What the Research Says About Confidence: teacher key

Feeling Good About Yourself, grade 11 edition, written for 11th grade. Studies of mindset, praise, kindness, gratitude and self-compassion show how self-esteem can grow. They also show where the evidence stops and what researchers still cannot prove.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. Why do studies like the gratitude-letter experiment not prove that letters cause happiness?
   • They ran for only a year
   • Such studies cannot prove cause and effect (answer)
   • They had too many adults
2. What did modest praise do for children with lower self-esteem in the virtual reality study?
   • Encouraged them to explore more (answer)
   • Made them stop trying
   • Raised the bar for next time
3. What did the Vancouver students who did kind acts gain in?
   • Hours of sleep
   • Test scores
   • How much classmates accepted them (answer)
4. What did the national growth mindset lesson change for lower-achieving students?
   • Their friends changed
   • Their grades rose (answer)
   • Their sleep improved
5. In this passage, what does causal direction mean?
   • Which thing causes the other (answer)
   • How far a wave travels
   • How loud praise is

Words

• mindset: way of thinking
• narcissism: too much self-love
• longitudinal: over time
• resilience: bouncing back
• causal: cause-and-effect