David S. Yeager

David Yeager is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he co-directs the Texas Behavioral Science and Policy Institute. He is a principal investigator of the National Study of Learning Mindsets and the Texas Mindset Initiative. 

Yeager co-founded two major scholarly networks: the Mindset Scholars Network (now the Student Experience Research Network) and the College Transition Collaborative. His research examines the causes of and solutions to adolescent health problems, such as bullying, depression, academic achievement, cheating, trust, or healthy eating. He often focuses on adolescent transitions—the transition to middle school, the transition to high school, or the transition to college—as a place where there is great opportunity (and risk) for young people’s trajectories. 

Yeager is a Jacobs Foundation Advanced Research Fellow, and has been a William T. Grant Foundation Scholar, a residential Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS), and a Fellow at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. He is a member of the Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Global Working Group at the University of Chicago. He chaired and co-hosted a national summit on mindset interventions at the White House Office for Science and Technology Policy. His work has been covered in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Scientific American, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, and more.

Formerly, Yeager was a middle school English teacher in Tulsa, Oklahoma. He holds a PhD and MA from Stanford University, and a BA and MEd from the University of Notre Dame.