Mindset induction effects on cognitive control: A neurobehavioral investigation

Abstract

Messages about how much our abilities can change - or "mindset" messages - affect learning, achievement, and performance interpretations. However, the neurocognitive mechanisms responsible for these effects remain unexplored. To address this gap, we assessed how a mindset induction influenced cognitive control brain activity. Participants were randomly assigned to read that intelligence was either malleable (growth-mindset condition) or immutable (fixed-mindset condition) before completing a reaction-time task while electroencephalogram was recorded. Findings revealed that inducing a growth mindset resulted in enhanced attention to task-relevant stimuli, whereas inducing a fixed mindset enhanced attention to responses. Despite enhanced attention to responses in the fixed mindset group, this attention allocation was unrelated to adaptive performance adjustments. In contrast, the growth mindset induction produced a relatively strong coupling between error-related attention allocation and adaptive post-error performance. These results suggest that growth- and fixed-mindset messages have differential effects on the neural dynamics underlying cognitive control. © 2014.