AUTHOR=Hancı Elçin , Ruijten Peter A. M. , Lacroix Joyca , IJsselsteijn Wijnand A. 

TITLE=The Impact of Mindset on Self-Tracking Experience

JOURNAL=Frontiers in Digital Health

VOLUME=Volume 3 - 2021

YEAR=2021

URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/digital-health/articles/10.3389/fdgth.2021.676742

DOI=10.3389/fdgth.2021.676742

ISSN=2673-253X

ABSTRACT=Self-tracking technologies aim to get a better understanding of ourselves through data, create self-awareness and facilitate healthy behavior change. Despite its promising objectives, very little is known about whether the implicit beliefs users may have about the changeability of their own behavior influences the way they experience self-tracking. These implicit beliefs about the permanence of the abilities is called mindset; someone with a fixed mindset perceives human qualities as fixed, while someone with a growth mindset perceives them as amenable to change and improvement through learning. This paper investigates the concept of mindset in the context of self-tracking and uses online survey data from individuals wearing a self-tracking device (N = 290) to explore the ways in which users with different mindsets experience self-tracking. A combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches indicates that implicit beliefs about the changeability of behavior influence the extent to which users are self-determined towards self-tracking use. Moreover, differences were found in how users perceive and respond to failure, and how self-judgmental vs. self-compassionate they are towards their own mistakes. Overall, considering that how users respond to the self-tracking data is one of the core dimensions of self-tracking, our results suggest that mindset is one of the important determinants in shaping the self-tracking experience. The paper concludes with presenting design considerations and directions for future research.