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Lay Theories of Personality: Cornerstones of Meaning in Social Cognition
Abstract
Lay theories (or ‘implicit theories’) are cornerstones for social cognition: people use lay theories to help them make sense of complex and ambiguous behavior. In this study, we describe recent research on the entity and incremental theories (the belief that personality is fixed or malleable). In so doing, we demonstrate that each theory does not act alone. Instead, each is associated with a set of allied beliefs, the sum total of which cohere into two distinct meaning systems. We present evidence that these meaning systems produce systematic differences in a range of fundamental social cognition processes, with important implications for the field’s understanding of trait/situation attribution, moral judgment, person memory, and stereotyping. We further argue that because meaning systems serve a central meaning-making function, people are motivated to believe that the meaning system they are using is effective and accurate. Accordingly, we present evidence that people exhibit processing distortions and compensatory mechanisms to minimize the impact of information that violates their meaning system. We discuss the implications of these findings for the field’s understanding of basic social cognition.
... In general, incremental theorists interpret behaviours in terms of psychological processes, whereas entity theorists see traits as key causes of behaviour (Molden & Dweck, 2006). The psychological process refers to emotional support, learning strategies and contextual factors, and traits to the nature of personality and levels of ability (Plaks et al., 2009;Rissanen et al., 2018;Yu et al., 2022). Among teaching practices aimed at motivating students, process-focused (vs trait-focused) pedagogy is reflected in facilitating a mastery-oriented (vs performance-oriented) atmosphere, fostering learning (vs performance) goals, praising courage and strategies (vs achievement), and giving emotional support (vs teaching according to student ability and achievement, see Plaks et al., 2009;Rissanen et al., 2018). ...
... The psychological process refers to emotional support, learning strategies and contextual factors, and traits to the nature of personality and levels of ability (Plaks et al., 2009;Rissanen et al., 2018;Yu et al., 2022). Among teaching practices aimed at motivating students, process-focused (vs trait-focused) pedagogy is reflected in facilitating a mastery-oriented (vs performance-oriented) atmosphere, fostering learning (vs performance) goals, praising courage and strategies (vs achievement), and giving emotional support (vs teaching according to student ability and achievement, see Plaks et al., 2009;Rissanen et al., 2018). Second, teacher characteristics such as seniority as well as educational background may affect the extent to which teachers promote the mindsets and behaviours of students (Leroy et al., 2007;Schmidt et al., 2015). ...
... One could assume that the lack of correlation between mindset and behavioral patterns (e.g., praising and a performance-goal orientation in Study 1) is attributable to the moderating effects of multiple situational factors. Such an assumption reflects environmental climates in which mindset establishment and application are intertwined (Plaks et al., 2009;Rissanen et al., 2018;Yu et al., 2022). Hence, we propose that interventions should take into consideration the situational factors in certain settings to enhance their validity. ...
The current investigation consists of four independent sub-studies. In Study 1, 114 teachers participated in a two-round questionnaire survey investigating the descriptive features of mindset and pedagogy. Two groups of teachers were interviewed in Study 2 & 3 to explore how these features were reflected in their teaching. Study 4 comprised focus-group interviews identifying the underlying mechanism determining which and how factors moderate the correspondence between mindset and pedagogy. Teachers in upper-secondary education endorsed mixed pedagogies despite their mindsets. The mixing style was characterized by 1) process-focused and trait-focused pedagogical thinking, and 2) mastery-oriented and performance-oriented pedagogical practices, with variable persistence and differential instructions. Situations related to culture, education, society and individual experiences were deemed to moderate the alignment of mindset with corresponding pedagogy-an insight that could be helpful in designing mindset intervention to enhance its validity. Implications concerning the adjustment of situational factors to educational surroundings are discussed.
... Situationist critique of neo-Hahnian thought is concerned with assumptions about personality traits. Plaks et al. (2009) argue that individuals will go to some lengths to preserve their lay personality theories, which are "critical starting assumptions from which much of social cognition proceeds" (p. 1078). ...
