Effective Mindset Intervention for Sustainable Development: History
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Junfeng Zhang

The increasing attention has been paid to interventions designed to enhance individuals’sustainable development in learning by priming a growth mindset. The three pedagogical characteristics that ensure successful interventions are: (1) Mutual interaction among the person, the context, and the theory to generate the message; (2) Iterative processes to ensure the message is delivered; and (3) a persuasive yet stealthy approach to facilitating its internalization. The findings inspire educators to design effective mindset interventions to enhance students’ learning. 

  • Mindset intervention
  • Interaction
  • Iterative process
  • Persuasive
  • Stealthy

1. Introduction

Due to the launch of the Unites Nations ‘Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)’ in 2015, students’ academic and social performance towards sustainable development at the educational level has increasingly attracted attention. With increasing studies investigating educational processes to improve learning efficacy [1][2][3], mindset theory has proved in both educational and psychological settings as a tool for improving learning patterns through strengthening self-affirmation. Mindset, also known as implicit theory, is the belief people hold about the malleability of their human attributes [4]. Individuals with a growth mindset believe these attributes are malleable with effort, whereas for those with a fixed mindset they are immutable. In academia, for example, an academic mindset has proved to stimulate students’ learning experiences including but not limited to academic perseverance [5], enjoyment, and engagement [6]. Consequently, it has been found to give academic grades a significant boost [7][8][9]. Accordingly, more and more mindset interventions have come to light in the last two decades, exploring effective approaches to cultivating a growth mindset among individuals to enhance achievement [6][10][11].
It is worth noting that the efficacy of mindset thinking has been doubted given the very small even null effects found. For example, a meta-analysis (k = 273, N = 365,915) yielded weak overall effects of mindset and mindset intervention on academic achievement [12], which raised doubts as to whether a growth mindset did help to improve adaptive behavioral patterns. However, the poor results could have been attributable to the lack of scientificness and efficacy in how teachers transferred growth-mindset messages to students [13]. In other words, growth-mindset pedagogy was lacking [14]. Interestingly, benefits from mindset interventions have been broadly supported for marginalized individuals such as those with low socioeconomic status or at risk academically [12]. Furthermore, research involving a nationally representative sample in the US (k = 65, N = 12,490) has shown that mindset intervention increases student enrolment overall for advanced mathematics courses [15].
Mindset interventions differ in terms of design. The accumulative time of the sessions ranges from several minutes [16] to couple of hours [17], and the number of operating sessions varies from one [18][19][20] to dozens [21]. Most sessions include activities such as reading [18][22][23], discussion [24][25], and writing exercises [26][27][28]. Intervention proceeds on-site or online, or even in combination [29]. Brainology, an online program with animation-based interaction to encourage a growth mindset [30], is one example of an intervention [21][31]. Given the availability of such computer-based approaches, mindset interventions have ranged from small-scale field research to scalable investigations [10]. Measures such as complementing the experiment group with a control group that does non-mindset exercises (e.g., coping skills, see [32]; health issues, see [33]) or has no treatment [7][34][35] have been introduced to verify the efficacy of mindset intervention. Other motivational factors, such as sense of purpose [10], social belonging [36], and social norms [23], have been combined with growth-mindset messages to see if intervention efficacy would be additive. However, several empirical investigations discouraged such a prediction [10][36].
In addition to the various empirical investigations in either laboratory or real-world settings, there have been a limited number of theoretical studies focusing on the characteristics of mindset interventions [5][37] or their effectiveness [12]. Farrington et al. [5], for example, emphasize the interaction between individuals and the social-cultural context through recursive processes in which people and context are mutually reinforced or discouraged in a repeating feedback loop. Hence, without removing objective adversities, how individuals interpret adversity could determine whether it hurts the outcome [37]. The implication is that the mindset is a product of interaction between individuals and the surrounding environment rather than a set of predetermined characteristics [5].
Notably, more review and commentary studies have focused on the traits of general social-psychological interventions rather than on mindset intervention [38][39][40]. Some of the theoretical underpinnings in these studies, related to social-psychological attributes, for example, could be applied, given the theoretical commonalities across different perceptual points that fall within the scale of social-psychological intervention. Cohen et al. [38] and Wilson et al. [39], emphasize the importance of the surrounding environment. It is also acknowledged that underlying theoretical knowledge of its mechanisms facilitates the development of well-designed interventions and their timely revision [40].

