MindCraft Challenges

Hope training has been used with people facing big obstacles (like the cancer patients linked in the ‘Read More’ section). Hope training involves learning to set goals, to imagine pathways, and to talk to yourself about how to accomplish those goals.

Challenge: Hope training can also help people overcome everyday obstacles. On mindcraftchallenge.com, you will find a set of diary prompts for a week-long home hope training challenge. You can track your hopeful progress using the hope scale we discussed in class: https://cognopod.com/sketch/HOPE.

Hope Training Prompts:
https://mindcraftchallenge.com/RESOURCES/HOPE-TRAINING-WORKSHEET.docx

Read More
Hope training diary prompts
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110383
Hope training helps cancer patients
https://doi.org/10.1177/2377960819844381

Acting as an agent can make a big difference. However, people don’t always think about whether they can be agents. College classrooms are one place where this often happens—students don’t always realize that they can actively improve their classes. Erika Patall and her colleagues demonstrated that student motivation improves when they learn to act as agents.

Challenge: Read the short version of Patall’s training course (linked below). Make sure that you complete the letter-writing activity at the end. Try to apply what you learn about agency and motivation in one of your classes. Did your classroom experience change?

Training: https://mindcraftchallenge.com/RESOURCES/make-any-class-better.pdf

Read More
Student agency to change motivation
https://doi.org/10.1037/edu0000614
Student engagement improves motivation
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0034934
Student actions create supportive classrooms
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0032690

One way that we think about and explain our identity is by telling our life story. When the most important events in our lives and the turning points (where the story of a life could have changed completely) are linked to meaning-making (understanding some aspect of one’s self), identity formation moves toward identity achievement.

One way to engage in meaning-making is through counterfactual thinking-imagining other paths that your life could have taken. Choose some aspect of your life right now (where you go to school, your major, the church you attend, your hobbies). Think about how you ended up at this point in your life.  Looking back, list (write about) the broad sequence of things that led to you being where you are. 

Next, write about all the ways things could have turned out differently. Did counterfactual thinking increase the feeling that your life is meaningful?

Read More
The Psychology of Life Stories
https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.5.2.100
Life Stories and Meaning-Making
https://doi.org/10.1037/0012-1649.42.4.714
Counterfactual Thinking and Meaning-Making
https://doi.org/10.1037/a0017905
A Group Process for Reducing Identity Distress
https://doi.org/10.1080/15283488.2014.944696

John Gottman reports that improving friendship between romantic partners reduces negative interactions during conflict. Gottman teaches improving friendship as part of his marriage education program with multiple exercises, but there are simple everyday actions that people can take to build their friendships.

Challenge: Brenda O’Connell and her colleagues demonstrated that intentional gratitude and kindness towards friends can improve relationship quality. They asked people to either “Write and deliver a positive message (email, text, face-to-face) to someone in your social network (friend, family, colleague), thanking or praising them for something you are grateful for” or to engage in acts of kindness for someone in their social network at least 3 or 4 times in a week. Try this for yourself and see if those relationships improve.

Read More
Gottman’s assessment of interventions
https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327698jfc0503_1
O’Connell’s friendship-building study
https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2015.1037860

Challenge: Follow Rachel Baumsteiger’s prosocial intervention steps:

• Learn about prosociality (we did this in class)>
• Elevation—Watch a prosocial story from ESPN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaXVk5GBx-s
• Spend at least a minute each writing about:
• People you admire
• How you would change the world if you could
• 3-5 values (examples: courage, independence, discipline) that are meaningful to you
• Your imagined self in five years in your best possible future—describe what your life would be like
• A plan for how you could help others more over the next week
• Implement your plan. Take notes at the end of each day about how your prosocial actions impacted others. Were you more prosocial?

Read More
A Prosocial Elevation Intervention
https://doi.org/10.1080/01973533.2019.1639507
Elevation increases tedious helping
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797609359882
Elevation makes violence less enjoyable
https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-1105/a000214