Carol S. Dweck

Goals: An approach to motivation and achievement.

This study tested a framework in which goals are proposed to be central determinants of achievement patterns. Learning goals, in which individuals seek to increase their competence, were predicted to promote challenge-seeking and a mastery-oriented response to failure regardless of perceived ability. Performance goals, in which individuals seek to gain favorable judgments of their competence or avoid negative judgments, were predicted to produce challenge-avoidance and learned helplessness when perceived ability was low and to promote certain forms of risk-avoidance even when perceived ability was high. Manipulations of relative goal value (learning vs. performance) and perceived ability (high vs. low) resulted in the predicted differences on measures of task choice, performance during difficulty, and spontaneous verbalizations during difficulty. Particularly striking was the way in which the performance goal-low perceived ability condition produced the same pattern of strategy deterioration, failure attribution, and negative affect found in naturally occurring learned helplessness. Implications for theories of motivation and achievement are discussed.

Lay dispositionism and implicit theories of personality

Lay dispositionism refers to lay peoples tendency to use traits as the basic unit of analysis in social perception (L. Ross & R. E. Nisbett, 1991). Five studies explored the relation between the practices indicative of lay dispositionism and peoples implicit theories about the nature of personal attributes. As predicted, compared with those who believed that personal attributes are malleable (incremental theorists), those who believed in fixed traits (entity theorists) used traits or trait-relevant information to make stronger future behavioral predictions (Studies 1 and 2) and made stronger trait inferences from behavior (Study 3). Moreover, the relation between implicit theories and lay dispositionism was found in both the United States (a more individualistic culture) and Hong Kong (a more collectivistic culture), suggesting this relation to be generalizable across cultures (Study 4). Finally, an experiment in which implicit theories were manipulated provided preliminary evidence for the possible causal role of implicit theories in lay dispositionism (Study 5).

Ego depletion--is it all in your head? implicit theories about willpower affect self-regulation.

Much recent research suggests that willpower—the capacity to exert self-control—is a limited resource that is depleted after exertion. We propose that whether depletion takes place or not depends on a person’s belief about whether willpower is a limited resource. Study 1 found that individual differences in lay theories about willpower moderate ego-depletion effects: People who viewed the capacity for self-control as not limited did not show diminished self-control after a depleting experience. Study 2 replicated the effect, manipulating lay theories about willpower. Study 3 addressed questions about the mechanism underlying the effect. Study 4, a longitudinal field study, found that theories about willpower predict change in eating behavior, procrastination, and self-regulated goal striving in depleting circumstances. Taken together, the findings suggest that reduced self-control after a depleting task or during demanding periods may reflect people’s beliefs about the availability of willpower rather than true resource depletion.

An analysis of learned helplessness: II. The processing of success.

Helpless children attribute their failures to lack of ability and view them as insurmountable. Mastery-oriented children, in contrast, tend to emphasize motivational factors and to view failure as surmountable. Although the performance of the two groups is usually identical during success of prior to failure, past research suggests that these groups may well differ in the degree to which they perceive that their successes are replicable and hence that their failures are avoidable. The present study was concerned with the nature of such differences. Children performed a task on which they encountered success and then failure. Half were asked a series of questions about their performance after success and half after failure. Striking differences emerged: Compared to mastery-oriented children, helpless children underestimated the number of success (and overestimated the number of failures), did not view successes as indicative of ability, and did not expect the successes to continue. subsequent failure led them to devalue ;their performance but left the mastery-oriented children undaunted. Thus, for helpless children, successes are less salient, less predictive, and less enduring--less successful.

Mindsets That Promote Resilience: When Students Believe That Personal Characteristics Can Be Developed

Because challenges are ubiquitous, resilience is essential for success in school and in life. In this article we review research demonstrating the impact of students’ mindsets on their resilience in the face of academic and social challenges. We show that students who believe (or are taught) that intellectual abilities are qualities that can be developed (as opposed to qualities that are fixed) tend to show higher achievement across challenging school transitions and greater course completion rates in challenging math courses. New research also shows that believing (or being taught) that social attributes can be developed can lower adolescents’ aggression and stress in response to peer victimization or exclusion, and result in enhanced school performance. We conclude by discussing why psychological interventions that change students’ mindsets are effective and what educators can do to foster these mindsets and create resilience in educational settings.

