-no question: Is there an intervention effect or not? This traditional, all-or-nothing thinking stands in contrast with current best practice in meta-analysis, which calls for a heterogeneity-attuned approach (i.e., focused on the extent to which effects vary across procedures, participant groups, or contexts). This heterogeneity-attuned approach allows researchers to understand where effects are weaker or stronger and reveals mechanisms. The current article builds on a rare opportunity to compare two recent meta-analyses that examined the same literature (growth mindset interventions) but used different methods and reached different conclusions. One meta-analysis used a traditional approach (Macnamara and Burgoyne, in press), which aggregated effect sizes for each study before combining them and examined moderators one-by-one by splitting the data into small subgroups. The second meta-analysis (Burnette et al., in press) modeled the variation of effects within studies-across subgroups and outcomes-and applied modern, multi-level meta-regression methods. The former concluded that growth mindset effects are biased, but the latter yielded nuanced conclusions consistent with theoretical predictions. We explain why the practices followed by the latter meta-analysis were more in line with best practices for analyzing large and heterogeneous literatures. Further, an exploratory re-analysis of the data showed that applying the modern, heterogeneity-attuned methods from Burnette et al. (in press) to the dataset employed by Macnamara and Burgoyne (in press) confirmed Burnette et al.'s conclusions; namely, that there was a meaningful, significant effect of growth mindset in focal (at-risk) groups. This article concludes that heterogeneity-attuned meta-analysis is important both for advancing theory and for avoiding the boom-or-bust cycle that plagues too much of psychological science.

Surgical Safety Checklist

Objectives: the surgical safety checklist (SSC) is a document that is intended to increase patient safety in the operating theater by eliminating avoidable errors. The original document has been published in English by the WHO which recommends its obligatory use. The document’s name is often distorted when translated into European languages, for instance into the “surgical control list”. This article aims to assess the consequences of the distortion of the originally intended meaning for the completion of SSC in the operating theater. Methods: we compared the exactness of the meaning of translation in 29 European languages based on Google translator. Particular attention was paid to the presence of essential words such as “checklist” and “safety” in the translation.Results: we found that in 15 out of the 29 languages, the translation of these two words was incorrect, particularly in Slavic languages. The most often mistranslation was the “control card” or “control list”, which was a misnomer.Conclusions: the translation of the SSC name into native languages is inadequate in about one-half of the cases, which may jeopardize its proper use by team members of the operating theater, and thus the patient perioperative safety.

Regional Gray Matter Volume Is Associated with Growth Mindset: A Voxel-Based Morphometry Study

A growth mindset refers to an individual's beliefs about the malleable nature of intelligence. It plays an important role in motivation and achievement. However, few studies have examined the brain mechanisms involved in the growth mindset. In this study, voxel-based morphometry was used to investigate the relationship between growth mindset and gray matter volume (GMV) in healthy adults' sample from 114 men and 275 women who completed the Growth Mindset Inventory and intelligence test and underwent an anatomical magnetic resonance imaging scan. Whole-brain correlation analyses showed a positive relationship between growth mindset scores and regional GMV of the medial orbitofrontal cortex (mOFC) after controlling for age, sex, and total intracranial volume. This result was robust after controlling for intelligence quotient. The mOFC was primarily related to reward processing, supporting the social-cognitive theory of motivation on growth mindset.

Reading struggle stories of role models can improve the perseverance of undergraduates with low perseverance

Perseverance refers to the ability that individuals show in the process of overcoming failure repeatedly and achieving success. The present study aimed to investigate how many stories about struggling role models undergraduates with a low level of perseverance need to read to effectively improve their perseverance after experiencing failure. Undergraduates with high and low levels of perseverance who had experienced failure were randomly assigned to read 5 struggle stories or 5 achievement stories of role models. They were asked to report their confidence in success, their emotional experience, and their persistent intentions after experiencing failure (i.e., their initial report after reading 0 stories) and then again after reading each story. The results showed that the participants' initially reported level of confidence in success improved after reading 1 struggle story of a role model and further improved after reading 5 struggle stories of role models. Furthermore, the participants' initially reported level of positive emotions increased after reading 1 struggle story or 1 achievement story of a role model, and the positive effects began to level off after reading 4 struggle stories or 4 achievement stories of role models. The participants' initially reported persistent intentions improved after reading 5 struggle stories of role models. These findings reveal that undergraduates can benefit from reading struggle stories of role models regardless of their perseverance levels. Undergraduates' confidence in success and their emotional experience can be improved more quickly than their persistent intentions after experiencing failure.

