Interventions
Underperformance, health problems, and interpersonal conflict are common social problems that impinge on personal, academic, and organizational functioning. To address these issues and to help people flourish, growth mindset interventions seek to inculcate the belief that human attributes can be developed. Scientists and policy makers alike are asking: Are these interventions effective? However, answering this question by aggregating intervention effects without paying attention to implementation fidelity is a serious threat to validity and can lead to erroneous conclusions. To draw attention to this issue and to encourage future research, we created a framework for the implementation of mindset interventions and developed a checklist for open reporting. Example interventions from our lab are below.
Healthy Minds
Healthy Minds is an intervention focused on fostering growth mindsets of people and emotions. We implemented this intervention with adolescents in the Southeastern United States and in an online sample of adolescents across the country. We examined if the intervention helped reduce symptoms and rates of depression. We also sought to reduce blame for depression as well as increase self-efficacy and improve coping strategies.
Growing Minds
Growing Minds is a growth mindset intervention with adolescent girls to promote academic motivation and mental health.
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Entrepreneurship Mindsets
In this research, we developed and tested if a growth mindset intervention could be leveraged to promote students’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy and if this, in turn, predicted career development.