Methods
The study carried out by Berg et al. (2023) was to discover the effects of nurturing the growth mindsets of self, job, or both (dual-growth mindset) on happiness at work. Study 1 was a field quasi-experiment carried out at a top-500 technology organization. 149 employees from different departments participated in the study. Participants attended one of three mindset workshops: I can be a student, a job seeker, or a dual student. The workshops were called “career development” seminars, and participation was voluntary. The primary design elements were incorporated to minimize validity threats, which included random assignment of workshops to conditions, treatments delivered in a controlled manner by the same facilitators, and three waves of data collection (pretest, 6 weeks post and 6 months post). Happiness was assessed through the observer ratings of participants’ managers and peers, having good reliability and consistency.
In Study 2, the researchers came up with 398 full-time employees in the U.S. through Amazon MTurk. The participants went through pretest surveys, were randomly assigned to the online versions of the three mindset workshops, and completed posttest surveys at four weeks and 6 months. Measures were taken in the form of subjective happiness items and self- and job-growth mindset scales. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the measurement model, indicating a three-factor solution is the best fit. Job crafting intentions were used as the hypothesized mediator through which the effect of a dual-growth mindset on happiness was expected to be manifested. Random-intercept models were employed for data analysis, which included considering participants’ nesting across time points.
Main Results
The outcomes showed that the dual mindset group demonstrated an average increase in happiness that was significantly greater than the self- or job-mindset groups. A significant increase in happiness was observed during and after the workshops, which continued for 6 months (Berg et al.,2023). Also, the dual mindset intervention group had increases in both self and job growth mindsets. Still, the self and job mindset intervention groups only had increases in their respective mindsets. Dual-growth mindset intentions were found to mediate the relationship between self-perception and job-perception as flexible and, therefore, employees who have a relaxed view of themselves and their jobs are more likely to craft their jobs.
Conclusions and Findings
The findings from these researches play an essential role in the actualization of organizations’ objectives with respect to the achievement of high employee well-being. Developing a dual-growth mindset, which is a way of seeing both the individual and the job as flexible bodies, could be a key to improving happiness. This implies that schemes that focus on self-development and job design prioritize the relationship between personal and environmental factors. Follow-up studies should also investigate the underlying mechanisms of how dual-growth mindsets may impact other behaviors, such as job performance. Organizational citizenship behavior’s duration of conduction of this study is essential. Therefore, longitudinal studies with more frequent measurements could be further considered to understand better the dynamics of mindset development and what influence it has on employees’ well-being over time. The results show that there are two essential ways to improve the employee experience led by a positive mindset, and they reveal several areas of future research.
Reference
Berg, J. M., Wrzesniewski, A., Grant, A. M., Kurkoski, J., & Welle, B. (2023). Getting unstuck: The effects of growth mindsets about the self and job on happiness at work. Journal of Applied Psychology, 108(1), 152–166. https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0001021
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