Acknowledgments We thank Dr. Yu, Dr. Bateman, and Professor Szabo for allowing us to conduct this study during their class time. We especially thank the students for their participation and Dr. Yu for her guidance and data analysis assistance. Many thanks to Tammy Elliott for help with poster layout and printing. Introduction In various real life situations, individuals are encouraged with positive, and sometimes negative, instructions before performing a task. This often occurs in educational settings: for example, right before a teacher distributes a test to the class. Foos (1992) examined the effect of student expectations of test difficulty on performance. Students expecting a more difficult test outperformed those who expected an easier test. The present study investigates whether inducing a mindset of encouragement or discouragement via instructions affects accuracy on the task as well as the individual’s confidence in their ability to perform well in the presented task. Previous studies focused on recall and traditional testing methods as the task, but this study used optical illusions and brainteasers. Mindset was manipulated through instructions read by participants prior to the task. We hypothesized that students given positive encouragement would perform better on the task and have higher confidence ratings than those given discouragement or given nothing at all. Method Discussion Our hypothesis was not supported. There is no statistically significant difference in test performance between conditions. Differences in confidence and perceived test difficulty were also not statistically significant, with the test difficulty rating coming closest to statistical significance (p =.116). Some possible explanations for this outcome: - The manipulation may not have been strong enough to have an effect. The difference in test difficulty ratings between the groups was not statistically significant, indicating that participants’ explicit ratings of test difficulty were not affected by the manipulation. However, the effect could exist implicitly. - The manipulation may have worked, but the nature of the effect may differ across individuals. Positive encouragement could reduce anxiety and increase confidence in some people but increase anxiety and create more pressure to live up to expectations in others. Similarly, negative instructions might lead some to try harder and others to give up. -The manipulation may not affect participants’ performance on the specific tasks we used. This is of particular interest given previous findings that expectations can influence performance on other types of tasks. For future studies, a stronger, more explicit manipulation is suggested. Encouragement and Its Effects on Students’ Mindsets and Test Taking Abilities Ijeoma Anyanwu, Lizzie Butler, Shameka Jennings Department of Psychology, Sewanee: The University of the South, Sewanee, Tennessee References Foos, P.W. (1992). Test performance as a function of expected form and difficulty. Journal of Experimental Education, 60(3), Results Participants 66 participants from Sewanee: The University of the South. 21 males, 45 females Materials Instructions Positive Condition: The positive group’s instructions said, “Most people figure out the right answers. You will find it easy. ” Negative Condition: The negative group’s written instructions said, “Most people do not figure out the right answers. You will find it difficult. ” Neutral Condition: The neutral group was given only the basic instructions that the other groups were also given without any encouragement. Optical Illusions 6 illusions. See example in Figure 1. Brain Teasers 6 questions. See example in Figure 2. Confidence Survey 5 Likert scale questions to assess test difficulty and participant confidence. 2 questions to assess familiarity with test questions. 2 demographic questions Procedure Participants were randomly assigned to conditions within each of the three psychology classes that participated. Participants who signed the informed consent forms were walked through the packet, first reading the instructions, then completing the test, and finally filling out the confidence survey. Participants were debriefed at the end of the study. For the optical illusions, participants were asked to choose which of the three illusions represented equality of lines (in length, size, or potential to line up). Brain teasers were a variety of short and long situations that require either a one word answer or explanation. Figure 1 Figure 2 Two fathers and two sons go fishing. Each of them catches one fish. So why do they bring home only three fish?