The second edition of my work psychology textbook has just been published and it marks the very rewarding end of months of hard work.
Writing a textbook is a challenge like no other. It’s not just the sheer number of words or the amount of information that needs to be read, processed and explained in a way that (hopefully) someone else will understand. It's also a challenge of self-motivation, especially over a year when the COVID-19 pandemic has given us plenty of other challenges to normal life.
Given that I have a whole chapter about motivation for work in the textbook, I should be able to offer some insights into why I took on this challenge. It probably won’t surprise you to learn that psychologists have approached this question from several different angles. One of the interesting areas of research is the growth mindset: the belief that our personal characteristics and abilities can be developed. If we believe we can improve, we’re more likely to rise to a challenge and thrive under difficulty. If we have a fixed mindset, on the other hand, we don’t think we can improve and are more likely to avoid a challenge.
In a recent article summarising the research on growth mindsets, the authors ask a very interesting question: “Why should the idea that students can develop their abilities be controversial?” They then show that there is a large body of evidence to show that we can indeed develop in many ways and that we can even develop a growth mindset itself.
Certainly to me, the idea of a growth mindset is not controversial. In fact, the belief that we can all develop ourselves is another of the reasons that I loved the challenge of writing this new edition. It’s my hope that it will be even better at helping students to use work psychology to improve their own abilities and ultimately to build better workplaces.
Comments