Mindset research

Those of you who’ve been reading the blog for a while, you know I like Carol Dweck’s research in general. This group of articles has two in which she’s a coauthor. Chen et al. (2025). A Strategic Mindset Enhances Children’s Generation of Effective Strategies and Delay of Gratification across Tasks” in Developmental Psychology. Here are some excerpts:

Overcoming challenges to achieve success involves being able to spontaneously come up with effective strategies to address different task demands. Research has linked individual differences in such strategy generation and use to optimal development over time and greater success across many areas of life. Yet, there is surprisingly little experimental evidence that tests how we might help young children to spontaneously generate and apply effective strategies across different challenging tasks. We test this in an area important to development: delaying gratification. To do this, we developed a “strategic mindset” storybook that encouraged children, when waiting felt hard, to ask themselves strategy-eliciting questions, such as: “What can I try to be better at this?” In two experiments (N = 237), 5- to 6-year-old children who read the strategic mindset storybook with an experimenter (vs. a control storybook) waited significantly longer to receive desirable treats (Experiments 1 and 2) and to watch an appealing YouTube video (Experiment 2). Moreover, they were able to wait longer because they spontaneously generated and applied a greater number of effective waiting strategies. Going beyond classic research that taught children specific strategies to delay gratification, our results suggest that our new “metacognitive” approach can empower children’s self-regulation.

Children who learned a “strategic mindset” spontaneously generated and applied more effective self-control strategies—and hence, waited longer on two, different delay-of-gratification tasks (compared to a control group). This is one of the first experimental tests of an internally driven, metacognitive, potentially generalizable way of teaching young children to regulate themselves. This research paves the way for research on real-world, longer term outcomes that may be influenced by such agentic, self-driven strategizing.

A strategic mindset is defined as an orientation, or tendency, toward frequently prompting oneself with strategy-eliciting questions—such as “What can I try to be better at this?,” “How else can I do this?,” or “Is there an even better way of doing this?”—especially in the midst of challenges or unproductivity. Among adults (which the published literature has been limited to thus far), those who have more of a strategic mindset tend to spontaneously generate and apply more strategies that are effective for navigating challenging tasks. These strategies that they spontaneously apply include sophisticated metacognitive strategies, such as planning and self-monitoring, which involve taking a perspective on oneself and the task. Indeed, the more of these effective strategies adults apply to their goal pursuit, the greater the progress they report making toward personally important professional, educational, health, and fitness goals.

A strategic mindset puts the child in the driver’s seat, in control of their own search for and use of effective strategies when they are faced with a challenge. We did not teach children any specific strategies for waiting, nor did we provide training to build their skills. In this way, our approach can complement self-regulatory skills training, which trains children in how to use various strategies, but often may not motivate them to access or develop such strategies when needed. Our “internally driven” approach also complements other efforts to change children’s social environments, such as to increase their reliability and the trustworthiness of caregivers and teachers.

A strategic mindset may be an empowering psychology that we can nurture in young children to improve delay of gratification—a fundamental part of self-regulation. In our research, children who learned a strategic mindset were able to apply it to effectively navigate different kinds of delay-of-gratification challenges. Our work paves the way for research on real-world, longer term outcomes that may be influenced by such agentic, self-driven strategizing.

We are seeing more research on metacognitive strategies and this study nicely illustrates their value. The next study examines other mindsets. Muradoglu et al. (2025) published “The Structure and Motivational Significance of Early Beliefs about Ability” in Developmental Psychology. Here are the edited abstract and impact statements:

Adults hold a broad range of beliefs about intellectual ability. Key examples include beliefs about its malleability, its distribution in the population, whether high levels of it (“brilliance”) are necessary for success, its origins, and its responsiveness to intervention. Here, we examined the structure and motivational significance of this network of consequential beliefs in a sample of elementary school-age children (5- to 11-year-olds, N = 231; 116 girls, 112 boys, three gender nonbinary children; predominantly White and Asian children from relatively high-income backgrounds). We assessed five beliefs: (a) growth mindsets (malleability), (b) universal mindsets (distribution), (c) brilliance beliefs (necessity for success), and beliefs about ability’s (d) innateness and (e) responsiveness to intervention. Even among the youngest children, these beliefs were empirically distinguishable and also largely coherent, in that they related to each other in expected ways. Moreover, the five beliefs assessed here were differentially related to children’s learning (vs. performance) goals, preference for challenging tasks, and evaluative concern (i.e., concern that mistakes will lead others to evaluate the self negatively). Even when adjusting for age, children with growth mindsets were oriented toward learning goals and preferred challenging tasks; children who believed ability has innate origins preferred performance goals; and younger (but not older) children who thought success required brilliance expressed more concern over being evaluated. These findings speak to the multifaceted nature of children’s concepts of ability and highlight their significance for children’s achievement-related attitudes and behavior in the early school years. 

