Week 5 Discussion

I’m a little late on my week 5 post, but I wanted to respond to the portion of the Granic article where growth mindset is referenced. I pasted the portion below my comment.

I wondered about these different domains of cognitive, motivational, emotional, and social development that they were observing regarding playing video games. It seemed like some variable that could lead in gains in one domain could lead to a deficit in another domain. In regards to where the ideas of entity vs. incremental theories of intelligence or cognitive development were presented, it seemed like they could actually work against a child’s emotional development in the sense that the mindset of constant incremental gains could keep a child always exerting effort to prove themselves. That feeling in and of itself could be emotionally exhaustive. I don’t know much about the growth mindset, so I may have misinterpreted it here.

Excerpt from Granic:

Children who are praised for their traits rather than their efforts (e.g., “Wow, you’re such a smart boy”) develop an entity theory of intelligence, which maintains that intelligence is an innate trait, something that is fixed and cannot be im- proved. In contrast, children who are praised for their effort (e.g., “You worked so hard on that puzzle!”) develop an incremental theory of intelligence; they believe intelligence is malleable, something that can be cultivated through effort and time. We propose that video games are an ideal training ground for acquiring an incremental theory of intelligence because they provide players concrete, immediate feedback regarding specific efforts players have made.

Further, research has shown that the extent to which individuals endorse an incremental versus entity theory of intelligence reliably predicts whether individuals in challenging circumstances will persist or give up, respectively (Dweck & Molden, 2005). Thus, these implicit theories of intelligence have implications for how failure is processed and dealt with. If one believes that intelligence or ability is fixed, failure induces feelings of worthlessness. But if intelligence or ability is presumed to be a mark of effortful engagement, failure signals the need to remain engaged and bolster one’s efforts. In turn, this positive attitude toward failure predicts better academic performance (e.g., Black- well, Trzesniewski, & Dweck, 2007).