Cognitive training enhances growth mindset in children through plasticity of cortico-striatal circuits

Growth mindset, the belief that one's abilities can improve through cognitive effort, is an important psychological construct with broad implications for enabling children to reach their highest potential. However, surprisingly little is known about malleability of growth mindset in response to cognitive interventions in children and its neurobiological underpinnings. Here we address critical gaps in our knowledge by investigating behavioral and brain changes in growth mindset associated with a four-week training program designed to enhance foundational, academically relevant, cognitive skills in 7-10-year-old children. Cognitive training significantly enhanced children's growth mindset. Cross-lagged panel analysis of longitudinal pre- and post-training data revealed that growth mindset prior to training predicted cognitive abilities after training, providing support for the positive role of growth mindset in fostering academic achievement. We then examined training-induced changes in brain response and connectivity associated with problem solving in relation to changes in growth mindset. Children's gains in growth mindset were associated with increased neural response and functional connectivity of the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, striatum, and hippocampus, brain regions crucial for cognitive control, motivation, and memory. Plasticity of cortico-striatal circuitry emerged as the strongest predictor of growth mindset gains. Taken together, our study demonstrates that children's growth mindset can be enhanced by cognitive training, and elucidates the potential neurobiological mechanisms underlying its malleability. Findings provide important insights into effective interventions that simultaneously promote growth mindset and learning during the early stages of cognitive development.

Female peer mentors early in college have lasting positive impacts on female engineering students that persist beyond graduation

Expanding the talent pipeline of students from underrepresented backgrounds in STEM has been a priority in the United States for decades. However, potential solutions to increase the number of such students in STEM academic pathways, measured using longitudinal randomized controlled trials in real-world contexts, have been limited. Here, we expand on an earlier investigation that reported results from a longitudinal field experiment in which undergraduate female students (N = 150) interested in engineering at college entry were randomly assigned a female peer mentor in engineering, a male peer mentor in engineering, or not assigned a mentor for their first year of college. While an earlier article presented findings from participants' first two years of college, the current article reports the same participants' academic experiences for each year in college through college graduation and one year post-graduation. Compared to the male peer mentor and no mentor condition, having a female peer mentor was associated with a significant improvement in participants' psychological experiences in engineering, aspirations to pursue postgraduate engineering degrees, and emotional well-being. It was also associated with participants' success in securing engineering internships and retention in STEM majors through college graduation. In sum, a low-cost, short peer mentoring intervention demonstrates benefits in promoting female students' success in engineering from college entry, through one-year post-graduation.

Do beliefs in the malleability of well-being affect the efficacy of positive psychology interventions? Results of a randomized placebo-controlled trial

The present study examines the role of beliefs about the malleability of well-being in a randomized, placebo-controlled, online positive psychology intervention targeting 267 German-speaking adults (83% women, mean age = 43.16 years). The participants of the experimental group ("three good things" intervention) and placebo control group ("early memories") reported their levels of happiness before and immediately after the 1-week intervention, as well as 2, 4, and 12 weeks after the intervention. Furthermore, the researchers recorded how participants completed the exercises and to what extent they liked the exercises. This study also assesses the participants' beliefs surrounding two different aspects of malleability (well-being is modifiable in general, and one knows how to change their well-being). Although both aspects of malleability were strongly intercorrelated, beliefs about how to change one's well-being seemed particularly relevant in the context of positive psychology interventions: Those who reported a stronger belief about how to change their well-being liked the intervention better and more often completed the activity as instructed. Further, they reported greater increases in well-being as compared with the control group. We conclude that beliefs about the malleability of well-being might represent an important moderating variable in the effectiveness of positive psychology interventions.

