Social-evaluative stressors—experiences in which people feel they could be judged negatively—pose a major threat to adolescent mental health^1,2,3 and can cause young people to disengage from stressful pursuits, resulting in missed opportunities to acquire valuable skills. Here we show that replicable benefits for the stress responses of adolescents can be achieved with a short (around 30-min), scalable 'synergistic mindsets' intervention. This intervention, which is a self-administered online training module, synergistically targets both growth mindsets⁴ (the idea that intelligence can be developed) and stress-can-be-enhancing mindsets⁵ (the idea that one’s physiological stress response can fuel optimal performance). In six double-blind, randomized, controlled experiments that were conducted with secondary and post-secondary students in the United States, the synergistic mindsets intervention improved stress-related cognitions (study 1, n = 2,717; study 2, n = 755), cardiovascular reactivity (study 3, n = 160; study 4, n = 200), daily cortisol levels (study 5, n = 118 students, n = 1,213 observations), psychological well-being (studies 4 and 5), academic success (study 5) and anxiety symptoms during the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns (study 6, n = 341). Heterogeneity analyses (studies 3, 5 and 6) and a four-cell experiment (study 4) showed that the benefits of the intervention depended on addressing both mindsets—growth and stress—synergistically. Confidence in these conclusions comes from a conservative, Bayesian machine-learning statistical method for detecting heterogeneous effects⁶. Thus, our research has identified a treatment for adolescent stress that could, in principle, be scaled nationally at low cost.

社会评价压力源（人们感觉自己可能受到负面评价的经历）对青少年心理健康构成重大威胁^1,2,3 ，并可能导致年轻人摆脱有压力的追求，从而错失获得宝贵技能的机会。在这里，我们表明，通过短期（约 30 分钟）、可扩展的“协同心态”干预，可以实现对青少年压力反应的可复制益处。这种干预措施是一个自我管理的在线培训模块，协同针对成长心态⁴ （智力可以发展的想法）和压力可以增强的心态⁵ （一个人的生理压力反应可以促进最佳表现的想法） ）。在对美国中学生和大专学生进行的六项双盲、随机、对照实验中，协同心态干预改善了与压力相关的认知（研究 1， n = 2,717；研究 2， n = 755），心血管反应性（研究 3， n = 160；研究 4， n = 200）、每日皮质醇水平（研究 5， n = 118 名学生， n = 1,213 次观察）、心理健康（研究 4 和 5）、学业成功（研究 5）和 2020 年 COVID-19 封锁期间的焦虑症状（研究 6， n = 341）。异质性分析（研究 3、5 和 6）和四细胞实验（研究 4）表明，干预的好处取决于协同解决两种心态（成长和压力）。这些结论的可信度来自于用于检测异质效应的保守的贝叶斯机器学习统计方法⁶ 。 因此，我们的研究找到了一种治疗青少年压力的方法，原则上可以在全国范围内以低成本推广。