WILLEMSTAD - In Curaçao, we regularly hear broad statements such as: "our mindset needs to change", without any further elaboration or specification. To understand exactly what kind of mindset dominates our culture and learn how to transform people’s mindsets into those of resilience, The Think To Do Institute (T2DI) has conducted a nation-wide research on mindset, and how mindset influences the resiliency of our population. Between the period March 2020 up and until December 2020, a total of 1021 people filled in the survey.
The key concepts of interest in the research are growth versus fixed mindset, and abundance versus scarcity mindset. Based on their survey answers, the respondents were sorted into four mindset categories: Fixed scarcity, Growth scarcity, Fixed abundance and Growth abundance.
The main research question was:
“To what extent do the different mindset categories predict positive life outcome metrics?”
The assumption was that individuals with a growth and abundance mindset would score the highest and that individuals with a fixed and scarcity mindset would score the lowest. Furthermore, based on the distribution, the resilience or lack of resilience of the society can be determined.
An easy way to show the initial findings is in a simple box plot (figure 1). This image highlights that the ‘Growth abundance’ category has the highest positive outcome score, followed by the ‘Fixed abundance’ category. The ‘Fixed scarcity’ category has the lowest outcome score. The ‘Growth scarcity’ category has the second lowest outcome score.
Figure 1. Outcomes per mindset category
Thus, we can conclude from the available data that the hypothesis is correct: People that have an abundant and growth mindset experience higher positive life outcomes. The findings of this study provide valuable insights about the state of our nation’s mindset and how this affects individual as well as collective quality of life outcomes. This finding is the first of the findings that T2DI will share related to mindset and resilience. More findings will be shared, along with specific recommendations, in the coming months.