... (Ross & Nisbett, 2011, p. 99) Because lay theories tend to be dispositionist, research that found participants attributed personal trait development to OE is to be expected (Brookes, 2003a(Brookes, , 2003b. Moreover, laypersons who tend towards trait-based or stereotyping explanations for the behaviours of others tend to assume trait effects are strong (Plaks et al., 2009). ...
... (Dweck, 2015) Work which has shown that individuals who draw on an entity theory of self -those who attribute performance in challenging situations to an essential self, defined by traits -are at a disadvantage when confronted with new and difficult tasks compared to those who look for ways to improve on the next attempt. Selftheory can be changed by educational interventions (Dweck, 2000;Plaks et al., 2009), which implies OE programs could indeed contribute helpful interventions, provided it was understood that participants enter a program already having different self-theories and will respond differently to a program. At the same time, self-theory research problematizes curriculum premised on reinforcing trait attributions. ...
The idea that certain outdoor education (OE) programs consistently improve character traits has been a recurring theme not only in OE practice but also in some approaches to research and theory (Brookes, 2003a, 2003b). Sometimes referred to as “character building,” such approaches to OE persist although perhaps less prominently than in the past (Dyment & Potter, 2015). The idea of character-trait building is consistent with everyday beliefs about personality, but what is surprising is that strands of OE research and scholarship remain rooted in beliefs about personal traits that have been scientifically discredited for decades. This article considers some barriers which could help explain why OE research and scholarship have failed to exhibit a paradigm shift which should have eventuated had OE research more faithfully reflected key developments in psychological science and stayed within the bounds of scientific credibility.
... A xed mindset concerning personality traits predicts aggressive desires and produces more hostile attributional biases (Yeager et al., 2013). By contrast, a malleable mindset is related to a greater tolerance of immorality (Huang et al., 2017), a greater willingness to forgive (Iwai & de França Carvalho, 2020), more compassionate legal assessments (Weimann-Saks et al., 2019), and decreased support for harsh sanctions (Plaks et al., 2009). Consequently, relative to those with a xed mindset, people with a malleable mindset are less likely to assert attributions of internal proclivity for criminal behavior and to expect o enders to re-o end, and they are more likely to make less punitive judgments (Tam et al., 2013). ...
... This nding seems consistent with past research showing that both a xed mindset (e.g. Plaks et al., 2009;Tam et al., 2013) and a conservative political orientation are related to stronger punitiveness (e.g. Carroll et al., 1987;Clark & Wink, 2012;. ...
... Finally, the present study did not nd any evidence supporting the second hypothesis (H2), whereas previous research has shown that a malleable, relative to a xed, mindset reduces overall punitive motives (e.g. Plaks et al., 2009;Tam et al., 2013) and is more closely related to a liberal orientation (Kahn et al., 2018). To manipulate participants' mindset about malleability, we used a procedure that is widely found in the literature (e.g. ...
We examined whether beliefs about malleability moderate observers’ motives for justice, expressed in a desire for either retribution, in which punishment is based on what offenders deserve for their offense (past-oriented), or rehabilitation, in which punishment is intended to improve the offenders (future-oriented). The main hypothesis was that people with a fixed mindset would tend to support punishment motivated by retribution rather than rehabilitation, and the reverse was expected for those with a malleable mindset. We recruited participants (N = 432) through the platform Prolific and asked them to complete an online questionnaire. We first manipulated participants’ mindset (malleable vs. fixed) and then the salience of a specific justice motive (retribution vs. rehabilitation). Finally, participants read a vignette depicting an incident of professional misconduct and were asked to indicate their support for the punishment of the offender. Our results did not confirm our main hypothesis, but the exploratory results indicated a partial confirmation as a function of political orientation: in the malleable mindset condition, support for punishment among liberals was higher in the rehabilitation condition than in the retribution condition, whereas the reverse effect was observed among moderately conservative participants. We discuss the possible limitations of the study and future research avenues.
... Individuals possess various attributes and characteristics, which they view differently. Implicit theories are the knowledge forms by which individuals construe meaning of themselves and others (Plaks et al., 2009). Individuals differ in their views about the docility of certain human cognitive, emotional, and behavioral domains (Dweck et al., 1995), including intelligence, emotion, social skills, relationships, management skills, social judgment, and stereotyping (Dweck, 2012). ...
