Abstract:

Growth mindset, the belief that one’s abilities can be improved through effort and learning, has drawn much attention from researchers in personality, social and developmental psychology. They believe that mindsets shape individuals’ different meaning systems when facing challenges and setbacks, resulting in diverse achievement outcomes. Individuals with a growth mindset tend to pursue learning goals (rather than avoiding looking incompetent), attribute failure to controllable factors such as effort and strategy (rather than fixed low ability), and believe that their efforts in learning will lead to improvement. Therefore, a growth mindset can foster higher academic achievement. However, while numerous studies confirm that a growth mindset can considerably enhance students’ academic achievement, others indicate that its impact is small and complex. Meta-analytic results further reveal that the relationship between a growth mindset and academic achievement is highly heterogeneous, meaning that a growth mindset is effective in some situations but ineffective or detrimental in others.

To account for this heterogeneity, researchers propose the mindset × context theory, which emphasizes that the effectiveness of a growth mindset depends on the context. They refer to the characteristics of the context that support the legitimacy and adaptability of a growth mindset as psychological affordances. This theory posits that teaching students a growth mindset is most effective in contexts that provide psychological affordances for it. In other words, effective interventions need to cultivate an adaptive belief system (plant high-quality seeds) in supportive situational features (fertile soil). This evidence contradicts the “mindsets alone” hypothesis, which holds that teaching students a growth mindset is sufficient and that students can benefit from it in almost any context, even unsupportive ones. Moreover, individuals’ mindsets are formed based on their experiences, which may be limited or biased, leading to a misalignment between mindset and actual circumstances, thereby affecting their performance. For some disadvantaged groups, they may become trapped in a self-defeating cycle. Changing the mindsets of these disadvantaged students through growth mindset interventions and situational resource support can effectively help them break the cycle and overcome challenges. Therefore, vulnerability and psychological affordances are two crucial boundary conditions for the effects of a growth mindset. When individuals face vulnerability (e.g., poor performance or challenging courses or school transitions) and the environment provides psychological affordances for students (e.g., classroom policies that offer opportunities for growth mindset actions), growth mindset interventions are more likely to have meaningful effects.

The Mindset × Context theory has provided a new direction for the study of growth mindset. However, deriving meaningful conclusions from the heterogeneity of psychological phenomena is not an easy task, especially when it comes to real-world behaviors and policy-related outcomes. While the Mindset × Context theory offers a good framework for understanding the heterogeneity of the growth mindset effects, it does not offer a clear explanation of why psychological affordances can influence the effects of a growth mindset. Drawing on the existing empirical evidence, we contend that psychological availability affects individual academic achievement by moderating the relationship between mindset patterns and motivation and behavior patterns related to the meaning system, which in turn affects individual academic achievement. First, psychological affordances moderate the relationship between growth mindset and the meaning system. Participants’ growth mindset led to learning-oriented choices only when teachers provided information and opportunities to support growth mindset, and in the growth mindset teacher condition, participants who reported more growth mindset were more likely to choose a challenging assignment that enhanced learning rather than a simple review assignment; however, the relationship between the variables was not significant in the teacher fixed mindset condition. That is, psychological affordances (high academic achievement mobility, teacher growth mindset, etc.) enables growth mindset individuals (especially those with lower grades or those who are vulnerable when faced with difficult course or school transitions) to pursue learning goals (rather than avoid appearing incompetent); attribute failures to controllable factors, such as effort and strategy (rather than a fixed low level of competence); and believe that their efforts in learning will result in improvement, which in turn leads to higher academic achievement. In other words, the meaning system is a good theoretical solution to the why question that is not answered by the mindset × context theory. We hope that our model can inspire future research and practice on how to optimize the benefits of a growth mindset for students’ learning and development.

Key words: growth mindset, heterogeneity of effects, vulnerability, psychological affordance