Dweck, C. S., &Leggett, E. L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological review, 95(2), 256.

Past work has documented and described major patterns of adaptive and maladaptive behavior: the mastery-oriented and the helpless patterns. In this article, we present a research-based model that accounts for these patterns in terms of underlying psychological processes. The model specifies how individuals’ implicit theories orient them toward particular goals and how these goals set up the different patterns. Indeed, we show how each feature (cognitive, affective, and behavioral) of the adaptive and maladaptive patterns can be seen to follow directly from different goals. We then examine the generality of the model and use it to illuminate phenomena in a wide variety of domains. Finally, we place the model in its broadest context and examine its implications for our understanding of motivational and personality processes.

 

 

Dweck, C. S., & Leggett, E. L. (1988). A social-cognitive approach to motivation and personality. Psychological Review, 95(2), 256-273.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.95.2.256  

 

Hollis-Walker, L., &Colosimo, K. (2011). Mindfulness, self-compassion, and happiness in non-meditators: A theoretical and empirical examination.

This study examined relationships between mindfulness and indices of happiness and explored a five-factor model of mindfulness. Previous research using this mindfulness model has shown that several facets predicted psychological well-being (PWB) in meditating and non-meditating individuals. The current study tested the hypothesis that the prediction of PWB by mindfulness would be augmented and partially mediated by self-compassion. Participants were 27 men and 96 women (mean age = 20.9 years). All completed self-report measures of mindfulness, PWB, personality traits (NEO-PI-R), and self-compassion. Results show that mindfulness is related to psychologically adaptive variables and that self-compassion is a crucial attitudinal factor in the mindfulness–happiness relationship. Findings are interpreted from the humanistic perspective of a healthy personality.

 

 

Hollis-Walker, L., & Colosimo, K. (2011). Mindfulness, self-compassion, and happiness in non-meditators: A theoretical and empirical examination. Personality and Individual differences, 50(2), 222-227.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2010.09.033

 


Adams, C. E., &Leary, M. R. (2007). Promoting self–compassionate attitudes toward eating among restrictive and guilty eaters.

This study investigated the possibility that inducing a state of self–compassion would attenuate the tendency for restrained eaters to overeat after eating an unhealthy food preload (the disinhibition effect). College women completed measures of two components of rigid restrained eating: restrictive eating (desire and effort to avoid eating unhealthy foods) and eating guilt (tendency to feel guilty after eating unhealthily). Then, participants were asked either to eat an unhealthy food preload or not and were induced to think self–compassionately about their eating or given no intervening treatment. Results showed that the self–compassion induction reduced distress and attenuated eating following the preload among highly restrictive eaters. The findings highlight the importance of specific individual differences in restrained eating and suggest benefits of self–compassionate eating attitudes

 

 

Adams, C. E., & Leary, M. R. (2007). Promoting self–compassionate attitudes toward eating among restrictive and guilty eaters. Journal of social and clinical psychology, 26(10), 1120-1144.

https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2007.26.10.1120

 

Wood, A. M., Maltby, J., Gillett, R., Linley, P. A., &Joseph, S. (2008). The role of gratitude in the development of social support, stress, and depression: Two longitudinal studies.

In two longitudinal studies, the authors examined the direction of the relationships between trait gratitude, perceived social support, stress, and depression during a life transition. Both studies used a full cross-lagged panel design, with participants completing all measures at the start and end of their first semester at college. Structural equation modeling was used to compare models of direct, reverse, and reciprocal models of directionality. Both studies supported a direct model whereby gratitude led to higher levels of perceived social support, and lower levels of stress and depression. In contrast, no variable led to gratitude, and most models of mediation were discounted. Study 2 additionally showed that gratitude leads to the other variables independently of the Big Five factors of personality. Overall gratitude seems to directly foster social support, and to protect people from stress and depression, which has implications for clinical interventions.

 

 

Wood, A. M., Maltby, J., Gillett, R., Linley, P. A., & Joseph, S. (2008). The role of gratitude in the development of social support, stress, and depression: Two longitudinal studies. Journal of Research in Personality, 42(4), 854-871.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2007.11.003

 

McCullough, M. E., Kilpatrick, S. D., Emmons, R. A., &Larson, D. B. (2001). Is gratitude a moral affect?. Psychological bulletin, 127(2), 249.

Gratitude is conceptualized as a moral affect that is analogous to other moral emotions such as empathy and guilt. Gratitude has 3 functions that can be conceptualized as morally relevant: (a) a moral barometer function (i.e., it is a response to the perception that one has been the beneficiary of another person’s moral actions); (b) a moral motive function (i.e., it motivates the grateful person to behave prosocially toward the benefactor and other people); and (c) a moral reinforcer function (i.e., when expressed, it encourages benefactors to behave morally in the future). The personality and social factors that are associated with gratitude are also consistent with a conceptualization of gratitude as an affect that is relevant to people’s cognitions and behaviors in the moral domain.

 

 

McCullough, M. E., Kilpatrick, S. D., Emmons, R. A., & Larson, D. B. (2001). Is gratitude a moral affect?. Psychological bulletin, 127(2), 249.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.127.2.249

 

Hambrick, D. Z., et al. (2014). Deliberate practice: Is that all it takes to become an expert?. Intelligence, 45, 34-45.

Twenty years ago, Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer (1993) proposed that expert performance reflects a long period of deliberate practice rather than innate ability, or “talent”. Ericsson et al. found that elite musicians had accumulated thousands of hours more deliberate practice than less accomplished musicians, and concluded that their theoretical framework could provide “a sufficient account of the major facts about the nature and scarcity of exceptional performance” (p. 392). The deliberate practice view has since gained popularity as a theoretical account of expert performance, but here we show that deliberate practice is not sufficient to explain individual differences in performance in the two most widely studied domains in expertise research—chess and music. For researchers interested in advancing the science of expert performance, the task now is to develop and rigorously test theories that take into account as many potentially relevant explanatory constructs as possible.

