Negative feedback in academic settings is often unavoidable, although it may directly interfere with the ultimate goal of education, as setbacks can diminish motivation, and may even lead to dropping out of school. Previous research suggests that certain predispositions, inductions, and interventions might mitigate the harmful effects of negative feedback. Among others, growth mindset beliefs and mindfulness meditation were proposed as the most promising candidates that may help students to retain motivation. In a pre-registered, randomized experiment, we gave a disappointing evaluation to 383 university students in a bogus laboratory IQ test situation. Half of the participants previously received a growth mindset induction referring to intelligence as a malleable characteristic, while the other half received a fixed mindset induction referring to intelligence as a stable characteristic that cannot be changed. Then participants had a brief mindfulness meditation session or a control condition. Subsequently, they could choose to complete practice tasks before the final IQ assessment. The number of completed optional tasks was used as a behavioral proxy for task persistence. The results showed no difference in task persistence for the growth mindset or the mindfulness induction groups, compared to the other conditions. However, those who reported having higher pre-induction growth mindset beliefs or dispositional mindfulness completed more optional tasks after the mindset or mindfulness induction, respectively. We concluded that our brief inductions may not be adequate for everyone to rectify the demotivating effects of negative feedback, but can enhance task persistence for people with a stronger disposition towards a growth mindset or mindfulness.
Negative feedback in academic settings is often unavoidable, although it may directly interfere with the ultimate goal of education, as setbacks can diminish motivation, and may even lead to dropping out of school. Previous research suggests that certain predispositions, inductions, and interventions might mitigate the harmful effects of negative feedback. Among others, growth mindset beliefs and mindfulness meditation were proposed as the most promising candidates that may help students to retain motivation. In a pre-registered, randomized experiment, we gave a disappointing evaluation to 383 university students in a bogus laboratory IQ test situation. Half of the participants previously received a growth mindset induction referring to intelligence as a malleable characteristic, while the other half received a fixed mindset induction referring to intelligence as a stable characteristic that cannot be changed. Then participants had a brief mindfulness meditation session or a control condition. Subsequently, they could choose to complete practice tasks before the final IQ assessment. The number of completed optional tests was used as a behavioral proxy for effort. The results showed no difference in effort for the growth mindset or the mindfulness meditation groups, compared to the other conditions. However, those that reported having higher dispositional mindfulness completed more optional tasks after mindfulness meditation. We concluded that our brief mindset and mindfulness inductions may not be adequate for everyone to alleviate the demotivating effects of negative feedback, but it does not necessarily mean that mindfulness cannot help implementing a growth mindset.
ObjectivesGrowth mindset beliefs promote adaptive motivations, learning, and challenge seeking; however, the learning process promoted by growth mindset is not always a joyride. It can be especially true if one faces harsh criticism. Mindfulness might be hypothesized as a potential adaptive mechanism in a negative feedback situation. The present research examined the interplay between growth mindset (GMS) beliefs and trait mindfulness (MFS) regarding the motivation to learn from negative feedback.MethodsWe distinguished three forms of engagement with negative feedback (over-engagement, disengagement, and constructive engagement) as potential setback-specific mediators between GMS, MFS and learning from negative feedback. Cross-sectional methods have been used on a diverse Hungarian sample (N=1,469).ResultsWe found that both GMS and MFS are positively and directly related to the motivation to learn from negative feedback. GMS was negatively related to disengagement and was unrelated to over-engagement as well as constructive engagement, while MFS was negatively related to both disengagement and over-engagement, but positively related to constructive engagement. While disengagement was negatively, both over- and constructive engagement were positively related to learning from the negative feedback.ConclusionsIn sum, these results suggest that GMS beliefs do not let individuals to disengage from negative feedback, but do not provide guidelines for constructive or over-engagement with negative feedback. Complementarily, MFS promotes the struggling way of learning characterized by constructive engagement, and inhibit the suffering path of learning characterized by over-engagement with the negative feedback.
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