Beliefs about how much people can change their attributes influence cognitive, affective, and motivational responses to challenging situations. Most research on this topic has focused on academic contexts, but newer work suggests these types of beliefs may relate to clinical phenomena as well. Specifically, recent studies show that the belief that anxiety is changeable (the growth mindset of anxiety) relates to a preference for individual therapy versus medication and greater engagement in psychosocial treatments for anxiety disorders. A working model proposes that the growth mindset of anxiety promotes a motivation to engage in effortful strategies to experience and learn from uncomfortable emotions. However, all research to date on this construct has been correlational in nature. Therefore, the present investigation sought to examine the impact of a brief experimental manipulation promoting the growth mindset of anxiety. Study 1 was an online study and examined the causal impact of this belief on treatment preferences (therapy vs. medication), willingness to initiate in future treatment, and anticipated efficacy of such treatments. The intervention successfully increased growth mindset of anxiety endorsement, increased participants’ willingness to initiate future treatment, and increased expected efficacy at a trend level. It did not have an effect on treatment preference. Study 2 examined the impact of the mindset manipulation on electrophysiological correlates of emotion regulation. Baseline differences (before the intervention) between groups made comparisons difficult, but there was some evidence that those in the mindset condition were less reactive to negative stimuli overall after the intervention. Overall, the two studies suggest that the anxiety mindset can be induced and may have implications for treatment motivation and emotion regulation processes that deserve further study.
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