Similarities in mindset between adolescents’ friends and cooperation partners

Abstract

Peers, in terms of both friends and cooperation partners, are a very important aspect of the social context of adolescents. They may affect adolescents’ intelligence mindsets and therefore their school motivation and success. Being friends or cooperating with a peer with a similar mindset might either enhance (in case of a growth mindset) or hinder (in case of a fixed mindset) adolescents’ motivation to learn. In this cross-sectional social network study, we first examined whether friendship networks and cooperation partners networks within school classes differ from each other. Second, we investigated whether adolescents’ friends and cooperation partners have similarities in mindsets. We analysed peer nominations and intelligence mindsets within 26 Dutch classes of early and mid-adolescents (N = 558) using the quadratic assignment procedure (QAP). Our data showed that three unique networks could be distinguished: a friendship only network, a combined friends and cooperation partners network and a cooperation only network. Multiple regression quadratic assignment procedures (MRQAP) indicated no evidence for similarity in mindset in all the three networks. However, we did find that adolescents with a growth mindset select more peers to cooperate with than adolescents with a fixed mindset. This latter finding shows that mindset influences social interactions in the context of cooperation between adolescents. It might be valuable to take the social context into consideration in the development of new mindset interventions.