Shifting the mindset culture to address global educational disparities.

Educational outcomes remain highly unequal within and across nations. Students' mindsets-their beliefs about whether intellectual abilities can be developed-have been identified as a potential lever for making adolescents' academic outcomes more equitable. Recent research, however, suggests that intervention programs aimed at changing students' mindsets should be supplemented by programs aimed at the changing the mindset culture, which is defined as the shared set of beliefs about learning in a school or classroom.

The specificity of parenting effects: Differential relations of parent praise and criticism to children's theories of intelligence and learning goals.

Individuals who believe that intelligence can be improved with effort (an incremental theory of intelligence) and who approach challenges with the goal of improving their understanding (a learning goal) tend to have higher academic achievement. Furthermore, parent praise is associated with children's incremental theories and learning goals. However, the influences of parental criticism, as well as different forms of praise and criticism (e.

Parental Co-Construction of 5- to 13-Year-Olds' Global Self-Esteem Through Reminiscing About Past Events.

The current study explored parental processes associated with children's global self-esteem development. Eighty 5- to 13-year-olds and one of their parents provided qualitative and quantitative data through questionnaires, open-ended questions, and a laboratory-based reminiscing task. Parents who included more explanations of emotions when writing about the lowest points in their lives were more likely to discuss explanations of emotions experienced in negative past events with their child, which was associated with child attachment security.

The Lifespan Self-Esteem Scale: Initial Validation of a New Measure of Global Self-Esteem.

This article introduces the Lifespan Self-Esteem Scale (LSE), a short measure of global self-esteem suitable for populations drawn from across the lifespan. Many existing measures of global self-esteem cannot be used across multiple developmental periods due to changes in item content, response formats, and other scale characteristics. This creates a need for a new lifespan scale so that changes in global self-esteem over time can be studied without confounding maturational changes with alterations in the measure.

Do Parents Foster Self-Esteem? Testing the Prospective Impact of Parent Closeness on Adolescent Self-Esteem.

Close parent-child relationships are viewed as important for the development of global self-esteem. Cross-sectional research supports this hypothesis, but longitudinal studies provide inconsistent prospective effects. The current study uses data from Germany (N = 982) and the United States (N = 451) to test longitudinal relations between parent-child closeness and adolescent self-esteem.

The far-reaching effects of believing people can change: implicit theories of personality shape stress, health, and achievement during adolescence.

The belief that personality is fixed (an entity theory of personality) can give rise to negative reactions to social adversities. Three studies showed that when social adversity is common-at the transition to high school--an entity theory can affect overall stress, health, and achievement. Study 1 showed that an entity theory of personality, measured during the 1st month of 9th grade, predicted more negative immediate reactions to social adversity and, at the end of the year, greater stress, poorer health, and lower grades in school.

Continuity and change in self-esteem during emerging adulthood.

The present study examined the development of self-esteem in a sample of emerging adults (N = 295) followed longitudinally over 4 years of college. Six waves of self-esteem data were available. Participants also rated, at the end of their 4th year, the degree to which they thought their self-esteem had changed during college.

Using Trait-State Models to Evaluate the Longitudinal Consistency of Global Self-Esteem From Adolescence to Adulthood.

The present research used a latent variable trait-state model to evaluate the longitudinal consistency of self-esteem during the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Analyses were based on ten administrations of the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (Rosenberg, 1965) spanning the ages of approximately 13 to 32 for a sample of 451 participants. Results indicated that a completely stable trait factor and an autoregressive trait factor accounted for the majority of the variance in latent self-esteem assessments, whereas state factors accounted for about 16% of the variance in repeated assessments of latent self-esteem.

An implicit theories of personality intervention reduces adolescent aggression in response to victimization and exclusion.

Adolescents are often resistant to interventions that reduce aggression in children. At the same time, they are developing stronger beliefs in the fixed nature of personal characteristics, particularly aggression. The present intervention addressed these beliefs.

Theories of willpower affect sustained learning.

Building cognitive abilities often requires sustained engagement with effortful tasks. We demonstrate that beliefs about willpower-whether willpower is viewed as a limited or non-limited resource-impact sustained learning on a strenuous mental task. As predicted, beliefs about willpower did not affect accuracy or improvement during the initial phases of learning; however, participants who were led to view willpower as non-limited showed greater sustained learning over the full duration of the task.

Mentalizing deficits constrain belief in a personal God.

Religious believers intuitively conceptualize deities as intentional agents with mental states who anticipate and respond to human beliefs, desires and concerns. It follows that mentalizing deficits, associated with the autistic spectrum and also commonly found in men more than in women, may undermine this intuitive support and reduce belief in a personal God. Autistic adolescents expressed less belief in God than did matched neuro-typical controls (Study 1).

Promoting intergroup contact by changing beliefs: group malleability, intergroup anxiety, and contact motivation.

Intergroup contact plays a crucial role in moderating long-term conflicts. Unfortunately, the motivation to make contact with outgroup members is usually very low in such conflicts. We hypothesized that one limiting factor is the belief that groups cannot change, which leads to increased intergroup anxiety and decreased contact motivation.

Adolescent Self-Esteem: Differences by Race/Ethnicity, Gender, and Age.

Large-scale representative surveys of 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students in the United States show high self-esteem scores for all groups. African-American students score highest, Whites score slightly higher than Hispanics, and Asian Americans score lowest. Males score slightly higher than females.