A guide to megastudies

How can behavioral insights best be leveraged to solve pressing policy challenges? Because research studies are typically designed to test the validity of a particular idea, surprisingly little is known about the relative efficacy of different approaches to changing behavior in any given policy context. We discuss megastudies as a research approach that can surmount this and other obstacles to developing optimal behaviorally informed policy interventions. We define a megastudy as "a massive field experiment in which many different treatments are tested synchronously in one large sample using a common, objectively measured outcome." We summarize this apples-to-apples approach to research and lay out recommendations, limitations, and promising future directions for scholars who might want to conduct or evaluate megastudies.

The online mindset intervention 'The Growth Factory' for adolescents with intellectual disabilities: moderators and mediators

BACKGROUND

The online mindset intervention The Growth Factory (TGF) has shown promising effects-increasing growth mindsets and perseverance and decreasing mental health problems among youth with intellectual disabilities (ID). Studying moderators and mediators of intervention effects is essential to elucidate for whom and why TGF works. Using a randomised controlled trial design, we examined youth's baseline mindset, gender, age, level of ID and intervention satisfaction as moderators of TGF effects and examined whether the intervention effects of TGF on improvements in mental health were mediated by perseverance.

METHODS

The sample consisted of 119 participants with mild to borderline ID (Mage  = 15.83; SD = 2.23), randomly assigned to the intervention (n = 60) or passive control group (n = 59). Participants reported mindsets, perseverance, internalising, externalising, attention and total mental health problems at pre-test, at post-test and at 3-month follow-up. Additionally, youth in the intervention group graded their satisfaction with a score at the end of each session.

RESULTS

Findings indicated that the effectiveness of TGF was not affected by participants' baseline mindsets, age and ID level. TGF was more effective in reducing internalising problems in girls and increasing perseverance in boys. In addition, in the intervention group TGF was more effective in improving internalising, externalising and total mental health problems for youth who reported higher levels of intervention satisfaction at post-test. Finally, TGF indirectly decreased internalising and externalising problems at follow-up through improvements in perseverance reported at post-test.

CONCLUSIONS

TGF offers a universal, 'add-on' mindset intervention complementing usual care programmes. It improves mindsets, perseverance and mental health in youth with ID. Both practical and theoretical implications are discussed.

Prospering in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic: The effects of PROSPER-based intervention on psychological outcomes among preschool teachers

The growing concerns regarding the risks of transmitting the COVID-19 virus have intensified the job-related stressors commonly encountered by teachers in various cultural contexts. Evidence shows how the COVID-19 crisis has negatively impacted teachers' mental health outcomes such as stress, depression, and quality of life, which highlights the significance of designing psychological programs to boost teachers' well-being. This study examined the effects of a well-being intervention based on the Positivity, Relationship, Outcomes, Strength, Purpose, Engagement, and Resilience (PROSPER) framework on well-being outcomes among 76 in-service teachers (M_age = 26.05 years, SD = 4.71, range = 20–45; female = 93.4%) in Hong Kong. Participants completed survey measures associated with the seven PROSPER outcomes at baseline and 2-month follow-up. Multivariate regression analysis indicated that there were statistically significant multivariate effects for intervention conditions, Wilks' Lambda F(7, 58) = 4.50, p = .01. Results demonstrated that teachers who were assigned to the intervention condition (n = 36) had significantly higher scores than those in the control condition (n = 40) on positivity (b = 0.41, 95% CI [0.16, 0.65], p = .01), strength (b = 0.62, 95% CI [0.23, 1.01], p = .01), purpose (b = 0.61, 95% CI [0.18, 1.04], p = .01), and resilience (b = 0.57, 95% CI [0.07, 1.07], p = .04). Our findings provide evidence on the mental health benefits of the PROSPER-based psychological intervention program for preschool teachers.

