Progressfocused

In this article I describe new research by David Yeager and his colleagues into how mindsets about abilities and mindsets about stress can reinforce each other, in a positive and negative sense.

Mindsets are important in all areas of our lives. We know the concept of mindset from the work of Carol Dweck . She made the word widely known through her 2006 book . Dweck and her colleagues did a lot of research into the effects of how we think about the malleability of intelligence. But Alia Crum (photo), assistant professor at Stanford University, comes up with a broader definition of the concept of mindset. Her work shows how important our mindset is in about everything we encounter in life. Mindsets play a significant role in our health, our well-being, and our performance. 

- Coert Visser  Gregory M. Walton , associate professor of psychology at Stanford University, does research and teaching focused on wise interventions which target psychological processes involved in individual and major social problems. These wise interventions may shift how people think about themselves and their situations and may help them flourish, even over long periods of time. Recently he co-edited, with Alia Crum , the Handbook of Wise Interventions. How Social Psychology Can Help People Change . We talk about what these wise interventions are. Why use the word ‘wise’ to describe them? What are some examples of these interventions? How can it be that these brief and simple interventions sometimes have such long term benefits? 

Progress-focused directing is an approach to make expectations clear to someone. This is done in such a way that the person understands what is needed to do and why it is necessary to do. The person who directs takes the other person's perspective seriously, even if he or she raises other objections or objections. The other person is also given the opportunity to decide for himself or herself how he or she can meet the expectation. Below you can read 6 principles of progress-focused directing.  By practicing progress-focused directing techniques during training sessions, participants often learn the following things:

Dave Paunesku, former student of Carol Dweck, is now the director of PERTS, an applied research center at Stanford University. Among other things, he was involved in large-scale research at the Khan Academy. Below I describe three simple tips from Dave Paunesku on how to show a growth mindset to your students and support them in developing a growth mindset themselves.

A new study by Peperkorn et al. (2020) shows that as humans, we prefer social contact in pairs. What does this mean and what are the reasons for this? 

Two psychological theories that you may have read about on this site are the self-determination theory and the theory of planned behavior . A new study ( Chan et al., 2020 ) maps the relationships between these two theories.

Whether you see the benefit of cultivating wisdom in work situations depends on whether you believe that wisdom can be developed at all. Recent experimental research has shown that the important components of wisdom are indeed malleable. In a new book chapter, Igor Grossmann (2020) lists what is known about the malleability of wisdom. He also offers suggestions for how wisdom can be cultivated at work. 

The growth mindset is the belief that personal characteristics such as intellectual abilities can be developed through effort and strategy. David Yeager and Carol Dweck have written an article which addresses four critical questions about the growth mindset:  Does a growth mindset predict student outcomes?  Do growth mindset interventions work and do they work reliably?  Are the effect sizes meaningful enough to merit attention?  Can teachers successfully be taught a growth mindset and instill a growth mindset in their students?  Below I summarize the article without going into all the finer points and arguments in the original article. Think of my summary as an introduction to the article and do read the article itself to get the details behind the arguments and conclusions of the authors.