An increasing amount of research has indicated that the effectiveness of growth mindset (GM) intervention is sensitive to population characteristics. However, few studies have investigated whether GM interventions can be leveraged to promote academic performance among non-westerners such as Chinese students. Attuning to the Chinese background, we developed an extended GM intervention by incorporating both the malleability of intelligence and that of emotion. We examined the effect of the intervention in 11 schools across 48 classes in China and found that the intervention significantly improved students’ maths achievement with intrinsic motivation playing a partial mediating role. Different from the mechanism in the Western, the implicit theories of emotion, rather than implicit theories of intelligence, are more likely to play a role in the effects of the GM intervention on intrinsic motivation and maths achievement. Future studies are required for directly examining the role of implicit theories of emotion.

As psychological research progresses, the issue of concept overlap becomes increasing evident, adding to participant burden and complicating data interpretation. This study introduces an Embedding-based Semantic Analysis Approach (ESAA) for detecting redundancy in psychological concepts, which are operationalized through their respective scales, using natural language processing techniques. The ESAA utilizes OpenAI’s text-embedding-3-large model to generate high-dimensional semantic vectors (i.e., embeddings) of scale items and applies hierarchical clustering to group semantically similar items, revealing potential redundancy. Three preliminary experiments evaluated the ESAA’s ability to (1) identify semantically similar items, (2) differentiate semantically distinct items, and (3) uncover overlap between scales of concepts known for redundancy issues. Additionally, comparative analyses assessed the ESAA’s robustness and incremental validity against the advanced chatbots based on GPT-4. The results demonstrated that the ESAA consistently produced stable outcomes and outperformed all evaluated chatbots. As an objective approach for analyzing relationships between concepts operationalized as scales, the ESAA holds promise for advancing research on theory refinement and scale optimization.

Growth mindset research has received global attention. However, the psychological antecedents of growth mindset remain under-explored. We propose that autonomous orientation would foster growth mindset, whereas controlled and impersonal orientations would impede it. We found support for this proposition in two studies. In a laboratory experiment (Study 1), Chinese sixth-graders primed with the autonomous orientation scored significantly higher on growth-mindset measures than those in the control group, whereas students primed with the controlled and impersonal orientations scored significantly lower. Furthermore, in a classroom intervention experiment (Study 2), using a newly designed autonomy orientation intervention, students in the treatment group showed stronger growth mindset than those in the control group, and the effect lasted for at least three months. Overall, our findings suggest that autonomy orientation is an antecedent of growth mindset and can be used to improve growth mindset among adolescents.

Meaning in life contributes to psychological well-being. However, few studies have adopted an implicit theory approach to studying people's beliefs about the malleability of meaning in life. We propose the growth mindset of meaning in life (GMML) as the belief that meaning in life can be developed. In Study 1, we construct the Mindset of Meaning in Life Scale (MMLS) to measure GMML and demonstrate that GMML is distinct from growth mindset of intelligence and meaning in life. As predicted, GMML is positively associated with psychological well-being indicators, including life satisfaction and positive coping styles, and negatively correlated with ill-being measures such as depression and anxiety. In Study 2, tolerance of uncertainty was found to partially mediate the relationships between GMML and depression, anxiety, purpose in life, the presence of and search for meaning in life. Taken together, our findings suggest that GMML is a distinct construct relevant to individuals’ well-being and meaning in life.

Emotion has long been considered to distinguish humans from Artificial Intelligence (AI). Previously, AI's ability to interpret and express emotions was seen as mere text interpretation. In humans, emotions co-ordinate a suite of behavioral actions, e.g., under negative emotion being risk averse or under positive emotion being generous. So, we investigated such coordination to emotional cues in AI chatbots. We treated AI chatbots like human participants, prompting them with scenarios that prime positive emotions, negative emotions, or no emotions. Multiple OpenAI ChatGPT Plus accounts answered questions on investment decisions and prosocial tendencies. We found that ChatGPT-4 bots primed with positive emotions, negative emotions, and no emotions exhibited different risk-taking and prosocial actions. These effects were weaker among ChatGPT-3.5 bots. The ability to coordinate responses with emotional cues may have become stronger in large language models as they evolved. This highlights the potential of influencing AI using emotion and it suggests that complex AI possesses a necessary capacity for “having” emotion.

The JPRP Special Issue on Growth Mindset in Chinese Context was put together to address three questions. First, is the growth mindset less popular among the Chinese than Americans and Europeans? Second, is the growth mindset less relevant to human performance and psychological well-being in Chinese societies than in Western societies? Third, can the effectiveness of growth-mindset interventions in Chinese societies be enhanced, and if yes, how? In this editorial article, we review the research literature on growth mindset in the Chinese context. Our review focuses on articles published in the last five years (2019–2024). Most of these articles were published in English outlets. This review aims to situate the 13 articles included in the present issue in a broader theoretical background. The present editorial article consists of five sections: (1) the relative prevalence of the growth mindset in Chinese and Western societies; (2) evidence for the beneficial psychological and achievement effects of growth mindset in Chinese societies; (3) the supportive conditions for the development of a growth mindset; (4) the effectiveness of growth mindset interventions in Chinese societies; and (5C) future directions for growth mindset research in the Chinese context.