被拒绝后，人们的反应是什么?拒绝对人的未来有何影响?不同思维模式(mindset)的人有很大差异。总体来说，固定思维模式(fixed mind-set)的人容易心生悲观，而成长型思维模式(growth mind-set)的人会更积极。听起来很厉害的样子，一起来看今天的雅思课外读物分享：
Everyone knows what rejection feels like. It’s a universal (and universally disliked) experience, but it’s one that we each experience differently. For the most part(就绝大多数而言=in most cases), people are pretty good at moving on with their lives — even better than they might guess. Sometimes, though, getting rejected hurts more than we expect, especially if our immediate response is to become self-critical.
So what makes one person more resilient(有弹性的，灵活的, =flexible) than another in the face of rejection?
This is a popular topic in psychology, and researchers have investigated many contributing factors, such as differing attachment styles, coping mechanisms, and levels of self-esteem. (这是一个心理学很常见的话题，研究人员已经探讨了许多相关的因素，比如不同的情感风格、应对机制和自信程度等。)But Lauren Howe, a doctoral student in social psychology at Stanford, wanted to understand why some people change how they see themselves after a rejection — and how this tendency differentiates(区分=distinguish) who recovers over time and who continues to suffer.
She learned that her professor, the psychologist Carol Dweck, had also been thinking about it, and the two began exploring the psychological mechanisms(机制) that make people more likely to link rejection to the self, effectively making it worse.
Dweck is best known for her work on implicit personality theory(内隐人格理论), the idea that people have growth mindsets (i.e., they believe personality traits are malleable[可塑造的=flexible, changeable]) or fixed mindsets (personality traits don’t change) and that these beliefs shape how people approach and make sense of their social world. Her previous research has found that people with fixed mindsets (also called entity theorists) chronically(长期地=constantly, always) judge themselves and tend to see their outcomes as evidence of who they are and what they’re capable of. (她在之前的研究中发现，固定思维模式的人不断评价自己，而且倾向于将事情的结果看作他们身份和能力的证明。)So, for example, getting a bad grade on a test leads them to think they’re not smart. People with growth mindsets (incremental theorists) see outcomes not as evidence of who they are but as evidence of what they could improve in the future and what challenges they could overcome.
Howe and Dweck conducted a series of studies to see whether the same idea holds when people are rejected. Focusing on romantic rejection, which can be especially potent(有力的=strong; powerful) in threatening the self, they predicted that those with fixed mindsets would take rejection as proof that they are flawed or undesirable. They predicted these people would start to question who they are and carry this emotional baggage with them into the future, stalling(阻止;拖延=prevent; delay) their recovery. Growth mindset people, the researchers guessed, wouldn’t see the experience as reflective of their worth. The results were recently published in the journal Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.
In the first study, they recruited 194 participants on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The researchers assessed(评估;评价=judge; evaluate; appraise) people’s mindsets by noting how much they agreed with statements such as ”Everyone, no matter who they are, can significantly change their basic characteristics” and “The kind of person you are is something very basic about you, and it can’t be changed much.” The researchers used a continuous scale(连续的级阶) in all the studies so they wouldn’t separate people into two groups based on their beliefs. Across all the studies, there were some who agreed more with incremental views and some who agreed more with entity views.
The researchers then asked people to recall a painful romantic rejection and respond to a series of statements about the experience and its impact(冲击力;影响力=effect, influence). They controlled for how long ago the rejection happened and how severe it was, as well as participants’ current relationship status.
They found that rejection made participants with more of a fixed mindset more likely to worry that there is something wrong with them. Compared to people with more of a growth mindset, they experienced more negative emotions, such as shame, embarrassment, anger, and frustration.(与成长型思维模式的人相比，这些人有更多负面情绪，比如羞愧、尴尬、愤怒和绝望等。) They also agreed more strongly that talking about the past would harm new relationships — even though, on average, people were thinking about rejections that had happened five years ago.
The researchers conducted a second study to better measure whether rejection actually altered(改变=change, modify) how fixed mindset people see themselves. They measured how people felt when looking back (“I feel kind of bad about myself when I think about being rejected by this person”; “It sometimes upsets me to be reminded of this person”) and whether people feared it happening again (“Deep down, I sometimes worry that I might never find someone who really loves me”; “I put up walls to protect myself in new relationships”).
Just as with the first study, they found that people who endorsed(同意，批准，支持=agree, approve, consent, support) more of a fixed mindset felt worse, both generally and about themselves specifically, after being rejected. Stronger beliefs about personality being fixed also predicted more fear about being rejected again and greater distress when reminiscing(回忆=remember, recall, look back). These people typically didn’t take positive lessons away from the experience; they simply wished it had never happened.
A third study included an open-ended essay question: “What did you take away from this rejection?” The researchers found that people with fixed mindsets used a more negative tone in their responses and were more pessimistic(悲观的) about future relationships.
Each of the experiments raised the question of whether these effects appear only in memorable cases, so Howe and Dweck conducted another study to rule that out. They had participants respond to one of two hypotheticals(假设), a seemingly smaller rejection and a more significant one. One group was told to imagine how they would respond if they met someone at a party, felt a “spark,” and then later overheard the person saying that they weren’t interested. (Ouch.) The other group had to imagine a significant other of several years leaving them out of the blue after a fight. (Bigger ouch.)
The researchers found that while people generally responded more negatively to the larger rejection, people with fixed mindsets responded to both scenarios(场景=scene) more severely than people with growth mindsets.
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