Motivation and self-regulation across the life span

Introduction Jutta Heckhausen and Carol S. Dweck Part I. Regulation of the Self, Action, and Development: 1. Decomposing self-regulation and self-control: the volitional components inventory Julius Kuhl and Arno Fuhrmann 2. Developmental regulation in adulthood: selection and compensation via primary and secondary control Jutta Heckhausen and Richard Schulz 3. Development of regulatory focus: promotion and prevention as ways of living E. Tory Higgins and Israela Loeb 4. Commentary: human psychological needs and the issues of volition, control, and outcome focus Richard M. Ryan Part II. Social Determinants of Motivation: 5. Social motivation and perceived responsibility in others: attributions and behavior of African-American boys labeled as aggressive Sandra Graham 6. A multidimensional perspective of social control: implications for the development of sex differences in self-valuation and depression Eva Pomerantz and Diane Ruble 7. The functional regulation of adolescent dating relationships and sexual behavior: an interaction of goals, strategies, and situations Nancy Cantor and Catherine A. Sanderson 8. Commentary: strategies for studying social influences on motivation Ellen A. Skinner Part III. Functional and Dysfunctional Control-Related Behavior in Childhood: 9. Ruminative coping with depression Susan Nolen-Hoeksema 10. The development of early self-conceptions: their relevance for motivational purposes Carol S. Dweck 11. Sociocultural influences on the development of childrens action-control beliefs Todd D. Little 12. Commentary: self-regulation, motivation and developmental psychopathology John R. Weisz Part IV. Developmental Goals in Adulthood: 13. A life-span approach to social motivation Laura L. Carstensen 14. Maintaining self-integrity and efficacy in later life: the adaptive functions of assimilative persistence and accommodative flexibility Jochen Brandtstadter 15. The willful pursuit of identity Peter M. Gollwitzer and Oliver Kirchhof 16. Commentary: motivation through the life course Richard Schulz.

The Development of Ability Conceptions

Publisher Summary This chapter describes the development of ability conceptions. Childrens conceptions of ability play a pivotal role in their achievement motivation. During grade school and middle school, critical changes take place in these conceptions and their influence on achievement motivation. It is during this time that children come to fully understand the idea of ability as a potentially stable trait of the self; to reason fluently about the relations among intellectual ability, effort, and performance; and, perhaps most important, to show a coherent relation both among their achievement beliefs and between their ability beliefs and their motivation. As these conceptions develop, children become more concerned about their ability and more sensitive to evaluation, especially negative evaluation. To understand these changes, this chapter reviews research on developmental changes in childrens ability conceptions—their definitions of ability, self-perceptions of ability and reasoning about ability—and research on the purpose of developmental changes in ability conceptions alter childrens achievement motivation.

Achievement goals and intrinsic motivation: Their relation and their role in adaptive motivation

In this article, the relation between research emerging from the goals approach to motivation and research emerging from the intrinsic motivation approach is examined. A review of relevant research suggests that factors promoting learning goals (emphasizing the development of competencies) are associated with enhanced intrinsic motivation, and that factors promoting performance goals (emphasizing the evaluation of competence) are associated with diminished intrinsic motivation. It is also suggested that important aspects of the goals approach are often incorporated into conceptions and measures of intrinsic motivation. Finally, a framework is presented in which adaptive motivation is described in terms of the coordination of achievement goals and intrinsic motivation.

Implicit Theories Individual Differences in the Likelihood and Meaning of Dispositional Inference

In their research, the authors have identified individuals who believe that a particular trait (intelligence, personality, or moral character) is a fixed disposition (entity theorists) and have contrasted them with those who believe the trait to be a malleable quality (incremental theorists). Research shows that an entity theory consistently predicts (a) global dispositional inferences for self and other; even in the face of limited evidence, as well as (b) an over reliance on dispositional information in making other judgments and decisions. An incremental theory, by contrast, predicts inferences that are more specific, conditional, and provisional The implicit beliefs seem to represent not only different theories about the nature of traits but also different mental models about how personality works-what the units of analysis are and how they enter into causal relations. Implications for the literature on person perception are discussed.

Can Personality Be Changed? The Role of Beliefs in Personality and Change

Using recent research, I argue that beliefs lie at the heart of personality and adaptive functioning and that they give us unique insight into how personality and functioning can be changed. I focus on two classes of beliefs—beliefs about the malleability of self-attributes and expectations of social acceptance versus rejection—and show how modest interventions have brought about important real-world changes. I conclude by suggesting that beliefs are central to the way in which people package their experiences and carry them forward, and that beliefs should play a more central role in the study of personality.