Mindsets about stress influence how individuals expect, explain, and are motivated when experiencing stress.

“So mindsets are an assumption that you make about a domain. So take stress, for example. The nature of stress. What's your sort of core belief about that? And mindsets that we've studied about stress, or do you view stresses enhancing good for you, or do you view it as debilitating and bad for you? Those mindsets, those core beliefs, orient our thinking, they change what we expect will happen to us when we're stressed, how we explain the occurrences that happen or unfold when we're stressed, and also change our motivation for what we engage in when we're stressed.”