Social Psychology Commons^™

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 …

Well-Being In The Time Of Covid-19: Do Metaphors And Mindsets Matter?, Jeni L. Burnette, Crystal L. Hoyt, Nicholas Buttrick, Lisa A. Auster-Gussman

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

Communications about the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) often employ metaphors, which can help people understand complex issues. For example, public health messages may focus on “fighting” the disease, attempting to rouse people to action by instilling a sense of urgency. In contrast, change-focused metaphors may foster growth mindsets and self-efficacy—cornerstones of well-being and action. We randomly assigned participants to read one of two articles—either an article about coronavirus that focused on fighting the war or an article that highlighted the possibility of change. In Study 1 (N = 426), participants who read the war, relative to the change, message …

I Can Do That: The Impact Of Implicit Theories On Leadership Role Model Effectiveness, Crystal L. Hoyt, Jeni L. Burnette, Audrey N. Innella

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

This research investigates the role of implicit theories in influencing the effectiveness of successful role models in the leadership domain. Across two studies, we test the prediction that incremental theorists (‘leaders are made’) compared to entity theorists (‘leaders are born’) will respond more positively to being presented with a role model before undertaking a leadership task. In Study 1, measuring people’s naturally occurring implicit theories of leadership, we showed that after being primed with a role model, incremental theorists reported greater leadership confidence and less anxious-depressed affect than entity theorists following the leadership task. In Study 2, we demonstrated the …

Taking A Turn Toward The Masculine: The Impact Of Mortality Salience On Implicit Leadership Theories, Crystal L. Hoyt, Stefanie Simon, Audrey N. Innella

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

The present research investigates the influence of subtle death-related thoughts (i.e., mortality salience), on people’s images of effective leaders (i.e., their implicit leadership theories). We test the prediction that mortality salience will change the content of these implicit theories to be more gender stereotypical such that individuals will conceive of effective leaders in a significantly more masculine, or agentic, manner. To test this prediction, we assessed participants’ communal and agentic implicit leadership theories after they were presented with a mortality salience or control manipulation. Results show that priming individuals to think about their mortality with two open-ended questions resulted in …

Biography And The Social Cognition Of Leadership, George R. Goethals

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

In this chapter, we'll discuss why we have a penchant for the depiction of leadership through the stories of individual leaders and why that tendency poses serious challenges to understanding leadership. One of the key distinctions in this collection of essays is the one between leaders and leadership. Following James MacGregor Burns, Richard Couto has tried to focus scholars and practitioners on the dynamics of leadership rather than on the lives of leaders. It may well be a losing battle. We'll try to explain why.

Our discussion proceeds as follows. First, we will discuss the ways human wiring leads us …

Personality And Social Psychology Connections Is In Development Stage, Donelson R. Forsyth

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

When will technology, in all its varied forms both complicated and simple, begin to give back some of the minutes, hours, and days that it has stolen from us? Slogging through emails, developing online teaching materials for courses, readying a manuscript for online submission, searching for information on the web, formatting a survey so that it prints nicely, and navigating through digital libraries and journal article repositories wastes more time than a Dean’s introductory remarks at a meeting of the full faculty, the paperwork required by a detailed-oriented IRB, or an eighth-year students’ dissertation defense.

Seeking to counter the trend …

Defining Deception As The "Waiver Of An Element", Donelson R. Forsyth

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

When dealing with the public, and with Institution Review Boards (IRBs), the moral high ground is the place to be. Yet, personality researchers and social psychologists, because of their methods and interests, often find themselves down in a moral morass. Take deception research as a case in point. Social psychologists, because they study people’s spontaneous reactions, prefer to not fully inform participants about all aspects of the situation until after the data have been gathered. This desire to withhold information, although scientifically essential, is nonetheless inconsistent with key elements in the Nuremberg Code, the Belmont Code, and HHS 45 CFR …

Irbism: Prejudice Against Institutional Review Boards, Donelson R. Forsyth

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

Alexander Pope, who opined that "the proper study of man is man," did not have to convince an Institutional Review Board (IRB) of the wisdom of his words. Just this week I was told that I could not use the question "What city does your romantic partner live in?" to check if the subject was in a long-distant relationship (made the partner too identifiable). Earlier in the year a reviewer objected to asking students about their mother and father's parenting style (reports on the behavior of unconsented third parties). When I said I would recruit participants from classes, the reviewer …