“We were surprised when we saw those differences emerge in the smaller condition,” Howe told me. “One reason for it might be that if someone rejects you without even getting to know you first, you might wonder if there is some quality about you that is so obviously undesirable that a virtual stranger would say, ‘No, no thanks, not interested.’”

Because these findings were correlational(相關(guān)的), Howe and Dweck conducted a fifth study to try to establish causality(因果關(guān)系). They primed 121 subjects to adopt a certain mindset before thinking about a hypothetical rejection: One group read articles describing how personality traits seem set in stone after young adulthood (i.e., “3 Critical Factors That Shape Who You Are”); the second group read about how these traits can be developed anytime (“3 Key Ways to Shape Who You Are”).

You can probably guess the results. People induced(引導(dǎo)) to adopt fixed mindsets were more concerned that the fake rejection would change how they and others saw themselves. They reported feeling worse about themselves, and they thought rejection would happen again. This, the researchers say, suggests causal evidence that even being exposed to the idea that personality traits are fixed can make it harder for people to recover from rejection.

Two other things are worth noting from the study. First, perhaps surprisingly, no consistent gender effects appeared throughout the experiments. Second, life satisfaction was uncorrelated with implicit theories and self-esteem, suggesting that people with a more fixed mindset are not generally more discontent(不滿意的;不滿足的=unsatisfactory) than others.

Of course, romantic rejection is very different from other kinds of rejection, but could these findings still apply to rejections we experience in our careers and social circles? Howe said they did think the findings could generalize(普遍化) more broadly, perhaps in other types of social relationships (with friends and family, for example) and in contexts that aren’t interpersonal (academic or career failures), but they’d have to conduct actual studies in those domains to know for sure.

“Imagine you’re rejected for a job that you’re really interested in. You might start asking yourself, ‘What skills do I lack? What things don’t make me a good employee? I thought I was well suited for this position, but I guess I was wrong. What does this say about me?’” Howe said. “I think it could play out similarly, but we’d have to do work to confirm that.”

It also isn’t clear whether people always have the same mindset. Howe said that some research shows it can be domain-specific — so you might have a fixed theory of intelligence and a growth theory about personality. (豪認(rèn)為，一些研究表明思維模式可能是場景決定的--因此，就智力而言，你可能持固定理論，就個性而言，你可能持成長理論。) Researchers are still studying how we develop these mindsets.

But the important thing to remember is that it seems like people can change how they think about personality traits, as the fifth study attests to(證實 =confirm, testify). “I think a lot of us have a gut instinct to question ourselves in the face of rejection,” Howe said, “but we’ll be better off pausing and taking a moment to think about what happened that wasn’t about us. What were the situational factors that might have led to this outcome? What was going on with the timing or with the other person?” (豪說：“我認(rèn)為面臨被拒絕時，許多人的第一直覺就是懷疑自己，然而，如果我們停下來稍微想一想發(fā)生的事情跟我們是誰無關(guān)會更好。導(dǎo)致這種解決的環(huán)境因素有哪些?是不是時機(jī)或者別人有問題?)

Vocabulary

for the most part 就絕大多數(shù)而言

resilient 有彈性的

differentiate 區(qū)分

mechanism 機(jī)制

implicit 隱含的

malleable 可以鍛造的;可以改變的

chronically 長期地

stall 避免;拖延

assess 評估;評價

impact 沖擊力;影響力

alter 改變

endorse 同意;簽署

reminisce 回憶

pessimistic 悲觀的

scenario 場合;場景

correlational 互為相關(guān)的

causality 因果關(guān)系

induce 引導(dǎo);誘使

discontent 不滿足的

generalize 使泛化;歸納

attest to... 證實

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