Let's face it, mindsets are...complicated.

If I had to describe my take on mindsets research, I’d say it’s…complicated.

There have been some serious debates about whether mindset interventions have any effect at all, with many saying that advocates for mindsets have overstated their ease of implementation and effects. I’m on the side of skeptical optimism: I think there’s real value in helping people adopt the view that learning and ability are malleable, but I don’t think doing that is particularly easy. I suspect interventions need to target both people’s beliefs as well as the contexts affecting those people and their beliefs, which can take a long time and lots of effort. All of that is…complicated.

A new article by de Ruiter & Thomas (2023) tries to capture that complexity by asserting a dynamic, socially situated model of how mindsets develop. Based in complex dynamic systems theory and enactivist approaches, the authors argued that people don’t “have” mindsets, rather particular mindsets are activated in context. In addition, people internalize these mindsets, making them more likely to be triggered, but it is not accurate to say that someone has the same mindset in every situation, all the time. de Ruiter and Thomas (2023) summarized these ideas, and a few others, in a set of conceptual proposals:

“(a) situational responses and attributions are socially situated negotiations, (b) when adults enter these negotiations, they constitute asymmetrical interactions with children, (c) the principle of emergence allows for conceptualizing mindsets as dynamic properties, (d) the principle of constraint allows for conceptualizing mindsets as self-sustaining, (e) individuals can develop multiple mindsets, (f) mindsets can be conceptualized as enacted in contexts; and (g) contextual affordances can be conceptualized as dynamic.” (p. 1327)

After asserting a Process Model of Mindsets based on those proposals, they discussed why many mindset interventions don’t work and what is needed to make them work. If you are interested in mindsets, the paper is definitely worth a read. I suspect this type of situated, complex dynamic systems approach to mindsets is needed to resolve past controversies and improve interventions. Hopefully, a complex process model can make the mindset controversies less complicated.