Three families of
Psychological Processes

Psychologically Wise Interventions that Capitalize on the Need to Understand

Many interventions aim to help people interpret themselves and their circumstances in adaptive ways by capitalizing on the need to make sense of matters as best they can. These studies draw primarily on attribution theory, which assumes that people try to form rational impressions of the causes of their own and other people’s behavior (Weiner, 1985). They thus assume that people are responsive to information and experiences that suggest new ways of thinking. Because there is typically no single simple truth about subjective meanings, and because people’s views readily become self-fulfilling, this approach is less concerned with whether people’s interpretations are accurate in some objective sense than with facilitating reasonable perspectives that help people flourish (Abramson, Seligman, &Teasdale, 1978).

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People strive to develop reasonable understandings of themselves, other people, and the world around them, so as to understand and predict their own and other people’s behavior and to guide their behavior effectively (Heider, 1958). Initially researchers focused on how people make causal attributions about behavior, as documented in decades of research on attribution theory (Bem, 1972; Heider, 1944, 1958; Jones & Davis, 1965; Kelley, 1967; Weiner, 1985). Subsequent research has examined how people make sense of themselves (e.g., their identity) and the social world (e.g., their relationships) more generally (e.g., Miller, Brickman, & Bolen, 1975; Murray et al., 2006), and broadened the view of the kinds of information people use to draw these inferences, including features of the cultural context (Markus & Kitayama, 2010; Stephens et al., 2012). All approaches in this group, however, share the assumption that people often act like rational information processors—lay scientists trying to make sense of themselves and others as best they can. They also agree that there is often no single “truth” to be discovered, such as about one’s self-identity, ability in school, or how a romantic partner “really” feels. Instead, people do their best to draw inferences that are consistent with their experiences and the information available to them.

Sometimes the available information leads people to draw pejorative inferences. A 9th grader might reasonably infer, from the existence of “Gifted and Talented” programs, a corporate focus on “talent” (Murphy & Dweck, 2010), and praise like “You’re so smart!” (Gunderson et al., 2013; Haimovitz & Dweck, 2016; Mueller & Dweck, 1998), that intelligence is a fixed quality that cannot change. She might then conclude that a poor score on a first algebra test means she is “not good at math.” Cultural stereotypes also create specific risks or contingencies, and, thus, different perspectives for making sense of the same event (Steele, 1997). In many academic contexts, awareness of the possibility of race-based disrespect can lead Black students, as compared to White students, to consider very different causes of critical academic feedback, even when both are trying to form reasonable impressions of the world (Cohen, Steele, & Ross, 1999). In turn, pejorative inferences can lead to self-defeating cycles of behavior, such as failing to try hard in school (Blackwell et al., 2007; Valins & Nisbett, 1971; Wilson & Linville, 1982).

As these examples imply, meanings, including negative ones about both the self and social events, are not just “in the head” but typically are reasonable responses to the world as it presents itself to a person. A broadly important intervention strategy, then, is give people a new basis for drawing a more adaptive inference, interrupting the flow of ideas that become self-defeating from socio-cultural contexts into minds. There can be multiple potential points of entry to do so, such as by changing how a specific experience is presented to people (e.g., framing feedback from teachers in adaptive ways, Yeager, Purdie-Vaughns et al., 2014, Experiments 1 and 2), or by encouraging a new view of a class of experiences (e.g., teaching students to interpret feedback in general in adaptive ways, Yeager, Purdie-Vaughns et al., 2014, Experiment 3). One approach alters how the world presents itself to a person; the other alters people’s lens for making sense of an aspect of the world (see Figure 1C, middle panel).