A Growth Mindset Intervention: Enhancing Students’ Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy and Career Development

Abstract

Despite mounting interest in growth mindset interventions, this approach has yet to be applied to the domain of entrepreneurship. In the present 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 (i.e., academic interest, career interest, task persistence, and academic performance). We report on our findings, from an Open Science Framework (OSF) preregistered study, that is a randomized controlled trial implementing a growth mindset intervention. We randomly assigned undergraduate students ( N = 238) in an introduction to entrepreneurship class to either the growth mindset intervention or to a knowledge-based attention-matched control. Students in the growth mindset intervention, relative to the control, reported greater entrepreneurial self-efficacy and task persistence on their main class project. The intervention also indirectly improved academic and career interest via entrepreneurial self-efficacy. However, the intervention failed to directly or indirectly impact performance on a classroom assignment. Additionally, and somewhat surprisingly, gender and past experience in the field failed to moderate any effects of the intervention on outcomes. Theoretical implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.

Making a Contribution to Entrepreneurship Research by Studying Crowd-Funded Entrepreneurial Opportunities

“…Our third recommendation, for theory-testing research, is that clear ex ante specification of the hypotheses (and/or preregistration) is important in avoiding hypothesizing after results are known as well as replication failure (Anderson et al, 2019; Nosek et al, 2015). More specifically, we encourage researchers in both quantitative and qualitative endeavors, to engage in transparent and open science principles to help improve the strength and reproducibility of research in the domain of crowd-funded entrepreneurial opportunities (e.g., Aguinis, Hill, & Bailey, 2019; Aguinis, Ramani, & Alabduljader, 2018; Aguinis & Solarino, 2019; Anderson et al, 2019; Burnette et al, 2019; Nosek et al, 2015). We suggest that the Open Science Framework (OSF; https://osf.io/) provides an excellent avenue of information and resources (for authors, reviewers, and editors) to consider regarding open science research practices.…”

Growth Mindset Messaging in Stigma-Relevant Contexts: Harnessing Benefits Without Costs

“…The beneficial effects replicate in another health domain: addiction (Burnette, Forsyth, et al, 2019). Given that growth mindsets can encourage adaptive self-regulatory strategies, such as substance users pursuing treatment for depression (Salem et al, 2019), we explored effects on self-regulatory outcomes—namely, treatment intentions.…”

“…Although originally focused on promoting academic achievement, more recent interventions leveraged growth mindsets to help individuals cope with social exclusion (e.g., Yeager et al, 2014) and address mental health symptoms (e.g., Schleider et al, 2019). Researchers extended the concept to include, for example, other attribute-related mindsets (e.g., entrepreneurship ability; Burnette, Pollack, et al, 2019), or experience-based mindsets (e.g., stress as enhancing or debilitating; Crum et al, 2013). Of most relevance here are mindsets in health domains, often involving potentially stigmatizing conditions (e.g., health, anxiety, addiction, obesity; Burnette, Forsyth, et al, 2019; Hoyt et al, 2014; Schroder et al, 2017; Thomas et al, 2019).…”

The impact of entrepreneurship education and students' entrepreneurial mindset: the mediating role of attitude and self-efficacy

“…(2005) were among the first scholar who provided the chain of entrepreneurial self-efficacy and providing a discussion of a mediation role of self-efficacy toward entrepreneurial mindset. Additionally, a prior study believes that entrepreneurial self-efficacy can explain the relationship between perceived formal education, entrepreneurial experience, and entrepreneurial mindset ( Burnette et al., 2020 ). H7.…”