Failing to improve: investigating when a growth mindset backfires

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 1:45 pm - Gold 4
  In Roundtable Session: Intervention Innovations: Leveraging and Learning From Motivational Processes

Abstract

Across three studies we demonstrate an unintended backfiring effect of growth mindset beliefs in an educational context, such that teachers and college students who believe more strongly that ability can improve tend to judge a consistently poor performing student as being more blameworthy/less praiseworthy. These three studies build on one another using different methods to show: 1) that mindset and blame are related in a learning context, 2) that this relationship is causal, and 3) that there are concrete consequences of this relationship among teachers, in the form of a bigger grading penalty for failure vs. improvement.

Authors

• Makita White, Washington State University

• Elizabeth A. Canning, Washington State University