The findings from this study suggest that 5- to 11-year-old children’s beliefs about the nature of intellectual ability—namely, its malleability, universality, importance for success, origins, and responsiveness to intervention—are distinct and coherently interrelated. Moreover, a number of these beliefs relate to children’s learning (vs. performance) goals, preference for challenges, and concern about others negatively judging their abilities. Together, these findings point to sophistication in early beliefs about ability and highlight the importance of these beliefs for young children’s motivation. 

I liked the breadth of this study in examining multiple beliefs about intellectual ability. The benefits of the growth mindset are clear. The next study explores it further. Rudolph et al. (2024) published “Cultivating Emotional Resilience in Adolescent Girls: Effects of a growth emotion mindset lesson” in Child Development. Here are some excerpts:

To address the widespread mental health crisis facing adolescent girls, this study examined whether a growth emotion mindset lesson can enhance emotional competence. During 2018–2022, adolescent girls (Mage = 15.68 years; 66.3% White) were randomized to a growth mindset (E-MIND; N = 81) or brain education (control; N = 82) lesson, completed the Trier Social Stressor Test, and reported on various aspects of emotional competence. Compared with the control group, the E-MIND group reported more adaptive emotion mindsets, higher emotion regulation self-efficacy, and more proactive in vivo and daily efforts to regulate emotions (effect sizes = small-to-medium to medium), with several differences remaining 4-month later. Findings provide novel insight into one promising approach for cultivating emotional resilience among adolescent girls.

During adolescence, dramatic biological, psychological, and social reorganization lays the groundwork for normative change as well as emerging individual differences in emotion processing. Increasing emotional sensitivity may overwhelm regulatory resources, setting youth, particularly girls, on a path of emotional risk. Indeed, rates of stress exposure and emotional disorders rise sharply in girls during this time. Yet, the rapid cognitive growth and flexibility characterizing adolescence also can support the acquisition of new skills and knowledge, making it a window of opportunity for positive development. This paradox suggests the need to better understand which girls are more or less likely to take advantage of increasing resources to promote better mental health. 

Overall, adolescent girls exposed to the E-MIND lesson, relative to a control brain education lesson, showed greater improvements in multiple aspects of emotional competence reflecting three levels proposed as critical targets of mindset interventions – mindsets, motivation (i.e. self-efficacy), and behavior (i.e., ER/dysregulation). Moreover, findings revealed that some of these effects were moderated by initial levels of fixed mindsets or perceived clarity of the lesson.

Incorporating many recommended features for rigorous mindset intervention research, the present study suggests that exposure to a single-session emotion mindset lesson can improve emotion mindsets and enhance ER self-efficacy and strategy use in adolescent girls. We also found evidence for some degree of lasting change, although diminishing effects over time suggest the need to consider ways to bolster mindset interventions to confer longer-lasting benefits across development. Overall, findings from this research suggest one possible avenue for optimizing girls' emotional health during a critical developmental stage.

This study of teenage girls finds a single-session intervention can enhance emotional self-regulation. The final study looks at adults. Hu et al. (2025) published “Exploring the Interplay between Stress-Is-Enhancing Mindsets, Emotional Growth Mindsets, and Mental Health: Dynamic structural equation modeling” in Emotion. The edited abstract follows:

Stress must not be avoided unilaterally because adaptive mindsets toward stress and stress-induced emotions are associated with better mental health outcomes. However, few studies have explored the reciprocal relationships between adaptive mindsets and mental health. This study assessed the role of trait-level stress-is-enhancing mindsets in the dynamic interplay between emotional growth mindsets and mental health in real-life contexts. Using ecological momentary assessment, 196 participants recorded daily stressful events, emotional growth mindsets following these events, depression and life satisfaction four times daily over 10–12 days, after completing baseline measures of stress-is-enhancing mindsets. Dynamic structural equation modeling was used to examine the cross-lagged associations between daily emotional growth mindsets and mental health indicators and to investigate the moderating role of stress-is-enhancing mindsets in these relationships. The findings suggest that increased emotional growth mindsets predict decreased depressive symptoms and elevated life satisfaction on the next occasion. Moreover, heightened levels of life satisfaction predict subsequent increases in the emotional growth mindsets. In tandem with the principal findings, this study underscores that the inverse link between preceding depressive symptoms and subsequent emotional growth mindsets, as well as the positive association between life satisfaction and subsequent emotional growth mindsets, is amplified for individuals endorsing higher stress-is-enhancing mindsets. These findings have noteworthy clinical implications since interventions geared toward fostering adaptive mindsets have the potential to simultaneously mitigate vulnerability to depression and amplify life satisfaction. 

Here we see the benefits of the growth mindset relative to depression and life satisfaction. Taken together, these studies illustrate the benefit of strategic and growth mindsets from early childhood through adulthood.