Todd Kashdan, Professor, Psychology, received $1,500,000 from the Chan Zuckerberg Institute to create and evaluate a 10-week program called GripTape that helps young people find their way in life.
As part of this effort, Kashdan and his collaborators will observe teenagers pursuing personally meaningful goals under the light mentorship of adults to better understand the psychology of curiosity, self-direction, and purpose, and how they operate as potential resiliency factors.
The researchers will examine the effectiveness of the program and the underlying mechanisms that account for positive outcomes in both the short-term and the longer term.
The researchers intend to clarify precisely why GripTape works, for whom, and what psychological and social factors optimize its impact.
Upon completion of the study, they plan to widely disseminate the lessons learned from GripTape to aid the efforts of other character strength initiatives for youth. They also plan to improve and expand the delivery of GripTape to a larger number of teenagers around the country.
Funding for this project began in November 2019 and will conclude in late November 2022.
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