A Growth Mindset Intervention: Enhancing Students’ Entrepreneurial Self-Efficacy and Career Development

TLDR

Growth mindset interventions have not yet been applied to entrepreneurship. The study developed and tested a growth mindset intervention to boost students’ entrepreneurial self‑efficacy and examine its effect on career development, and discusses theoretical implications, limitations, and future directions. A randomized controlled trial with 238 undergraduates in an entrepreneurship class compared a growth mindset intervention to an attention‑matched control. Students in the growth mindset group reported higher entrepreneurial self‑efficacy and task persistence, indirectly improved academic and career interest via self‑efficacy, but showed no direct or indirect effect on classroom assignment performance, and gender or prior experience did not moderate outcomes.

Abstract

Despite mounting interest in growth mindset interventions, this approach has yet to be applied to the domain of entrepreneurship. In the present research, we developed and tested if a growth mindset intervention could be leveraged to promote students’ entrepreneurial self-efficacy and if this, in turn, predicted career development (i.e., academic interest, career interest, task persistence, and academic performance). We report on our findings, from an Open Science Framework (OSF) preregistered study, that is a randomized controlled trial implementing a growth mindset intervention. We randomly assigned undergraduate students ( N = 238) in an introduction to entrepreneurship class to either the growth mindset intervention or to a knowledge-based attention-matched control. Students in the growth mindset intervention, relative to the control, reported greater entrepreneurial self-efficacy and task persistence on their main class project. The intervention also indirectly improved academic and career interest via entrepreneurial self-efficacy. However, the intervention failed to directly or indirectly impact performance on a classroom assignment. Additionally, and somewhat surprisingly, gender and past experience in the field failed to moderate any effects of the intervention on outcomes. Theoretical implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.