Self-control and SAT outcomes: Evidence from two national field studies

Self-control is often thought to be synonymous with willpower, defined as the direct modulation of impulses in order to do what is best in the long-run. However, research has also identified more strategic approaches to self-control that require less effort than willpower. To date, field research is lacking that compares the efficacy of willpower to strategic self-control for consequential and objectively measured real-world outcomes. In collaboration with the College Board, we surveyed two national samples of high school students about how they motivated themselves to study for the SAT college admission exam. In Study 1 (N = 5,563), compared to willpower, strategic self-control predicted more hours of SAT practice and higher SAT scores, even when controlling for prior PSAT scores. Additionally, the more self-control strategies students deployed, the higher their SAT scores. Consistent with dose-response curves in other domains, there were positive albeit diminishing marginal returns to additional strategies. Mediation analyses suggest that the benefits of self-control strategies to SAT scores was fully explained by increased practice time. These results were confirmed in Study 2, a preregistered replication with N = 14,259 high school students. Compared to willpower, strategic self-control may be especially beneficial in facilitating the pursuit of goals in high-stakes, real-world situations.

When (deliberate) practice is not enough – the role of intelligence, practice, and knowledge in academic performance

It is well established that academic performance (AP) depends on a number of factors, such as intellectual capacities, practice, and previous knowledge. We know little about how these factors interact as they are rarely measured simultaneously. Here we present mediated-Factors of Academic Performance (m-FAP) model, which simultaneously assesses direct and indirect, mediated, effects on AP. In a semester-long study with 118 first-year college students, we show that intelligence and working memory only indirectly influenced AP on a familiar, less challenging college course (Introduction to Psychology). Their influence was mediated through previous knowledge and self-regulated learning activities akin to deliberate practice. In a novel and more challenging course (Statistics in Psychology), intellectual capacities influenced performance both directly and indirectly through previous knowledge. The influence of deliberate practice, however, was considerably weaker in the novel course. The amount of time and effort that the students spent on the more difficult course could not offset the advantage of their more intelligent and more knowledgeable peers. The m–FAP model explains previous contradictory results by providing a framework for understanding the extent and limitations of individual factors in AP, which depend not only on each other, but also on the learning context.

Antecedents and Consequences of Grit Among Working Adults: A Transpersonal Psychology Perspective

Positive psychology has paved the way for newer and more informed ideas of living a meaningful, integrated and well-rounded quality of living. The current era of the pandemic has also moulded the ways in which individuals perceive their quality of life and how they want to integrate a holistic approach towards their well-being. The workplace settings have seen tremendous changes in terms of how employers, employees and the organisations at large function and operate. The pre-pandemic concept of success has shifted its focus from hard work to developing grit among employees to increase the overall efficiency of the organisations. Grit has revolutionised the conventional standards of success, meaning in life and has impacted personal as well as occupational welfare. This integration of positive psychology and transpersonal psychology has catalysed the purpose for the current study. To help organisations and individuals thrive in their professional endeavours at the workplace and to provide them with relevant psychological tools to enhance their occupational growth, the present study has been conducted empirically to investigate the antecedents and consequences of grit among 209 working professionals in India. The results of this study indicate that the transpersonal capital of metacognition, flow, optimism and empathy have a significant role to play in developing grit among the participants. The findings have implications for enhancing job satisfaction and job performance of participants. The current research also provides a framework to organisations towards designing interventions for improving efficiency at the workplace.

Rethinking the Multidimensionality of Growth Mindset Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Systematic Review and Framework Proposal

Students, staff, and faculty in higher education are facing unprecedented challenges due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Recent data revealed that a good number of academic activities and opportunities were disrupted as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and its variants. While much uncertainty remains for the next academic year, how higher education institutions and their students might improve responses to the rapidly changing situation matters. This systematic review and framework proposal aim to update previous empirical work and examine the current evidence for the effectiveness of growth mindset interventions in young adults. To this end, a systematic search identified 20 empirical studies involving 5, 805 young adults. These studies examined growth mindset within ecologically valid educational contexts and various content areas. Generally, these findings showed that brief messages of growth mindset can improve underrepresented students' academic performance and facilitate other relevant psychological constructs. In addition, we argue, although growth mindset has been identified as a unitary concept, it is comprised of multiple interdependent skills, such as self-control, self-efficacy, and self-esteem. Understanding the nature of growth mindset may contribute to successful mindset implementation. Therefore, this article presents a practical framework to help educators in higher education rethink the multidimensionality of growth mindset and to provide their students with alternative routes to achieve their goals. Finally, additional articles were discussed to help evaluate growth mindset interventions in higher education.

