Check out this interesting article, "The Secret to Raising Smart Kids," from Scientific American (via the Marginal Revolution blog). The author is well-known psychologist (now at Stanford) Carol Dweck, who has written a lot on topics related to self-conceptions and their effects on motivation and behavior.
One question this raises for me: Is it ever too late to start cultivating a growth mind-set?
The study with managers she mentions suggests that it is possible for people to change their implict person theory regarding personal attributes from one that assumes that traits are innate and fixed to one that believes that the attributes can be changed and that this can have behavioral consequences. (In this case, managers who believed that personality and ability could be changed were more likely to coach their employees.) That study used a workshop focusing on self-persuasion techniques ("parallel counter-attitudinal idea generation, counter-attitudinal reflection, counter-attitudinal advocacy, and dissonance induction components") to increase the belief that people can change.
There's one hell of a self-help book/workshop series to be gotten from all of this.
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