Goals & Mindsets Flashcards
Why do we set goals?
Goals are related to who we want to be
- The Ideal Self
Goals are related to who we think we are
- The Actual Self
Actual Self -> Ideal Self
- Motivating or Devastating?
Goals
Achievement Goals
- Mastery
- Performance
- Approach
- Avoidance
Other Goals
- Work-Avoidance Goals
- Social Goals
- Career Goals
Achievement Goals
Mastery Goal
- Focused on acquiring knowledge or mastering a skill
Performance Goal
- Focused on performance in the eyes of others
Achievement Goals
Performance-approach Goal
- Want to display competency and garner approval
Performance-avoidance Goal
- Doesn’t want to display incompetency and receive unfavorable judgements
Jane, Joan, June Example
3 girls are playing basketball and all want to play well for different reasons:
- Jane: I want to show everyone how good I am (Performance-approach Goal)
- Joan: I really don’t want to screw this up (Performance-avoidance Goal)
- June: I want to be a better player (Mastery goal)
Mastery vs Performance Goals
Mastery
- More intrinsically motivated
- Seek out challenges
- Interpret failure as need for more effort
- Remain calm during tests
- Achieve at higher levels
Performance
- More extrinsically motivated
- Avoid tasks that might reveal incompetence
- Interpret failure as lack of ability
- Feel anxious during tests
- Doesn’t necessarily mean they achieve at lower levels
Encouraging Mastery & Performance Goals
Mastery
- Describe intrinsic value of learning a skill
- Focus attention on progress being made
- Communicate role of understanding over rote memorization
- Have students explain and justify their reasoning
Performance (Places emphasis more on looking good than learning!)
- Post best papers on the wall
- Score tests on a curve
- Remind students that good grades are needed for college/grad school
- Emphasize desire to beat other students/teams
Work-Avoidance Goals
- When someone either doesn’t want to do the task, or exert as little effort as possible
- What do they do?
- Why? (Lack of intrinsic/extrinsic motivation)
Social Goals
Our goals direct our social behavior (good/bad):
Want to feel powerful?
- Become a bully
Want to be liked/popular?
- Adopt that practices of the social group you want to join
Want to gain the teacher's approval? - Work hard in class and participate
Career Goals
Solidify as we grow older
Often guided by cultural norms, familial expectations
Gender stereotypes
- Helping professions
- Work/family balance
Goal Intersectionality
Our goals can
- Overlap
- Conflict
- Exist separately
In-Class Activity about goals (Are my goals mastery or performance-based?)
Are my goals mastery or performance-based?
- Mastery Goal: Focused on acquiring knowledge or mastering a skill
- Performance Goal: Focused on performance in the eyes of others
Carol Dweck’s Research
These are attributions!
Fixed mindset
- Entity theory of intelligence
Growth mindset
- Incremental theory of intelligence
Fixed Mindset
(i.e., “entity view”)
Intelligence is stable, uncontrollable, fixed
Ability can’t be changed
- Mistakes can be devastating
- View difficulties as obstacles and more likely t give up
- Learned helplessness is common
Growth Mindset
AKA “Incremental View”
Intelligence is unstable, controllable, changing
Challenges are energizing, not intimidating
Ability can be changed over time
- Mistakes can increase effort
- View difficulties as challenges to be overcome
- Effort will lead to improvement
Praising Intelligence vs. Effort (The Effects of Praise)
The Effects of Praise
- Children praised for their intelligence solved significantly fewer problems after a failure than they had before encountering difficulty
- In contrast, children praised for their effort solved more problems after their brush with adversity than they bad before it
Growth vs. Fixed Mind-Set (Mind-set and Math Grades)
Mind-Set and Math Grades
- Students who believed intelligence is malleable (growth mindset line) earned higher math grades in the fail of 7th grade than those who believed in static intelligence (fixed mind-set line)
- Even though the two groups had equivalent math achievement test scores in the 6th grade
- The grades of the growth mind-set group then improved significantly over the next two years, whereas the grades of the fixed mind-set students declined
How to Encourage a Growth Mindset
- Focus on effort!
- Praise for persistence, not intelligence
- Tell success stories emphasizing hard work & effort achieve goals
- Emphasize change through effort
- See mistakes as opportunities for learning
- Teach about the brain as a learning machine
Praising Effort, not success or intelligence (examples)
- I like the way you tried a lot of different strategies on that math problem until you finally got it
- That was a hard English assignment, but you stuck with it until you got it done
- I like that you took on a challenging project for your science class. You are going to learn a lot of great things.
- Mistakes are so interesting. Here’s a wonderful mistake. Let’s see what we can learn from it
Self-efficacy
Belief in one’s capacity to succeed at tasks
- Can be about general ability or specific tasks performance
Judgement of confidence
Context-sensitive
“Can I do this?”
“How well can I do this?”
Self-efficacy Influences
- The choices we make
- The effort we put forth
- How long we persist
- How we feel
High Self-Efficacy
- See challenging problems as tasks to be mastered, rather than threats to be avoided
- Develop greater intrinsic interest and focus in their activities
- Set challenging goals and demonstrate a stronger sense of commitment to them
- Quickly recover their self-efficacy following setbacks and disappointments (Bandura, 1994)
Low Self-Efficacy
- Avoid difficult tasks and view them as personal threats
- Have a weak commitment to their goals and believe that difficult tasks and situations are beyond their capabilities
- Dwell on personal failings and negative outcomes, rather than how to succeed
- Quickly lost faith in their personal abilities and easily develop depression and stress (Bandura, 1994)
Learned Helplessness
Learned helplessness: The belief that we can’t change the course of negative events, that failure is inevitable and insurmountable
Is a response to failure, NOT success
Is a control - NOT a competence - problem
Seligman* key theorist
Learned Helplessness Example (Seligman)
Animals must learn to jump barrier to avoid shock
Learned Helplessness and Students
- “Students that are repeatedly exposed to school failure are particularly at risk for the development of learned helplesness” (Sutherford & Singh, 2004)
Overcoming Learned Helplessness
- Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy
- Change attributions from pessimistic to optimistic and more realistic
