Visualizing the Rewards of Success

“Losers visualize the penalties of failure. Winners visualize the rewards of success.” (William S. Gilbert). This is an interesting point of view on mindset, Gilbert is basically saying that what we visualize or believe typically becomes reality. This fits right in with the concept of mindset affects all aspects of our life such as school, work, and arts. According to Carol Dweck (2006) there are two types of mindset a person can have, either a Growth Mindset or a Fixed Mindset.

People with fixed mindset believe that their abilities are innate, and they view failure as a deficiency in their capabilities. Where does this type of mindset come from? I believe that the fixed mindset is mostly imposed by our current educational institutions. The use of standardized exams in universities can undermine both creativity and grit (Hochanadel and Finamore, 2015). This can foster a sense of helplessness in students. Grit can be defined as passion and perseverance for long-term goals (Frontiers in Psychology, 2014). Students that have a fixed mindset don’t have grit and mostly lack motivation. They believe that no matter how hard they study they are still going to get a bad grade.

People with a growth mindset believe that they can be successful in anything if they put in the hard work. Growth mindset is what all students should have but unfortunately this is not always the case. Dweck, Walton and Cohen, 2014 defined academic tenacity as working hard, and working smart for a long time. They explain that this is the reason why students of equal academic capabilities might not receive the same scores. Students with academic tenacity strive to keep improving. A student’s mindset about their academic abilities effects their academic tenacity. Students who are praised for their abilities (you’re so smart) typically endorse a fixed mindset and in the future when faced with difficult task are more likely to believe that they did bad because they are dumb or not smart enough; These thoughts become destructive and fosters a sense of helplessness. However, students who are praised for their effort (you did well because you worked hard) endorse a growth mindset and are more likely to pick up difficult task and work hard to complete or improve in it.

Self affirmation theory postulates that people are more likely to maintain self integrity. With self affirmations people try to view themselves in a morally (e.g. I’m a good person) and not specific concept like being a good student. To find out how effective self affirmations is in education Cohen et al. 2006, 2009, investigated amongst African Americans, Sherman et al. 2013, Latinos; they investigated this two groups because they are more likely to be discriminated against which leads to low self esteem and negative view about themselves. They also found that African Americans and Latinos worry that they might be seen through a negative lens rather from their merits. The study was performed in middle school, which is were adolescents have a quest for identity and one wrong turn could lead to a downward spiral (Moffitt et al. 2011). Students were randomly selected into either a control group or a values affirmation group. The Values affirmation group were required to do an affirmation exercises that were distributed by teachers as regular assignments. Results showed that there was an improvement in African Americans and in Latinos grades. The students with positive affirmations retained a higher GPA while the control groups GPA dropped quicker.

Figure 1: Performance across the school year as a function of ethnicity and affirmation condition, with means and error terms adjusted for baseline covariates and grade level. Middle school students completed a series of writing exercises related to either their most important value in the affirmation condition or an unimportant value/neutral topic in the control condition. Abbreviation: Q, quarter. Adapted from Sherman et al. (2013)
Retrieved from: Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention. Annu. Rev. Psychol., 65, 333-371.

Looking at the figure above it is clear that was an improvement in the grades of the students. However, there is clear difference between the GPA of the White students and the Latino students. Why is the difference between the white students and the Latino students so big? The study didn’t attempt to answer this question. There are some obvious answers to this question which include but are not limited to socioeconomic status, family issues and mindset. All these issues are equally important but I will be considering the notion that mindset might be the reason for the significantly lower grades.

Stereotypes can affect the mindset of students, this typically leads to the development of a fixed mindset. In the case of African American and Latino students they face a lot of racial stereotypes which might lead to an inferiority complex and a view of themselves that is negative. This is known as stereotype threat theory which states that minority students underperform because of pressures created by negative stereotypes about their racial group (Owens and Massey, 2013). They also point out that there are two pathways that students of minority can take when faced with stereotypes. They can either follow the internalization pathway (INT) or the externalization pathway (EXT). Minority students follow INT when they don’t identify with the academic performance as a determinant of self-esteem to relieve the distress of potentially confirming the negative stereotype (Steele and Aronson, 1995) and they do this by reducing their academic effort, by doing so when they receive a bad grade they can attribute it to their lack of effort. Students follow EXT when they become preoccupied by the possibility that the stereotype might be true rather than focusing on the task at hand. Owens and Massey, 2013 found that externalization led students to receive bad grades because they felt they were going to be judged by the majority group members based on stereotypical belief in minority intellectual inferiority. Internalization leads to higher grades when the student feels the need to outperform and prove others wrong. I did not look into the effects of gender however it is important to inform everyone reading that gender also plays a role in the performance of students, due to mindset of the students themselves and the society.

Losers visualize the penalties of failure. Winners visualize the rewards of success. Visualization is something that students should practice; most students need to change their mindset about their intelligence and develop a growth mindset. Students also need to be in control of their self narrative; even if you struggle in school there are so many other things that you are good at.

 

References

Cohen G. L, Garcia J, Apfel N, Master A. 2006. Reducing the racial achievement gap: a social-psychological intervention. Science 313:1307–10

Cohen G. L, Garcia J, Purdie-Vaughns V, Apfel N, Brzustoski P. 2009. Recursive processes in self-affirmation: intervening to close the minority achievement gap. Science 324:400–3

Cohen, G. L., & Sherman, D. K. (2014). The Psychology of Change: Self-Affirmation and Social Psychological Intervention. Annu. Rev. Psychol. , 65, 333-371.

Dweck, C. (2006). Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. New York: Ballantine Books.

Dweck, C., Walton, G., & Cohen, G. L. (2014). Academic Tenacity Mindsets and Skills that Promote Long-Term Learning . Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Hochanadel, A., & Finamore, D. (2015). Fixed and Growth Mindset In Education And How Grit Helps Students Persist In The Face Of Adversity. Journal of International Education Research (JIER), 11(1), 47.

Owens, J., & Massey, D. S. (2011). Stereotype Threat and College Academic Performance: A Latent Variables Approach. Social Science Research, 40(1), 150–166.

Steele C. M, Aronson J. Stereotype threat and the intellectual test performance of African Americans. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 1995;69(5):797–811.