Our Research
How can we identify and dismantle psychological barriers that constrain people’s aspirations and hinder their achievement? Doing so can help people fulfill their potential and set them on a transformative life trajectory. To address this question, our research centers on people’s beliefs (“mindsets”)—about interest and passion, about opportunity, and about health and well-being. These beliefs serve as meaning frameworks that shape motivation, resilience, and achievement across contexts. Accordingly, we tend to focus on educational, work/organizational, and health contexts, where motivation is highly consequential.
Much of our current research leverages our findings on mindsets to design large-scale “wise” interventions, tested in randomized controlled field experiments, that promote interest, passion, innovation, resilience, and achievement.
The greater purpose of this research is to empower people, particularly those facing disadvantages, to thrive in their goal pursuits. While recognizing structural inequalities, it aims to reduce gaps in achievement and opportunity and to increase diversity and inclusiveness.