Promoting the Middle East peace process by changing beliefs about group malleability.

Four studies showed that beliefs about whether groups have a malleable versus fixed nature affected intergroup attitudes and willingness to compromise for peace. Using a nationwide sample (N = 500) of Israeli Jews, the first study showed that a belief that groups were malleable predicted positive attitudes toward Palestinians, which in turn predicted willingness to compromise. In the remaining three studies, experimentally inducing malleable versus fixed beliefs about groups among Israeli Jews (N = 76), Palestinian citizens of Israel (N = 59), and Palestinians in the West Bank (N = 53)--without mentioning the adversary--led to more positive attitudes toward the outgroup and, in turn, increased willingness to compromise for peace.

Adolescents' implicit theories predict desire for vengeance after peer conflicts: correlational and experimental evidence.

Why do some adolescents respond to interpersonal conflicts vengefully, whereas others seek more positive solutions? Three studies investigated the role of implicit theories of personality in predicting violent or vengeful responses to peer conflicts among adolescents in Grades 9 and 10. They showed that a greater belief that traits are fixed (an entity theory) predicted a stronger desire for revenge after a variety of recalled peer conflicts (Study 1) and after a hypothetical conflict that specifically involved bullying (Study 2). Study 3 experimentally induced a belief in the potential for change (an incremental theory), which resulted in a reduced desire to seek revenge.

What does the narcissistic personality inventory really measure?

The Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) is a widely used measure of narcissism. However, debates persist about its exact factor structure with researchers proposing solutions ranging from two to seven factors. The present research aimed to clarify the factor structure of the NPI and further illuminate its nomological network.

Self-esteem development from young adulthood to old age: a cohort-sequential longitudinal study.

The authors examined the development of self-esteem from young adulthood to old age. Data came from the Americans' Changing Lives study, which includes 4 assessments across a 16-year period of a nationally representative sample of 3,617 individuals aged 25 years to 104 years. Latent growth curve analyses indicated that self-esteem follows a quadratic trajectory across the adult life span, increasing during young and middle adulthood, reaching a peak at about age 60 years, and then declining in old age.

Groundhog Day Versus Alice in Wonderland, Red Herrings Versus Swedish Fishes, and Hopefully Something Constructive: A Reply to Comments.

In this reply to the comments on our original article, we identify common themes and respond to some specific issues that appear to be at the core of the debate over the evidence for "Generation Me." In particular, we point out that generational studies have both applied and theoretical consequences and echo the sentiment that developmental considerations are likely to be more important than generational considerations when thinking about the attributes of today's young people. We also acknowledge that disagreements are inevitable, as this is a controversial issue of study.

Rethinking "Generation Me": A Study of Cohort Effects From 1976-2006.

Social commentators have argued that changes over the last decades have coalesced to create a relatively unique generation of young people. However, using large samples of U.S.

Low self-esteem is a risk factor for depressive symptoms from young adulthood to old age.

Data from two large longitudinal studies were used to analyze reciprocal relations between self-esteem and depressive symptoms across the adult life span. Study 1 included 1,685 participants aged 18 to 96 years assessed 4 times over a 9-year period. Study 2 included 2,479 participants aged 18 to 88 years assessed 3 times over a 4-year period.

Do today's young people really think they are so extraordinary? An examination of secular trends in narcissism and self-enhancement.

The present research investigated secular trends in narcissism and self-enhancement over the past three decades. Despite recent claims about the impact of the "self-esteem movement" on the current generation of young people, we found no evidence that college students' scores on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory increased from the 1980s through 2007 (N= 26,867), although we did find small changes in specific facets of narcissism. Similarly, we found no evidence that high school students' level of self-enhancement, defined by the discrepancy between their perceived intelligence and their actual academic achievements, increased from 1976 to 2006 (N= 410,527).

Implicit theories of intelligence predict achievement across an adolescent transition: a longitudinal study and an intervention.

Two studies explored the role of implicit theories of intelligence in adolescents' mathematics achievement. In Study 1 with 373 7th graders, the belief that intelligence is malleable (incremental theory) predicted an upward trajectory in grades over the two years of junior high school, while a belief that intelligence is fixed (entity theory) predicted a flat trajectory. A mediational model including learning goals, positive beliefs about effort, and causal attributions and strategies was tested.

Low self-esteem during adolescence predicts poor health, criminal behavior, and limited economic prospects during adulthood.

Using prospective data from the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study birth cohort, the authors found that adolescents with low self-esteem had poorer mental and physical health, worse economic prospects, and higher levels of criminal behavior during adulthood, compared with adolescents with high self-esteem. The long-term consequences of self-esteem could not be explained by adolescent depression, gender, or socioeconomic status. Moreover, the findings held when the outcome variables were assessed using objective measures and informant reports; therefore, the findings cannot be explained by shared method variance in self-report data.

Revisiting the association between reading achievement and antisocial behavior: new evidence of an environmental explanation from a twin study.

Previous studies have reported, but not explained, the reason for a robust association between reading achievement and antisocial behavior. This association was investigated using the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, a nationally representative 1994-1995 birth cohort of 5- and 7-year-olds. Results showed that the association resulted primarily from environmental factors common to both reading and antisocial behavior and was stronger in boys.