... Mindsets are important means to explain academic performance, behaviors, and intelligence beliefs (e.g., . Because of their reliable descriptive power, mindsets can explain individuals' behaviors (Plaks et al., 2009). Mindsets also shape the individual approach towards a problem. ...
... The main research question to examine the characteristics of person at individual level affecting the whistleblowing intentions of the thesis has been dealt in three essays. definition, evaluation, perception and reaction of a phenomenon in environment is basically shaped and determined by the types of their mindset (Cook-Greuter, 2004;Dweck, 2009). Therefore, the mindset types of individuals determine their intentions and decisions. ...
The formidable loss incurred by the organizational malpractices in world venerated organizations hasdrawn the urgency to find the measures to curb these malpractices. Among various measures, whistleblowing has been considered as an effective preventive and corrective tool. Substantial significance granted to whistleblowing for safeguarding the strategic, financial, and legal interests of organizations makes it imperative to admit the importance of whistleblowers who jeopardize their careers, financial and social gains for social betterment. Admittedly, the significant role of whistleblowers in disclosing and preventing organizational wrongdoings to avoid potential catastrophes and dramatic accidents has been acknowledged in research and corporate world.This thesis mirrors the positive facet of whistleblowing and discusses the characteristics of whistleblowers at their individual level that give them the Guardian, Saviors and moral saints like images in public. A common observation is that of many employees witnessing the organizational wrongdoings, only few employees (whistleblowers) report them, while all others remain passive (silent observers). This observation leads towards the central research question of the thesis, which has been declined into three essays to study the effects of individual characteristics at three levels on whistleblowing intentions—internal and external. This three-essaysone- thesis approach facilitates developing and testing conceptual frameworks at three levels. The effects of types of mindset, stewardship and proactive behaviors and the effect of four non-cognitive traits—grit, political skills, self-monitoring and emotional intelligence— on whistleblowing intentions at individual level have been examined in first, second and third essays of the thesis respectively. Besides, the moderating role of perceived organizational support (a contextual factor) on the causal relationships in three essays helps to get a pertinent set of predictors of whistleblowing intentions. Literature review suggests that research model examining the effect of the predictors of potential whistleblowing intentions like mindsets, proactive and stewardship behaviors and non-cognitive traits is virtually non-existent, notably in the context of a developing country like Pakistan. This thesis, thus, abridges this research gap. The integrated variables of the thesis do not necessarily make an exhaustive list, nor is this viable, but helps in better understanding of the underlying factors affecting the whistleblowing intentions. To test the hypotheses, a mixed method research design using an explanatory sequential approach has been employed. The quantitative data through surveys have been collected from the students and faculty members of seven universities in Islamabad, Pakistan. 467 complete questionnaires of 650 show 71.84% response rate. Applying SEM approach, using SPSS and AMOS yield quantitative results. Qualitative data have been collected from two focus group discussions. The thematic approach yields qualitative results. Findings of quantitative and qualitative data have been integrated in discussion chapter using weaving approach. This thesis makes various methodological and theoretical contributions with academic, managerial, policy and scholarly orientated implications. One key contribution of the thesis is that it extends the whistleblowing research to Pakistani context, where the malpractices can readily get diffused. To curb this evil, recently the government has implemented Whistleblowing Act 2017 as one of the effective preventative measures to curtail the persistent high level of corruption in Pakistan. Thus this thesis aims to be milestone in better understanding the characteristics of potential whistleblowers by providing normative guidance to both practitioners and policymakers in Pakistan. The limitations of this thesis open up avenues for future research to explore the unanswered aspects.
... Lay theories about the nature of personal characteristics shape how people understand and incorporate information in their social worlds, fairly independent of the factual truth of those beliefs (Plaks et al., 2009). For instance, believing that intelligence is changeable versus fixed can affect academic effort after failure (Dweck, 1986;2000) and the belief that willpower is unlimited predicts persistence after effort (Job et al., 2010). ...
... Results of Study 4 suggest that people's beliefs about genetic heritability of moral character can be influenced at least temporarily by reading a newspaper article and writing from the perspective of high or low heritability beliefs. Lay beliefs are notoriously difficult to shift (Heine et al., 2017;Plaks et al., 2009), and although the manipulation used in this study did shift Parents' Immoral Act participants' self-reported heritability beliefs, the difference was small (about one point on a seven-point scale). Perhaps because of this small effect, the predicted moderation of heritability beliefs condition was not significant. ...
... Lay beliefs. The current research also contributes to the extensive literature on the power of lay beliefs (for a review of this literature see Heine et al., 2017;Plaks et al., 2009). ...
The idea of heritability may have consequences for individuals’ sense of self by connecting identity to the actions of others who happen to share genetic ties. Across seven experimental studies (total N = 2,628), recalling morally bad or good actions by family members influenced individuals’ moral self among those who endorse a lay belief that moral character is genetically heritable, but not among those who did not endorse this belief (Study 1–5). In contrast, recalling actions by unrelated individuals had no effect, regardless of lay beliefs (Study 2, 5), the endorsement of other relevant lay beliefs did not moderate the effect of parent's actions on self‐judgments (Study 3). Individuals who endorsed heritability beliefs also chose less helpful responses to hypothetical helping scenarios if they had recalled unhelpful (vs. helpful) acts by a genetically‐related family member (Study 5). Taken together, these studies suggest that lay beliefs in the role of genetics are important for self‐perceptions.
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... COVID-19 sürecinde aromatik ve tıbbi bitkilerin neden satın alındığını açıklamada sokaktaki insan kuramından da yararlanılabileceğinin ipuçlarının elde edilmiş olmasıdır. Sokaktaki insan kuramı; esas itibariyle bireylerin bilgi açısından karmaşık olan durumları kolaylaştırmak amacıyla (Plaks, Levy & Dweck, 2009, s. 1069 inançlarını sosyal normlar, çevre ya da kişisel deneyimlere dayalı olarak oluşturması (Wood, 2010, s. 952) anlamına gelmektedir. ...
... Sokaktaki insan kuramı; sosyal normlar, çevre ya da kişisel deneyimler yoluyla oluşabilen(Wood, 2010, s. 952), açık ve belirgin olmayan, muğlak, tutarsız ve değişken, tümevarımcı algılardır. Sokaktaki insan kuramında, bilgi açısından karmaşık olan durumları kolaylaştırmak asıl amaçtır(Plaks, Levy & Dweck, 2009, s. 1069) ve sıklıkla iki değişken arasında bir ilişkinin olduğu iddia edilir(Furnham, 1988, s. 2-5). Sokaktaki insan kuramı destekli içsel yükleme dikkate alındığında "bağışıklık sistemini güçlendirme, antibiyotik özelliği, antioksidan özelliği, rahatlatıcı-gevşetici etkisi, Koronavirüs semptomlarını-bulgularını azaltma, gribal enfeksiyon iyileşme sürecine ilişkin deneyim ve Koronavirüse yakalanma korkusu" alt temaları oluşturulmuştur.Antioksidan özelliği: Katılımcılar, COVID-19 sürecinde kullandıkları tıbbi ve aromatik bitkilerin tüketim nedenlerini "antioksidan" özelliklerine dayandırmışlardır. ...
COVID-19 pandemisi sürecinde, bireylerin tıbbi ve aromatik bitki tüketimlerine ilişkin ilgi ve yönelimlerinin arttığı gözlemlenmiştir. Bu kapsamda Mersin’de yaşayan bireylerin COVID-19 sürecinde değişen tıbbi ve aromatik bitki tüketimleri yükleme kuramı çerçevesinde irdelenmiştir. Durum çalışması olarak tasarlanan bu araştırmada, araştırmanın amacı ve örneklemine göre “tanımlayıcı-keşfedici, içsel ve iç içe geçmiş tekli durum deseni” kullanılmıştır. Araştırmanın örneklemini; Mersin’de COVID-19 sürecinde aktarlarda çalışan, görüşmeyi kabul eden 20 kişi ile Mersin’de yaşayan ve COVID-19 sürecinde tıbbi ve aromatik bitki tüketimine ilişkin ilgi ve yöneliminin arttığını beyan eden 33 kişi oluşturmuştur. Veriler, görüşme formu kullanılarak amaçlı örnekleme tekniğine göre 2022 Nisan-Temmuz ayları arasında toplanmış olup; içerik ve betimsel analize tabi tutulmuştur. Araştırmanın bulguları, tıbbi ve aromatik bitki tüketim nedenlerine çoğunlukla içsel yükleme yapıldığını, ancak aktar çalışanlarının tüketicilere kıyasla daha fazla dışsal yükleme yaptıklarını ortaya koymuştur. Çoğunlukla eğitim, yönetim ve pazarlama alanlarında çalışılan yükleme kuramının, tıbbi ve aromatik bitki tüketim nedenlerini açıklamada kullanılabileceği görülmüştür.
... In contrast, people with a growth mindset believe that such traits are flexible and still have the opportunity to alter or develop them. Many studies have proved that each theory (or mindset) is linked to a network of joint beliefs, such as achievement beliefs, effort beliefs, and beliefs on ability, goal orientation and reactions to failure situations that people endorse in order to provide an explanation of their behaviour (Plaks, Levy & Dweck, 2009;Ryan & Mercer, 2012). Empirical research has shown that such beliefs influence academic performance; in particular, incremental beliefs appear to yield better results than entity beliefs (Blackwell, Trzesniewski & Dweck, 2007;Chen & Pajares, 2010). ...
... Furthermore, previous studies have proven that the mindset of individuals entails a network of joint beliefs, such as beliefs in abilities, goal orientations, and reactions to failure situations (Plaks et al., 2009) regarding the malleability of their abilities contributed to adaptive or maladaptive cognitive, affective and behavioural responses (Dweck, 2000;Elliott & Dweck, 1988). Qualitative results of this study showed that the participants have a higher tendency to growth mindset beliefs. ...
Recent attention in literature has been given to the agency of students in the feedback process. This research aims to explore the experiences that students have of assessment feedback during their study in EAP programmes. In order to obtain vivid data that can help in understanding such experiences, both interviews and questionnaires were used sequentially, and were able to provide interesting insights into students’ experiences, including their responses to assessment feedback. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the interviews and exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, as well as structural equation modelling to analyse the questionnaire. The findings revealed that students joining EAP programmes value and appreciate assessment feedback on their academic writing. They also found it an opportunity to learn from the feedback and relate it to further learning. The study also highlights that the process of feedback involves a complex interplay between the cognitive and affective dimensions that could be affected by different factors. The findings suggest that the students are aware of the usefulness of the role of the feedback to advance their academic writing, even though they feel upset or disappointed in regards to it.
Furthermore, the research identified the factors that influence students’ responses to assessment feedback. Various factors related to the feedback message, the feedback provider and to students themselves have been revealed in the interview data. These factors were later examined in the quantitative phase. Results from exploratory factor analysis revealed that students display two types of responses to assessment feedback (positive and negative responses); and four factors (students self efficacy in writing, language mindset beliefs, perceptions of teacher role, preferences of the mode of feedback). The results of confirmatory factor analysis led to a model of students’ responses to assessment feedback that consists of the six factor structure. Additionally, SEM results confirmed that students’ self-efficacy in writing and their perceptions of the teachers’ role were strong predictors of their responses to assessment feedback. Self-efficacy was the strongest factor that influences students͛ positive responses to assessment feedback, whereas students’ perceptions of the teacher’s role were the strongest factor that influences their negative responses to assessment feedback. Interestingly, language mindset beliefs was found as a significant moderator of the relationship between their self-efficacy and their negative responses to assessment feedback, which indicates that this factor could make a noticeable difference in experiences with assessment feedback. Thus, future research investigating experiences with assessment feedback from students’ perspectives should consider the examination of their mindset beliefs, and how it could impact on their responses.<br/
... Accordingly, those holding an incremental belief about human characteristics are more forgiving because they believe people are capable of changing for the better (Molden & Dweck, 2006;Plaks, Levy, & Dweck, 2009). These findings thus suggest a positive association between cuteness and an incremental belief (as they both are linked by infantility). ...
