Guiding People to Interpret Their Experienced Difficulty as Importance Highlights Their Academic Possibilities and Improves Their Academic Performance.

ABSTRACT: Does experiencing difficulty bolster or undermine future self-images, strategies to get there and actual performance? We build on four insights from prior research to predict that accessible interpretation-of-experienced-difficulty mindset shapes identity and performance. First, people have two different interpretation-of-experienced-difficulty mindsets available in memory; their difficulty-as-impossibility mindset focuses attention on difficulty as implying low odds and their difficulty-as-importance mindset focuses attention on difficulty as implying high value. Second, people are sensitive to contextual cues as to which mindset to apply to understand their experienced difficulty. Third, people apply the mindset that comes to mind unless they have reason to question why it is "on-the-min

SUBMITTER: Oyserman D 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5983065 | biostudies-literature | 2018

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature