Background
What contributes to your well-being? When you think about it there are probably several things that lead to you feeling happier. Society today is more hectic than ever before, and this can be seen with younger people more and more. Upper secondary students feel more stress when it comes to school as well as more school tiredness. Moreover, the decisions they make in upper secondary school can affect for example how easy it will be when applying for further studies.
The Study with Strength intervention was built based on research done within positive psychology with the goal to give students tools to increase their well-being, stress management and confidence in their own abilities. The students were encouraged to think about their strengths and values as well as taught how to relax and become more consciously present in themselves and in their studies.
My thesis was written within this project, and I was interested in studying if the intervention can improve students’ subjective well-being and cultivate a growth mindset
Methods
My study adopted a qualitative approach and was based on semi-structured interviews of six students. My interview questions were divided into two categories, one focusing on subjective well-being and the other on the students’ mindset.
Results
The results, when it comes to subjective well-being, show that all the students felt that their conscious presence had improved and that this did affect their well-being positively. When it comes to negative thoughts and feelings all the students noticed a change and dealt with negative feelings in a better way. With regards to strengths all participants said that finding out their strengths had a positive effect on their well-being. Several students also said that knowing their strengths has given them better self-confidence. Finally, several students also noticed a positive change in their relationships after the intervention.
I was also interested in finding out if an intervention in positive psychology could also affect the mindset towards a growth mindset. My results show that when it comes to the students’ belief in themselves and ability to develop the students felt that they saw themselves differently after the intervention and half of the students attributed this to finding their strengths. With regards to how the students viewed challenges after the intervention four felt that they had a more positive view on challenges and feared them less. When looking at setbacks all the students said that they had a more positive view and were less scared to fail. All the students had learnt methods on how to manage their stress better and almost all of them had started using these methods. The ones who had started to use the methods said that they now perceived their stress in a more positive way and felt that they could manage it better.
My research shows that an intervention in positive psychology can improve subjective well-being and develop a growth mindset. The interesting question for the future would be to see if these effect can be seen long-term.
Miivi Selin-Patel
“Can positive psychology cultivate a growth mindset?” – A study in subjective well-being and mindset of upper secondary students