Motivating human flourishing: an ethnoracial appraisal-based intervention on growth mindset

Individuals with a growth mindset believe that their abilities can be improved through effort, which enables them to perceive challenges as manageable obstacles and attain higher achievement. Sociological factors (such as poverty and the social implications of minoritized identities) create self-efficacy limitations that hinder the attainment of a growth mindset. Although studies have shown the impact that identity can have on the development of a growth mindset and that interventions can increase growth mindset, this study investigated how identity (race/ethnicity) and its salience relates to a growth mindset intervention when there is an ethnoracial match versus when racial/ethnic identity is not identified. Participants (N = 607) were recruited through Qualtrics’ survey recruitment service and anonymously completed an online survey. Results suggested there was a significant increase in growth mindset in both the race/ethnicity match and control condition. Additionally, White participants reported significantly lower ethnic identity salience than did Black, Biracial, and Latinx participants. Identity salience explained 51% of the variance in posttest growth mindset in both the control and race/ethnicity match conditions. The interaction between ethnic identity salience explained an additional .3% of the variance in growth mindset change. Specifically, among individuals with higher ethnic identity salience, the impact on growth mindset was higher in the ethnomatching condition than in the control condition, but the opposite was true among those with lower ethnic identity salience. The higher an individual’s ethnic identity salience, the greater their likelihood of benefiting from an intervention that primes their ethnoracial identity. These findings are important to the growth mindset intervention literature in that the impact of ethnic identity salience is nuanced among individuals and may impact outcomes differently. For some, race/ethnicity matching may be a more important factor to changing growth mindset than for others.