Progress-focused

There is no denying that humanity faces a number of existential problems such as economic inequality, environmental degradation and political instability. Therefore, it is necessary for society as a whole to work for the common good. Unfortunately, a sense of despondency prevails as so many people seem to feel powerless in the face of these problems. Yet our contribution to a better world, even if we sometimes think they have little to do with these important challenges, can have an impact. In this article, we explore the power of small actions and how everyone's choices can influence the course of the future.

How mindset interventions can improve adolescent mental health. A new paper by David Yeager and Carol Dweck raises the idea that adolescents have different perceptions of their personal qualities, and that changing these perceptions can lead to better coping with challenging situations and improved mental health. The paper presents both theory and data that support this idea.

The word values ​​refers to what we value in life and what we think is good and bad. Values ​​are important because they strongly influence our judgments, choices and behaviors. Self-determination theory research shows that when we engage in activities that are consistent with our values, we feel and function better. But what kind of values ​​can we have? In this article I describe characteristics of values ​​and explain Shalom Schwartz's Theory of Fundamental Human Values. Then I describe which values ​​wise people especially have and which they especially don't have. If you want to get wiser, maybe you can take some inspiration from this.

Wisdom is a complex concept. Wisdom contains multiple components and facets. It brings together many of the best things in people at the same time. The complexity of wisdom makes it difficult to describe and study. Different thinkers and scientists have looked at this complex concept from different angles. With the advent of the still young science of wisdom, there is gradually more clarity about what wisdom consists of, how it can be measured, how it relates to other concepts, what its importance is and how it can be developed.

We live in a time of profound changes and countless uncertainties. Recently, as a society, we have been shaken up by the dramatic opportunities and threats that artificial intelligence (AI) entails. These developments are going so fast that the prospects are that AI will be able to take over the work of many people in the foreseeable future. What possibilities and opportunities will there be for us in the future? This is an essential question because opportunity is crucial to the pursuit of goals, and without opportunity, progress is unlikely.

This article is about the quality of motivation according to self-determination theory (SDT). I focus on the best quality of motivation: autonomous motivation and explain that it comes in two forms: intrinsic and internalized motivation. Then I explain that there are two wrong ways of thinking about intrinsic motivation. Finally, I come to the conclusion that the balance between intrinsic and internalized motivation can be seen as an important key to success in education and work.

Rebecca Collie conducted a survey of 426 Australian teachers. Through this research, she sought to find out which factors are involved in teachers' well-being and turnover intentions ( Collie, 2023 ).

An interesting, fairly new discipline is emerging within the social sciences: Cognitive Immunology (CI). This discipline of science studies the immune system of the mind that protects against infectious and dangerous ideas, just as the immune system of the body protects against microbes. Cognitive immunologists strive to better understand disorders, causes of mental immunity, and interventions to improve mental immunity. Below I give a brief description of this discipline.

Being able to say 'no' effectively is important. Countless explicit and implicit requests are coming our way every day. By explicit requests I mean direct questions that we are asked, such as: "Could you do ...  for me?'' or "Is it okay if I ...'' By implicit requests I mean something more abstract, namely all the stimuli and triggers that ask for our attention. These can be all kinds of things such as e-mails that come in, interesting, exciting or disturbing news reports on websites or on the radio or TV, expressions on social media websites such as Twitter and Facebook, incoming text messages or Whats app messages, and even people passing by or sounds you hear.

This week I facilitated a progress-focused session of a team of professionals from the municipality of Rotterdam. Facilitating such an unknown team in advance is often a bit exciting. You don't know who you're dealing with and you have no idea what they'll say or how they'll behave. But usually my sense of curiosity is greater than my nervousness. The reason for this is that I usually hear interesting and informative things from such a group. That was also the case that morning. Several interesting things were said that also made me think again. I will highlight one as an example.

