Digital Commons Network^™

Harnessing Growth Mindsets To Help Individuals Flourish, Jeni L. Brunette, Crystal L. Hoyt, Joseph Billingsley

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Psychologists are uniquely positioned to help with our collective obligation to advance scientific knowledge in ways that help individuals to flourish. Growth mindsets may offer one such tool for improving lives, yet some research questions the potential to replicate key findings. The aims in the current work are to help explain mixed results and outline ways to improve intervention impact. To reach these goals, we first offer a brief overview of the links between growth mindsets and psychological flourishing. Second, we outline key theories of causal mechanisms and summarize sources of meaningful heterogeneity in growth mindset interventions, with a focus …

The Seditious Class, Donelson R. Forsyth

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

I never saw it coming. My students and I had just shared a splendid semester-long educational experience. I had deftly mixed original readings, engaging class discussions, illuminating lectures, and thoughtful assessments with a community-based project that gave students the opportunity to apply course concepts in a real-world setting. Or had I? You would think that, after some 30 years of opening packets of students’ evaluations at the semester’s end (and now, downloading them from the University’s evil evaluation website), that the thrill would be gone—no more disappointment, elation, or surprise.

Not so.

My course was a required one, populated with …

The Bathsheba Syndrome: When A Leader Fails, Donelson R. Forsyth

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

Another leader—no, an entire cadre of leaders—has been found to be a moral failure. Legal authorities have charged Jerry Sandusky, who retired as the defensive coordinator for the Penn State football team in 1999, with the sexual abuse of children who he targeted through his involvement in the charitable organization The Second Mile. Additionally, a number of other administrators and leaders at Penn State University—the university’s president Graham Spanier, vice-president Gary Schultz, athletic director Tim Curley and long-time football coach Joe Paterno—face charges or have been fired from the university because of their failure to take action when Sandusky’s crimes …

It's That Efa* Time Of Year (*Extreme Fan Addiction), Donelson R. Forsyth

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

What an odd lot our ancestors must have been to let themselves get caught up in crazes like the 10th century dancing mania in Italy, or the alarming outbreak of biting mania in 15th century Germany, Italy, and Holland. Holland's 17th century tulipmania proved only economically painful, when wealthy families spent their savings buying and hoarding tulip bulbs, and were left in financial ruin when prices plummeted.

We are not so different from those long-gone dancers, biters, and tulipophiles, because a modern mania is about to descend upon us: March Madness. Sixty-four colleges and universities send their basketball teams into …

Exploring Group Behavior, Donelson R. Forsyth

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

When I migrated from the world of constructions and took a position as a college professor and social psychologist, I found myself on the right side of the "good work if you can get it" divide. Granted, professoring is still work. There are politics of the office, bosses who make demands, and duties that must be fulfilled. Nor is it a glamorous occupation, as Hollywood's depictions of Indiana Jones-like professorial types would suggest. But depending on one's goals and perspectives, it is a personally fulfilling pursuit. It is an elite profession that requires special training and skill, and for much …