 

 

Hambrick, D. Z., Oswald, F. L., Altmann, E. M., Meinz, E. J., Gobet, F., & Campitelli, G. (2014). Deliberate practice: Is that all it takes to become an expert?. Intelligence, 45, 34-45.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2013.04.001

 

 

 

 

Baird, B., Smallwood, J., Mrazek, M. D., Kam, J. W., Franklin, M. S., &Schooler, J. W. (2012). Inspired by distraction: mind wandering facilitates creative incubation

Although anecdotes that creative thoughts often arise when one is engaged in an unrelated train of thought date back thousands of years, empirical research has not yet investigated this potentially critical source of inspiration. We used an incubation paradigm to assess whether performance on validated creativity problems (the Unusual Uses Task, or UUT) can be facilitated by engaging in either a demanding task or an undemanding task that maximizes mind wandering. Compared with engaging in a demanding task, rest, or no break, engaging in an undemanding task during an incubation period led to substantial improvements in performance on previously encountered problems. Critically, the context that improved performance after the incubation period was associated with higher levels of mind wandering but not with a greater number of explicitly directed thoughts about the UUT. These data suggest that engaging in simple external tasks that allow the mind to wander may facilitate creative problem solving.

 

 

Baird, B., Smallwood, J., Mrazek, M. D., Kam, J. W., Franklin, M. S., & Schooler, J. W. (2012). Inspired by distraction: mind wandering facilitates creative incubation. Psychological science, 23(10), 1117-1122.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797612446024

 

 

Kim, K. H. (2005). Can only intelligent people be creative? A meta-analysis. Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, 16(2-3), 57-66.

Some research has shown that creativity test scores are independent from IQ scores, whereas other research has shown a relationship between the two. To clarify the cumulative evidence in this field, a quantitative review of the relationship between creativity test scores and IQ scores was conducted. Moderating influences of IQ tests, IQ score levels, creativity tests, creativity subscales, creativity test types, gender, age, and below and above the threshold (IQ 120) were examined. Four hundred forty-seven correlation coefficients from 21 studies and 45,880 participants were retrieved. The mean correlation coefficient was small (r = .174; 95% CI = .165 – .183), but heterogeneous; this correlation coefficient indicates that the relationship between creativity test scores and IQ scores is negligible. Age contributed to the relationship between intelligence and creativity the most; different creativity tests contributed to it secondly. This study does not support threshold theory.

 

 

Kim, K. H. (2005). Can only intelligent people be creative? A meta-analysis. Journal of Secondary Gifted Education, 16(2-3), 57-66.

https://doi.org/10.4219/jsge-2005-473

 


Bernardi, L., et al. (2006). Cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory changes induced by different types of music in musicians and non-musicians: the importance of silence.

Objective: To assess the potential clinical use, particularly in modulating stress, of changes in the cardiovascular and respiratory systems induced by music, specifically tempo, rhythm, melodic structure, pause, individual preference, habituation, order effect of presentation, and previous musical training.

 

Design: Measurement of cardiovascular and respiratory variables while patients listened to music.

 

Setting: University research laboratory for the study of cardiorespiratory autonomic function.

 

Patients: 12 practising musicians and 12 age matched controls.

 

Interventions: After a five minute baseline, presentation in random order of six different music styles (first for a two minute, then for a four minute track), with a randomly inserted two minute pause, in either sequence.

 

Main outcome measures: Breathing rate, ventilation, carbon dioxide, RR interval, blood pressure, mid-cerebral artery flow velocity, and baroreflex.

 

Results: Ventilation, blood pressure, and heart rate increased and mid-cerebral artery flow velocity and baroreflex decreased with faster tempi and simpler rhythmic structures compared with baseline. No habituation effect was seen. The pause reduced heart rate, blood pressure, and minute ventilation, even below baseline. An order effect independent of style was evident for mid-cerebral artery flow velocity, indicating a progressive reduction with exposure to music, independent of style. Musicians had greater respiratory sensitivity to the music tempo than did non-musicians.

 

Conclusions: Music induces an arousal effect, predominantly related to the tempo. Slow or meditative music can induce a relaxing effect; relaxation is particularly evident during a pause. Music, especially in trained subjects, may first concentrate attention during faster rhythms, then induce relaxation during pauses or slower rhythms.

 

 

Bernardi, L., Porta, C., & Sleight, P. (2006). Cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and respiratory changes induced by different types of music in musicians and non-musicians: the importance of silence. Heart, 92(4), 445-452.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/hrt.2005.064600

 

 

Dweck, C. S. (1986). Motivational processes affecting learning. American psychologist, 41(10), 1040.

Describes how motivational processes influence a child’s acquisition, transfer, and use of knowledge and skills. Recent research within the social-cognitive framework illustrates adaptive and maladaptive motivational patterns, and a research-based model of motivational processes is presented that shows how the particular performance or learning goals children pursue on cognitive tasks shape their reactions to success and failure and influence the quality of their cognitive performance. Implications for practice and the design of interventions to change maladaptive motivational processes are outlined. It is suggested that motivational patterns may contribute to gender differences in mathematics achievement and that empirically based interventions may prevent current achievement discrepancies and provide a basis for more effective socialization



Dweck, C. S. (1986). Motivational processes affecting learning. American Psychologist, 41(10), 1040-1048.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.41.10.1040