Elizabeth A. Canning

Many influential psychological theories are formulated in explicitly conditional terms: the impact of one construct depends on another. Yet when interactions appear weak or inconsistent empirically, often as a function of analytic constraints, the absence of evidence may be mistaken for evidence of absence. This encourages a drift from interactional theory to additive conceptions. Mindset theory provides a revealing case. Dweck’s original formulation did not portray fixed-ability beliefs as uniformly maladaptive; rather, it implied that their consequences depend on individuals’ self-evaluative appraisals, particularly self-concept. Yet this theoretically central interaction has rarely been directly tested. Our substantive–methodological synergy re-examines this neglected prediction, leveraging a three-wave longitudinal dataset and latent interaction modeling to test the theory’s conditional architecture. Across specifications and multiple achievement emotions, fixed mindset was neither uniformly detrimental nor benign. Only combined with low self-concept, it predicted greater anxiety, anger, and shame. Combined with high self-concept, it was associated with elevated pride—a dual pattern captured in the metaphor of the “Janus face.”By recovering this conditional structure, the findings clarify a foundational aspect of mindset theory and illustrate a broader principle: When theories are interactional in form, empirical models must mirror that structure to yield theoretically faithful conclusions.Keywords: conditional theory, latent interaction analysis, latent profile analysis, mindset, self-concept, achievement emotions

The Safety and Threat in Environment Perceptions (STEP) scale assesses perceptions of environments as safe (welcoming, inclusive) or threatening (critical, intimidating). We first evaluated the factor structure of the scale and demonstrated its unique predictive validity in classrooms (Studies 1 and 2), gyms (Studies 3 and 4), and the workplace (Study 5). When seeing classrooms with stereotypically masculine (vs. neutral) objects, women perceived less safety, which predicted less engagement, interest, and intentions to recruit others. When seeing an unwelcoming (vs. welcoming) gym, women (vs. men) perceived less safety, which predicted less engagement, interest, and intentions to recruit others, especially when the gym contained masculine (vs. feminine or gender-balanced) social cues. When seeing a boardroom with unwelcoming (vs. no) social cues, both men and women perceived greater threat, which predicted less intentions to recruit others. Together, these findings suggest that the STEP scale is a useful measure for assessing perceived safety and threat in any environment.

Early math experiences predict children’s later math abilities and beliefs. However, less is known about longer-term associations between early childhood math experiences and adult math outcomes. The present study examined emerging adults’ earliest memories of mathematics and reading experiences, asking whether characteristics of their early learning memories differ across domains of learning and relate to their adulthood math achievement and beliefs. Undergraduate students (n = 161, M _Age = 19.6 years) described their earliest memories of math and reading, then completed measures of their math anxiety, math task value, and math achievement. Our results reveal significant domain differences in participants’ age during their earliest memories, the level of social interaction, and their overall rating of the experience. Emerging adults with more positive memories of their earliest math experiences had lower math anxiety, higher math task value, and higher math achievement. Our results provide additional evidence of the long-term associations between early math experiences and later math outcomes and underscore the need to promote early math experiences that are positive and engaging for young children.

In response to the alarming recent decline in US math achievement, we conducted a national megastudy in which 140,461 elementary school teachers who collectively taught 2,992,027 students were randomly assigned to receive a variety of behaviorally informed email nudges aimed at improving students’ progress in math. Specifically, we partnered with the nonprofit educational platform Zearn Math to compare the impact of 15 different interventions with a reminder-only megastudy control condition. All 16 conditions entailed weekly emails delivered to teachers over 4-wk in the fall of 2021. The best-performing intervention, which encouraged teachers to log into Zearn Math for an updated report on how their students were doing that week, produced a 5.06% increase in students’ math progress (3.30% after accounting for the winner’s curse). In exploratory analyses, teachers who received any behaviorally informed email nudge (vs. a reminder-only megastudy control) saw their students’ math progress boosted by an average of 1.89% during the 4-wk intervention period; emails referencing personalized data (i.e., classroom-specific statistics) outperformed emails that did not by 2.26%. While small in size, these intervention effects were consistent across school socioeconomic status and school type (public, private, etc.) and, further, persisted in the 8-wk post-intervention period. Collectively, these findings underscore both how difficult it is to change behavior and the need for large-scale, rigorous, empirical research of the sort undertaken in this megastudy.

In a large-enrollment Introductory Biology course, students received either growth mindset or control emails. Growth mindset messages increased grades among first-generation college students. Performance increased as a function of increased activity on the course website.

Growth mindset interventions directed at students aim to change students' beliefs about the malleability of ability. These interventions have had mixed results, with some showing impressive findings (e.g., improving grades and persistence in science and closing performance gaps), while other implementations have shown null findings. This heterogeneity suggests that growth mindset interventions should not be viewed as a sole solution for improving educational outcomes for students and that further research is needed to identify the contextual factors that influence their effectiveness. We propose new theoretical directions in mindset research that adopts an anti‐deficit model and moves away from focusing exclusively on students and their belief systems. Instead, we encourage a new wave of mindset research that considers the institutional, cultural, and contextual environment that either corroborates or negates students' mindset beliefs. We propose a new approach to mindset research that emphasizes innovative approaches to better understand the conditions under which mindset interventions are effective.

In the context of continued equity gaps in student success within and beyond STEM, this paper explored the extent to which the representation of underrepresented racial minority (URM) and first-generation college students predict grades in postsecondary STEM courses. The analyses examined 87,027 grades received by 11,868 STEM-interested students within 8,468 STEM courses at 20 institutions. Cross-classified multilevel models and student fixed effects analyses of these data both support the same conclusion: the proportion of URM and first-generation students within a class is positively associated with STEM grades among all students, and these relationships are stronger among students who are members of the minoritized group. Thus, promoting the representation of students with minoritized identities in STEM courses may lead to greater equity in college outcomes.