Goals & Mindsets Flashcards

1
Q

Why do we set goals?

A

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?

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2
Q

Goals

A

Achievement Goals

  • Mastery
  • Performance
    • Approach
    • Avoidance

Other Goals

  • Work-Avoidance Goals
  • Social Goals
  • Career Goals
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3
Q

Achievement Goals

A

Mastery Goal
- Focused on acquiring knowledge or mastering a skill

Performance Goal
- Focused on performance in the eyes of others

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4
Q

Achievement Goals

A

Performance-approach Goal
- Want to display competency and garner approval

Performance-avoidance Goal
- Doesn’t want to display incompetency and receive unfavorable judgements

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5
Q

Jane, Joan, June Example

A

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)
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6
Q

Mastery vs Performance Goals

A

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
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7
Q

Encouraging Mastery & Performance Goals

A

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
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8
Q

Work-Avoidance Goals

A
  • 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)
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9
Q

Social Goals

A

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
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10
Q

Career Goals

A

Solidify as we grow older

Often guided by cultural norms, familial expectations

Gender stereotypes

  • Helping professions
  • Work/family balance
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11
Q

Goal Intersectionality

A

Our goals can

  • Overlap
  • Conflict
  • Exist separately
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12
Q

In-Class Activity about goals (Are my goals mastery or performance-based?)

A

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
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13
Q

Carol Dweck’s Research

A

These are attributions!

Fixed mindset
- Entity theory of intelligence

Growth mindset
- Incremental theory of intelligence

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14
Q

Fixed Mindset

A

(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
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15
Q

Growth Mindset

A

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
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16
Q

Praising Intelligence vs. Effort (The Effects of Praise)

A

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
17
Q

Growth vs. Fixed Mind-Set (Mind-set and Math Grades)

A

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
18
Q

How to Encourage a Growth Mindset

A
  • 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
19
Q

Praising Effort, not success or intelligence (examples)

A
  • 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
20
Q

Self-efficacy

A

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?”

21
Q

Self-efficacy Influences

A
  • The choices we make
  • The effort we put forth
  • How long we persist
  • How we feel
22
Q

High Self-Efficacy

A
  • 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)
23
Q

Low Self-Efficacy

A
  • 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)
24
Q

Learned Helplessness

A

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

25
Q

Learned Helplessness Example (Seligman)

A

Animals must learn to jump barrier to avoid shock

26
Q

Learned Helplessness and Students

A
  • “Students that are repeatedly exposed to school failure are particularly at risk for the development of learned helplesness” (Sutherford & Singh, 2004)
27
Q

Overcoming Learned Helplessness

A
  • Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

- Change attributions from pessimistic to optimistic and more realistic