“We conclude that apparent effects of growth mindset interventions on academic achievement are likely attributable to inadequate study design, reporting flaws, and bias.”
Trey Causey
In another sense, my conclusion is positive on mindset interventions in that, given that any average effects will be small, the lack of statistically significant average effects in small or even moderately-large studies does not have to imply that mindset interventions don’t work; it just says that they only work in some settings, and individual effects will mostly be small.
Unfortunately “statistically significant” is well-known to be abused as a proxy for “true”, even by those who know better (don’t get me started on “stat sig samples”) but I think the opposite is true as well. No significant effect is not the same thing as “no effect exists”.
I honestly have no idea how to hold two thoughts in my mind at the same time, and yet I do: