Chater & Loewenstein (C&L) argue that behavioral scientists have under-appreciated the role of the context in social change. On that we agree. But this is hardly an original point. When C&L say “the real problem lies not in human fallibility, but in institutions, laws and regulations” (target article, sect. 3, para. 4) they are reiterating 100 years of sociology (which they call the “future” of behavioral economics). They are also making a case for 80-year-old theoretical principles from Kurt Lewin, who founded the tradition they critique (yet do not cite). It is a problem that C&L do not wrestle with the intellectual histories that directly address the relationship between persons and situations in social change (e.g., Bronfenbrenner, Reference Bronfenbrenner and Vasta1992; Coleman, Reference Coleman1966, Reference Coleman1994; Lewin, Reference Lewin1951; Markus & Kitayama, Reference Markus and Kitayama2010; Ross & Nisbett, Reference Ross and Nisbett1991; Walton & Wilson, Reference Walton and Wilson2018) because much of their article critiques a belief that nobody holds. Here we discuss the Lewinian perspective, and why cross-disciplinary solutions coming from this tradition should be encouraged. To do so, we focus on the example of “wise” interventions (Walton & Wilson, Reference Walton and Wilson2018) that mitigate educational inequality.

C&L claim:

Really? In 2011, we wrote that wise interventions “are not silver bullets” (Yeager & Walton, Reference Yeager and Walton2011, p. 268), that these interventions “complement – and do not replace – traditional educational reforms,” and that it would be “absurd” to think of the former as a replacement for the latter (p. 293). Instead, we argued, wise “interventions may make the effects of high-quality educational reforms such as improved instruction or curricula more apparent” (p. 293). Why? Because clearing psychological obstacles like feelings of non-belonging or beliefs about fixed intelligence allows students to take advantage of the opportunities available to them.

This is not just our view. These claims were summarized well by Wilson's (Reference Wilson2006) earlier conclusion that “the fact that small, theory-based interventions can have large effects should not be taken as a criticism of large-scale attempts at social change. As important as people's construals of the environment are, often the environment itself needs changing” (p. 1252).

This theorizing developed from a long tradition showing that neither i-frame nor s-frame solutions, in isolation, have the desired effects. Students won't learn what they aren't taught. But they also won't learn, at least not as well as they could, if they doubt they belong in class. Construals such as of non-belonging are what wise interventions address. These interventions help students contend with psychological vulnerabilities that get in their way. Importantly, these vulnerabilities come from contexts – a fact that contradicts the authors’ false dichotomy. It is our fixed-mindset culture that provokes fixed-mindset thoughts. Praise for being “smart,” paternalistic sympathy (“It's okay. Not everyone can be good at math”), and “Gifted and Talented” programs all prompt a student who struggles to wonder, “Am I dumb at this?” and then avoid challenges (Leslie, Cimpian, Meyer, & Freeland, Reference Leslie, Cimpian, Meyer and Freeland2015; Mueller & Dweck, Reference Mueller and Dweck1998; Rattan, Good, & Dweck, Reference Rattan, Good and Dweck2012).

Nor do wise interventions work in a vacuum. These are not isolated “i-frame” solutions. C&L conflate a methodological choice (individual-level randomization) with a theoretical problem (locating problems in the person alone). Although individuals are treated, these treatments are fundamentally person × situation approaches. They address legacies of culture and depend for their effects on other “forces” in complex systems, in the tradition of Lewinian field theory (Walton & Wilson, Reference Walton and Wilson2018; Yeager & Walton, Reference Yeager and Walton2011).

The argument that we should reject an exclusively i-framed ideology is therefore a straw man. This caricature in turn leads to naïve recommendations to “change the situation.” This approach has been tried, often without success, for decades, as we have known since the 1966 publication of sociologist James Coleman's famous report on educational inequality to inform Johnson's (s-framed) Great Society reforms. The failure of solitary s-framed treatments is because inequality is both a behavioral and structural problem. See Table 1.

Table 1.

Conclusions from the Coleman report

We and other researchers have long been working to break down the false dichotomy between persons and situations. At least three key advances have emerged:

1. (1) Anticipate heterogeneity, not main effects: One should not expect strong main effects but variable effects in different contexts (for i-frame interventions) and among different individuals (for s-frame interventions) (Bryan, Tipton, & Yeager, Reference Bryan, Tipton and Yeager2021; Tipton et al., Reference Tipton, Bryan, Murray, McDaniel, Schneider and Yeagerin press; Walton et al., Reference Walton, Murphy, Logel, Yeager, Goyer, Brady and Krol2023; Yeager et al., Reference Yeager, Hanselman, Walton, Murray, Crosnoe, Muller and Dweck2019). C&L ignore this, claiming that small average effects for nudges indict the field. Yet the question should be: How and under what circumstances can effects be optimized? See Table 2.

2. (2) Study individual × context heterogeneity directly: Heterogeneity is what we should study (Bryan et al., Reference Bryan, Tipton and Yeager2021; Tipton et al., Reference Tipton, Bryan, Murray, McDaniel, Schneider and Yeagerin press), and this is a focus of contemporary research on wise interventions. See Table 2. Large-scale trials show the importance of “sustaining environments” (Bailey, Duncan, Cunha, Foorman, & Yeager, Reference Bailey, Duncan, Cunha, Foorman and Yeager2020). This is because wise interventions seed ways of thinking. But the soil has to be fertile for that seed to take root. That is, people must find the proffered way of thinking legitimate and useful in their context to sustain it and use it to guide their interpretations of and response to ongoing experience (Walton & Yeager, Reference Walton and Yeager2020).

3. (3) Create team-science infrastructure to integrate i- and s-frame solutions: It is false that the i-frame “blinds” behavioral scientists to s-frame solutions. The Lewinian tradition has always considered both the individual and the context. What, then, explains the relative abundance of i-frame experiments? We think it is partially because randomizing contexts (e.g., classrooms, schools) are far more difficult (costly, slow) than individuals. So, let's take a page from Nudge: Make it cheap and easy. Rather than pointing fingers, let's build public, shared infrastructure to support teams to systematically explore the roles of contexts and individuals navigating these contexts. Already, wise interventions have helped show what aspects of context to shift. See Table 2. We look forward to future work that integrates persons and situations to promote positive, sustainable social change.

Table 2.

Advances that arise from considering the roles of persons and situations together