Moral growth mindset is associated with change in voluntary service engagement

Abstract

Incremental implicit theories are associated with a belief regarding it is possible to improve one’s intelligence or ability through efforts. Previous studies have demonstrated that incremental implicit theories contributed to better academic achievement and positive youth development. Our study aimed to examine whether incremental implicit theories of morality significantly influenced change in students’ engagement in voluntary service activities. In our study, 54 Korean college students for Study 1 and 180 Korean 8th graders for Study 2 were recruited to conduct two two-wave studies. We surveyed participants’ implicit theories of morality and participation in voluntary service activities. The effect of implicit theories of morality on change in service engagement was analyzed through regression analysis. In Study 1, the moral growth mindset significantly moderated longitudinal change in service engagement. In Study 2, the moral growth mindset significantly influenced engagement in art-related activities, while it significantly moderated change in engagement in youth-related activities.

Applying the Deep Learning Method for Simulating Outcomes of Educational Interventions

“…The pretest engagement was surveyed before the beginning of the intervention period, and the posttest survey was conducted 12 weeks from the pretest survey. In addition, to control for any possible effects due to individual differences in participants' mindset regarding moral development, the study measured their moral growth mindset based on their volunteer service engagement [24]. Finally, the study surveyed how participants responded to intervention materials and activities, by collecting data on moral elevation, perceived moral excellence, and perceived difficulty to emulate presented moral behaviors after the end of the intervention period.…”

“…Before the intervention period, to examine whether a participant possessed either a growth or fixed mindset in the domain of morality, Han et al [23] assessed their moral growth mindset with a questionnaire. Han et al [24] reported that the presence of moral growth mindset, which is associated with a belief that one can be a morally better person through intentional efforts (e.g., participating in prosocial activities), was significantly associated with an increase in volunteering. Thus, we decided to control for this factor in our current analyses.…”

“…The three methods were selected based on the previous studies that originally reported on the dataset that used in the present study. SEM was performed in [24] and logistic regression analyses were performed in [23].…”

“…In the case of simple logistic regression, we used the posttest service engagement coded in a binary dependent variable, and the pretest service engagement (in hours), moral growth mindset, gender, intervention condition, moral elevation, perceived moral excellence, and perceived difficulty for emulation as independent variables. Only the main effects were entered into the model, following the models that were used in the studies that originally reported on the dataset used in the current study [23,24]. R's glm package was used for the logistic regression analysis [42].…”

A Structural Equation Model of Perceived Autonomy Support and Growth Mindset in Undergraduate Students: The Mediating Role of Sense of Coherence

“…Growth mindset concerns the belief that an individual's basic attributes are malleable and can be cultivated through endeavors (Dweck et al, 1995;Dweck, 2015). Recently, a burgeoning body of research has demonstrated that high levels of growth mindset are positively related to optimal functions across the psychological, social, and academic domains, such as psychological well-being (Zeng et al, 2016), less mental health difficulties (Schleider et al, 2015;Schleider and Weisz, 2018;Wang et al, 2019), prosocial tendency (Han et al, 2018), self-regulation (Burnette et al, 2013;Lan et al, 2019a), learning motivation (Burnette et al, 2018), and academic achievement (Yeager et al, 2016;Wang et al, 2020). Given the salience role of growth mindset in life courses, the knowledge about the contextual and individual antecedents of growth mindset is still limited in existing research.…”