I had an interesting experience last week during an exercise in our training. A participant changed his attitude from authoritarian and sarcastic to progress-focused within a few minutes. During our progress-focused leadership training, I supervised an exercise in which we practiced progress-focused directing . During part of that exercise, one of the participants, Peter, wanted to practice a bit. Peter had said earlier during the training that he wanted to practice being non-authoritarian in the conversation. He saw this as a pitfall for himself. I stepped into the role of employee and he stepped into that of manager. We practiced that he would ask me directing question and I would respond complainingly.

Love is an almost universal phenomenon with a biological background. It is therefore certain that love occurs worldwide. But to what extent do culture and environmental factors influence the extent to which people express and experience love? To find out, a group of 91 researchers conducted a large-scale study of romantic relationships in 45 countries and territories. 

Around the holidays and the New Year, we often meet a lot of people and sometimes have conversations that we can't always have during the busy working weeks . I had a few conversations with a few people about big topics of our time. I quite often think about such conversations afterwards. Below, from my memory, I try to recall as best I can how those conversations went.

Recently I was musing about people, as I often do. You may know that. As I did that, I realized that the people I thought about might, in real life, be very different from what I think they are. Our mental versions of them can be very different from themselves. I thought about that for a while.

How does internalization of motivation take place? It often happens that we have to do things that we do not find inherently fun or interesting. If this is the case, we need another reason to carry out the activity with motivation. Motivational internalization plays an important role here. Bex Hewett researched how internalization occurs.

Many see the growth mindset as an important concept for education. However, recent studies show relatively modest effects of growth mindset interventions on school outcomes. New research by Tieme Janssen and Nienke van Atteveld (2022) shows a specific improvement of growth mindset interventions. They not only explained to students about neuroplasticity, the ability of the brain to constantly change, but also let them experience these changes themselves through neurofeedback. Below I briefly describe their research.

What is the intelligent attitude? Psychologists have been measuring intelligence for over 100 years. Intelligence measurements have been widely used for years for admission to educations and selection decisions. In a new article, Robert Sternberg (2022) argues for a broader view of intelligence. I discuss some of the main points from the interesting article.

Unlearning and consciously leaving things out is important. In our training courses we pay more and more attention to contrasting learning. Read here why we have come to see it as an essential part of learning.

The Correspondent published an interesting Dutch article by Rutger Bregman entitled Zes tekenen dat je aan de verkeerde kant van de geschiedenis staat (Six signs that you are on the wrong side of history). Here I mention some highlights from the article in the hope that you will read the article yourself afterwards.

Progress monitoring can be a powerful countermeasure to the negativity bias . We almost always start our training sessions with a start up exercise. This is a short exercise, usually about 10 minutes, that we usually do in pairs. During the exercise, we always give the participants a concrete question to discuss. A question that is regularly used is: “Take turns telling each other about meaningful progress you have made in the past period.” I often remain surprised at how well this question works and how beneficial it is.

Description of a study by Clegg et al. (2022) on the predictors and correlates of autonomous motivation and controlled motivation. In other words: how good motivation is created and what effects it has.

A growth mindset is the belief that abilities can change. Having a growth mindset is beneficial for motivation and seeking challenges. But more and more researchers are concerned about the existence of a false growth mindset. Does it indeed exist? If so, what are its meaning, causes and relevance?

A school is launching a project aimed at improving students' self-regulation skills. The aim is that students learn to concentrate better, to persevere in the face of adversity, and to use various strategies to achieve their goals. Over time, researchers find that the learning performance of the students improves on average. So the project appears to be a success. However, to their surprise, they also see that the students do not feel that their self-regulation skills have improved. The school management and the researchers are scratching their heads. What is going on here? A publication by Lira et al. (2022) offers an explanation.

There are two new publications on the effects of growth mindset interventions. The two articles analyze the same research literature via meta-analyses but draw completely different conclusions. Macnamara & Burgoyne (2022) argue that growth mindset interventions hardly work; Burnette et al. (2022) found positive effects on academic outcomes, mental health, and social functioning. How can this be? There is a simple and important explanation described in an article by Tipton et al. (2022).

It seems logical: when you come to new insights, you are happy. But it is often a bit more complicated. It often happens that we can have mixed feelings when we come to a new insight. How is that possible?