Thursday, September 3, 2015

Week 2: Growth Mindset

Talking About Mindset

Earlier this week, the concept of "the self" came up in my social psychology class. There were four C's in the self-concept content and one of the C's was Changeability. Changeability is directly related to Dweck's research of "fixed" vs "growth" mindsets. My professor gave me some additional information regard these two different mindsets and this is what I learned.

Fixed mindsets: avoid challenges, give up easily, see effort as useless or bad, respond to criticism poorly, and feel threatened by others' success

Growth mindsets: embrace challenges, persists, sees effort as the path to mastery, learns from criticism, and inspired by others' success.

He even mentioned that he had a two sons and one obviously had a growth mindset while the other had a fixed mindset. By observing his sons, he found that the one thing that a fixed mindset person would say the most is "No. I don't like that." On the other hand, the growth mindset person would say "Let me try it. I might like it."

While I was pondering over this information, I asked my professor after class if it was possible to be both a fixed mindset and growth mindset individual at once, because that's what I thought I was. He told me that it is possible and to be both and that may be because I can compartmentalize different parts of me/my personality. For example, in academics, I could be a growth mindset, whereas in fashion, I could be a fixed mindset. I thought this would be interesting to share!

2 comments:

  1. Hello Michelle. It is crazy sometimes how the things that we are learning in one class can then be found in another. I really like how you showed us how an individual could contain both mindsets. I definitely feel that I have a growth mindset towards education, but I am not quite sure that I could say the same in other aspects of my life.

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  2. Michelle, this is WONDERFUL. I am so glad you found this point of connection between our class and your social psychology class, and thank you for reporting back like this. I really like the notion of "changeability" ... that's a great way to look at growth mindset and also all the other kinds of flexibility and adaptability that people have (or don't have) as they live their lives. And I'm like you: in some things I am really ready to try new things but in other aspects of my life, I hardly ever change things. Like with food: I will try any new kind of food, and I enjoy the adventure. But with clothing, I just prefer my same old clothes and I wear them until they are literally worn out... but I have friends who are always trying new outfits, accessorizing, paying attention to what other people wear. How did we get to all be so different? It's a mystery... but life is more fun that way, everybody doing their own thing!

    If you want to pursue different psychology topics for this class, that could be so exciting: maybe for your storytelling each week you could see how a character in one of the stories exemplifies some trait or pattern or behavior that you have learned about in psychology. Sometimes myths and legends can be perfect examples of psychological models ... going all the way back to Freud and his use of "Oedipus" for the Oedipus complex! :-)

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