The hallways of high school often feel like battlegrounds—with potential social stressors lurking around every corner. When teens get ditched by their best friends or teased for their looks, the sharp pain of exclusion feels like it will last forever. But what if we could help teens take a different perspective?
In a recent study, psychologists at the University of Texas at Austin and the University of Rochester set out to see if a small shift in mindset could reduce teenagers’ social stress. And they found that with a simple, half-hour training, they could help teens cope better, keep their bodies calmer, and even do better in school.
They recruited 60 high school students for an initial experiment, half of whom learned to cultivate a “growth mindset.” Students were taught that getting excluded doesn’t mean they have an inherent personal deficit—no one is doomed to shame and exclusion—nor are those who do the excluding inherently bad people. Instead, everyone is complicated and capable of change. (A growth mindset contrasts with a fixed mindset, where you believe people are born with certain traits, such as intelligence or popularity, and they can’t be improved.) This group of students also read scientific evidence and testimonies from older peers that supported a growth mindset.
[For more of this story, written by Sarah Wheeler, go to http://www.mindful.org/can-cha...elp-teens-de-stress/]
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