A synergistic mindsets intervention protects adolescents from stress

Social-evaluative stressors-experiences in which people feel they could be judged negatively-pose a major threat to adolescent mental health1-3 and can cause young people to disengage from stressful pursuits, resulting in missed opportunities to acquire valuable skills. Here we show that replicable benefits for the stress responses of adolescents can be achieved with a short (around 30-min), scalable 'synergistic mindsets' intervention. This intervention, which is a self-administered online training module, synergistically targets both growth mindsets4 (the idea that intelligence can be developed) and stress-can-be-enhancing mindsets5 (the idea that one's physiological stress response can fuel optimal performance). In six double-blind, randomized, controlled experiments that were conducted with secondary and post-secondary students in the United States, the synergistic mindsets intervention improved stress-related cognitions (study 1, n = 2,717; study 2, n = 755), cardiovascular reactivity (study 3, n = 160; study 4, n = 200), daily cortisol levels (study 5, n = 118 students, n = 1,213 observations), psychological well-being (studies 4 and 5), academic success (study 5) and anxiety symptoms during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns (study 6, n = 341). Heterogeneity analyses (studies 3, 5 and 6) and a four-cell experiment (study 4) showed that the benefits of the intervention depended on addressing both mindsets-growth and stress-synergistically. Confidence in these conclusions comes from a conservative, Bayesian machine-learning statistical method for detecting heterogeneous effects6. Thus, our research has identified a treatment for adolescent stress that could, in principle, be scaled nationally at low cost.

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.

The development of grit and growth mindset in Chinese children

In a recent longitudinal study of U.S. adolescents, grit predicted rank-order increases in growth mindset and, to a lesser degree, growth mindset predicted rank-order increases in grit. The current investigation replicated and extended these findings in a younger non-Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (non-WEIRD) population. Two large samples totaling more than 5000 elementary school children in China completed self-report questionnaires assessing grit and growth mindset five times over 2 years. As in Park et al. (2020, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 198, 1048892020), we found reciprocal relations between grit and growth mindset. Grit systematically predicted rank-order increases in growth mindset at each subsequent 6-month interval. Growth mindset also predicted small rank-order increases in grit over the same period. These findings suggest that, over time, behavior may exert as much an influence on beliefs as the reverse-a dynamic possibly observable as early as in elementary school and not just in WEIRD cultures.

Parents' daily involvement in children's math homework and activities during early elementary school

This research examined parents’ involvement in children’s math homework and activities. During 2017 to 2019, American parents (N = 483; 80% mothers; 67% white) of young elementary school children (M_age = 7.47 years; 50% girls) reported on their math helping self‐efficacy; they also reported on their involvement in children’s math homework and activities daily for 12 days. At this time and a year later, children’s math motivation and achievement were assessed. Parents’ involvement in homework (vs. activities) was more affectively negative (d = .34), particularly among parents low in self‐efficacy (d = .23). The more affectively negative parents’ involvement, particularly in homework, the poorer children’s later math motivation and achievement (βs = −.09 to .20).

What Characterises an Effective Mindset Intervention in Enhancing Students’ Learning? A Systematic Literature Review

In recent years, increasing attention has been paid to interventions designed to enhance individuals’ sustainable development in learning by priming a growth mindset. The current study systematically explored the characteristics of message transformation in growth mindset interventions from the perspective of teaching and learning. According to a three-phase literature search (database, prominent researchers, and backtracking references), thirty-eight empirical studies investigating the efficacy of mindset interventions for adolescents of school age constitute the sample for the current literature review. The results indicate that a supportive but not-completely-saturated learning environment paves the way to implementing a mindset intervention. The three pedagogical characteristics that ensure successful interventions are: (1) Mutual interaction among the person, the context, and the theory to generate the message; (2) Iterative processes to ensure the message is delivered; and (3) a persuasive yet stealthy approach to facilitating its internalization. The findings inspire educators to design effective mindset interventions to enhance students’ learning. Theoretical and practical implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.