2. Theoretical Foundations

According to the person-environment fit theory from the developmental perspective, people flourish in environmental settings that are compatible with their developmental growth, including their skills, interests and values, for example [41]. “Subjective meanings do not work in a vacuum but within complex systems” [42] (p. 620), and the social circle’s diversity “enhances individual absorptive capacity” [43] (p. 11). This makes it easier to understand why a supportive learning environment as a precondition guarantees the success of an intervention [38][39].
As a social activity, learning is an internal-development process in which individuals interact with others in the environment [44]. Accordingly, the mindset is constructed in an interaction process, reflecting the statement of interaction needed to generate the growth message. This emphasis on the person and the context also reflects person-environment-fit theory [41], concerning the matching of environments to the psychological needs of individuals. Bodies of psychological research support the notion of a mindset [5], including but not limited to attribution theory [45][46], goal theory [47][48], self-determination theory [49], and expectancy-value theory [50]. Accordingly, rather than via objective numbers or attributes [32][51], one reason why a social-psychological intervention such as mindset intervention was impactful in guiding individuals’ behaviour was that it precisely targeted the participants’ subjective construal [40]. The accessibility of the mental concept may affect how people think about themselves and others, and how they interpret the social experience [52].
Rather than directly conveying ideas to participants who passively receive them, encouraging them actively to engage in an operation may be more effective in helping them to internalise the information [53]. Additionally, stealthy delivery enhances the validity of transformed messages [40][54]: Participants are less likely to reject ideas if “they do not feel controlling……they minimize resistance and reactance to the message” [40] (p. 284). This quiet and careful approach echoes the targeting of participants’ subjective construal of intervention [40], in that the forces that drive it are hard to see [55], and the negative stereotyping or social marginalization of participants is avoided [40]. This could also explain why a seemingly small intervention may produce a large effect [38].
In synthesizing predecessors’ findings in the social-psychological domain [40][56][57], Orosz et al. [24] summarized the core elements required to conduct an effective mindset intervention, which verifies the precision of currently proposed characteristics to some degree. First, the “psychologically precise theory and tool” (p. 9) is consistent with targeting of psychologically subjective construal (theory). Second, “targets a specific group” and “appropriate context” (p. 9) match another two of message-generating components: Person (Particularly the subject of the intervention) and context. Third, an iterative process is what researchers emphasize. Fourth, “not using direct persuasive appeal” and “not help but give an opportunity” (p. 9) refer to notion of persuasive yet stealthy message delivery.

3. Reflecting on the Mindset Intervention and Rethinking the Meaning of Mindset

Regarding the mindset intervention, first, in accordance with notion of stealthy delivery, one reason for the null difference between the experiment and the control group might be that the participants were aware of their participation in the test. Sometimes, the intervention visit included several surveys, hence they recognized that they were being tested. Consequently, the students may have been demonstrating resistance to the intervention. In addition, group allocation might lead to cross-contamination in that growth-mindset messages “can be difficult to confine to students in the intervention condition” [33] (p. 113), particularly if intervention-group students shared the “active” ingredients with their control-group peers. Peer cultures and classroom contexts proved to construct the meaning system of mindset among adolescents [58].
Second, the message repetition in the iterative process was not dull, and it was done as flexibly and with as much enjoyment as possible. In line with the core salience of messages, the delivery style and specific content varied. For example, a professional graphic designer animated the content of the growth-mindset intervention, and all sections were narrated, to make the intervention enjoyable so that students would find it engaging [59]. Paradoxically, long-term interventions with multiple sessions did not necessarily reinforce the iterative processes, because excessive information allows “room for diverse interpretations” [24] (p. 9). Although it is still not clear how many sessions are required or how long it takes for the intervention to yield optimal efficacy, to some degree, in the case of social-psychological intervention, less is more.
Regarding the meaning of mindset, there may be a need to rethink it. In the case of social psychology, interventions aimed at changing people’s self- and social perceptions, attribution of performance, and sense of social connectedness [39], for example. Critically, instead of the malleability of personal characteristics, the tenets of the meaning system of mindset, conceptualizing such characteristics in academic or social terms distinguish different categories of mindset [58]. Specifically, fixed theorists emphasize academic performance while growth theorists on social skills and mixed ones on interpersonal behaviours within the academic context. The current research prefers the social behavioral patterns within given cultural contexts. Rather than the view of the malleability of self-intelligence or personality [4] the mindset was also the construal of social perception. Even though the intervention did not remove the objective adversities in the individuals’ situating environment, mind shifts throughout the process would enable them to change their interpretation of adversity, and then to decide whether they were affected by them [37]. Hence, “it can be as important to change people’s construal—their interpretations of the social world and their place in it—as it is to change the objective environment” [39] (p. 1252).

4. Implications

On the theoretical level, the current research is to explore the manipulation mechanism of empirical investigations into mindset interventions. The characteristics are rooted in message generation, delivery and internalization. Based on a supportive learning environment, the design is reliant on both theoretical and contextual expertise, iterative processes and persuasive but stealthy delivery. The growth-transmission mechanism mentioned above applies not only to mindset intervention but also to a wider range of social-psychological interventions.
On the practical level, researchers propose a relatively scientific design for mindset intervention. Specifically, effective intervention typically involves, first, exposing individuals to theoretical and scientific information (by means of article reading, video watching, slideshows, for example) about the malleability of intelligence and personality; Second, using persuasive testimonials and case studies from celebrities or neighboring models; Third, encouraging self-persuasive writing (generally linked to personal experiences) addressed to oneself or someone else (typically struggling peers). Growth-mindset information is also incorporated into the participants’ routine activities in which they are randomly assigned to different conditions and engage in the intervention as naturally and actively as possible. Well-designed interventions that precisely target the participants’ psychological construal, and in which context is situated, the pattern of growth-mindset delivery is well-timed and flexibly altered, could be beneficial to students in school, children in families, and trainees in companies, among others, affecting a wide range of adaptive behaviours.

This entry is adapted from the peer-reviewed paper 10.3390/su14073811

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