Brief Growth Mindset and Mindfulness Inductions to Facilitate Task Persistence After Negative Feedback

Abstract

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.

“Mindfulset”—Harnessing or unleashing learning potential through mindfulness mindset.

“…Therefore, we adapted the PERC task to have an appropriately difficult level for the university population. For this purpose, we selected Raven items used in our previous study (Nagy et al, 2023), accounting for the difficulty levels (% of successful completion rate) for each block determined by the original PERC study (Porter et al, 2020). Our primary outcome was the aggregate indicator of mastery behavior; we used the separate scores of the four dimensions: challenge-seeking, resilience, persistence, and effort as secondary outcomes.…”

An implicit measure of growth mindset uniquely predicts post-failure learning behavior

“…Participants completed a block of 12 items (1 easy, 1 medium, 10 difficult) from the Raven’s Progressive Matrices [e.g., 66 ] with 45 s time limit per item 38 . We included 1 easy and 1 medium difficulty item at the beginning of the block, in order to ensure that participants had the feeling that some items were possible to solve.…”

“…In both studies, participants were invited for an IQ assessment to the laboratory where they first completed the PEP adapted to assess intelligence mindset. Then, all participants attempted to solve a block of very difficult IQ test items [e.g., 38 ]. Subsequently, participants received performance feedback (which was low overall, creating a failure experience, which is a crucial theoretical condition for mindsets to become relevant [e.g., 6 ].…”

Mindfulness in a digital math learning game: Insights from two randomized controlled trials

“…These findings align with emerging evidence demonstrating the beneficial effects of mindfulness‐based interventions for learning and academic performance (Dunning, 2023; Verhaeghen, 2023). However, some previous experiments using brief mindfulness inductions with adults found benefits only for participants with higher levels of trait mindfulness (de Sousa et al, 2021; Laurent et al, 2015; Nagy et al, 2023). As such, short inductions may only be sufficient to induce a state of mindfulness for those participants who are more receptive to this practice.…”

“…By exploring the potential for mindfulness‐enriched digital games to foster students' EF skills, we sought to advance our understanding of effective strategies for improving mathematical learning. Additionally, we aimed to examine whether the impact of the interventions varies based on students' trait mindfulness levels, given that prior work has suggested mindfulness inductions might be especially beneficial for participants with higher trait mindfulness who are more receptive to this technique (de Sousa et al, 2021; Laurent et al, 2015; Nagy et al, 2023).…”