Publications (2)0 Total impact
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Article: The nonconscious road to perceptions of performance: Achievement priming augments outcome expectancies and experienced self-agency
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ABSTRACT: Three experiments explored the effects of priming the achievement concept on the expectation of performance outcomes and experiences of self-agency over outcomes in a task in which performance outcomes were dependent on chance. Experiment 1 and 2 showed that achievement priming produced expectations of higher (more successful) outcomes prior to working on the task, regardless of whether priming was subliminal (nonconscious) or supraliminal (conscious) and that this effect could not be attributed to subjective motivation to perform well. Experiment 3 revealed that subliminal achievement priming decreased participants’ experienced self-agency when outcome feedback was low, but increased self-agency when it was high. Together, these results suggest that activating achievement concepts outside of awareness spontaneously triggers expectations of higher task outcomes, which increases or decreases self-agency depending on whether there is a match or mismatch with observed outcomes. Implications for the literature on achievement-priming effects on behavior are discussed.Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. -
Article: Implicit theories and IQ test performance: A sequential mediational analysis
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ABSTRACT: The mediational role of worry and practice time in explaining the relationship between implicit theories of ability and performance was examined in two studies. It was hypothesized that holding an implicit theory of ability as fixed and unchangeable would impair test performance. Worry and time invested in practicing prior to taking a test were predicted to mediate the direct effect of implicit theories on performance. These predictions were supported, using both correlational (Study 1) and experimental (Study 2) methods. The results also suggest that entity beliefs lead to decreased practice and performance even when initial failure is not encountered. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