... In particular, building on prior research on the malleability of human characteristics (Dweck & Leggett, 1988;Murphy & Dweck, 2016), individuals with an incremental belief learn from their mistakes and failures in order to improve themselves (Mathur, Chun, & Maheswaran, 2016). As such, individuals with an incremental belief about human characteristics are also more forgiving because they believe people are capable of changing for the better and learning from their past failures (Molden & Dweck, 2006;Plaks et al., 2009). ...
Research on brand transgressions has suggested that when a brand is involved in a transgression and perceived as harmful, consumers will punish the brand. The present research seeks to extend this literature by investigating how having a cute brand logo may reduce consumer punishment of a transgressing brand. Across five experimental studies, this research shows that a brand logo with high (vs. low) levels of cuteness associated with a transgressing brand can motivate consumers to protect the brand from harm, thus reducing consumer punishment of that brand. Notably, such motivations to protect the brand are driven by an incremental belief about the brand’s development. Moreover, the cuteness effect is attenuated in the case of repeated transgressions. Theoretical contributions to the literature on cuteness, brand logo, and brand transgression are discussed, as well as practical implications.
... Lay theories are informal, ontological assumptions about the social world that provide a framework for meaning (Plaks, Levy, & Dweck, 2009). Lay theories of affect reflect generalized beliefs about the nature of emotional experience that influence how people respond to the world. ...
... Although we found that DH and LM beliefs were related to goal pursuit across distinct samples, there may be limits to generality given that participants were college students or adults living in the U.S. Given that lay theories involve ontological assumptions about the social world (Plaks et al., 2009), they may be influenced by sociocultural norms. Socialization experiences within families, relationships, social networks, and cultures may differentially reinforce DH or LM beliefs. ...
How do people think about happiness? Is it something best enjoyed as an investment over time, or is it something fleeting that should be savored? When people view happiness as an investment, they may endorse delaying happiness (DH)-the belief that working hard and sacrificing opportunities for happiness now will contribute to greater future happiness. When people view happiness as fleeting, they may endorse living in the moment (LM)-the belief that one should seize proximal opportunities to experience happiness now, rather than later. Using a mix of cross-sectional, meta-analytic (Studies 1, 2a, 2b, 2c), experimental (Study 3), and daily diary methods (Study 4), people who endorsed DH or LM beliefs anticipated more positive affect upon goal attainment and experienced greater well-being, but only DH was related to more negative affect when pursuing nonfocal goals and less delay discounting of future rewards. Implications for self-regulation and emotion are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).
... An individual with a growth mindset concerning intelligence, for example, believes that people can become more and more intelligent through experience, whereas someone with a fixed mindset believes that people are either permanently intelligent or not. Such implicit beliefs form a complex network of tendentially incremental or entity meaning systems, which tend to be activated in challenging situations (Plaks et al., 2009). In this study, we use mindset as a standard term that also encapsulates implicit beliefs and implicit meaning systems. ...
... It is suggested that a complex network of implicit parental beliefs about their children's abilities is connected to a growth or fixed mindset (Plaks et al., 2009;Dweck, 2016, 2017), that is constantly actualized in their relationships. Not only do mindsets affect praise and failure feedback, but they also tend to take over in any learning-related situation, especially challenging ones. ...
The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore parental engagement in the home learning environment, and parents’ implicit beliefs about learning underlying such engagement. Nineteen parents of school children between 7 and 12 years old were interviewed in two different cultural contexts, Finland (N = 10) and Portugal (N = 9). The interviews were subjected to inductive and deductive content analysis. Forms of parental engagement at home were similar in both countries, divided between two main categories: engagement with their child’s holistic development and engagement with the child’s schooling process. Parental narratives about engagement were, for the most part, embedded in a growth mindset (or an incremental meaning system). The most common actualizations of engagement included considering the child’s learning contexts and emotions; encouraging effort, persistence and practice; approaching difficulties as a natural part of learning and suggesting strategies for overcoming them. Parental practices of engagement were combined with the actualization of their implicit beliefs to create parental engagement–mindset profiles. Twelve parents were classified as having a growth mindset to support the child’s holistic development profile, and the other seven were distributed amongst the three remaining profiles. The study contributes to the growing interest on the association between parental engagement and their learning-related implicit beliefs, giving clear first-person illustrations of how both occur and interact in the home learning environment. Implications for practice are discussed.
... However, we wondered if we assessed people's everyday beliefs about their personal intelligence (as opposed to using an experimenterdefined global estimate), whether one or more of their specific beliefs would relate more highly to actual ability than had global estimates of the past. At minimum, we would gain a better understanding of how people naturally think about their understanding of personality (e.g., Plaks, Levy, & Dweck, 2009). ...
... Our project is part of a family of related studies that explore lay theories of traits: for example, lay theories of general intelligence versus those for creativity and wisdom (Sternberg, 1985;Sternberg, Conway, Ketron, & Bernstein, 1981), or people's everyday theories of the Big Five personality traits (Mehl, Gosling, & Pennebaker, 2006), or the importance of lay beliefs about personality change (Plaks et al., 2009). ...
We examined the dimensions people use when estimating their ability to understand personality—an ability we refer to as personal intelligence. In the first two studies (Ns = 434 and 393), a four-factor model fit people's self-estimates reasonably, with scales of the “Explained Self”, “Self-Understanding”, “Understanding Others,” and “Goals and Planning”. In Study 2 and in Study 3 (N = 482) we examined whether any of the specific self-estimated abilities more accurately indexed actual ability-based personal intelligence relative to overall estimates, and if not, what other personality traits they correlated with. To find out, the four factor-based scales of self-estimated abilities were correlated with the objective Test of Personal Intelligence and traits of the Big Five. None of the specific, self-estimated abilities correlated with actual ability any higher than earlier-used experimenter-provided global self-estimated scales; the participants' self-estimates were determined chiefly by dimensions of the Big Five relative to ability, at a ratio of “variance explained” of six to one. The studies provide new insights into how people view their skills at understanding personality, and the possible origins of such beliefs.
... Unlike grand scientific theories, IPTs refer to a person's commonsensical explanations for everyday events. For this reason, IPTs are sometimes also called "naive" or "lay" theories (Plaks, Levy, Dweck, 2009). It is worth bearing in mind that the latter terms are more used in social psychology (e.g. ...
... "Instead, each is associated with a set of allied beliefs, the sum total of which cohere into two distinct meaning systems. (…) These meaning systems produce systematic differences in a range of fundamental social cognition processes" (Plaks, Levy, Dweck, 2009, p. 1069. It seems that dispositionism holds a prominent position in the afore mentioned "meaning system". ...
Studies on the role of implicit theories of personality (IPTs) in the field of education conducted so far, basically adopt a student's perspective. This article adopts the perspective of a teacher who, more than a student, has opportunities to invest social interactions in the classroom with significance. An attempt has been made to determine in detail the correlation between IPTs and the disposi-tionism of teachers with varied teaching experience. The studies comprised three stages: measuring IPTs (Stage One), measuring dispositionism as trans-situational behavioural cohesion (Stage Two), and measuring dispositionism as a belief that it is possible to predict behaviour in specific situations knowing relevant personality traits (Stage Three). The results obtained indicate that IPTs give solid ground for justifying dispositionism of teachers in both of its manifestations (a strong main effect of IPTs). A main effect concerning teaching experience, albeit somewhat weaker, was also obtained in addition to an interaction effect between two variables, i.e. IPTs and teaching experience. The study also shows how the results obtained may translate into educational implications.
... According to constructivist models of human psychology, individuals use implicit assumptions about themselves and the world around them to make sense of complex events and assimilate new information into their existing worldview (16). These assumptions structure the way individuals react to events and outcomes in their daily lives. ...
... One key implicit assumption that individuals make about themselves pertains to the malleability of personal attributes. For example, a person may believe that a personal attribute such as intelligence is a nonmalleable entity (entity theory), or they may believe that personal attributes may be developed and changed incrementally over time (incremental theory) (16). These diametrically opposed worldviews, often referred to as a fixed mindset and a growth mindset, respectively, impact students' sense of self-efficacy, in turn affecting the way in which individuals set goals and behave within academic environments ( Fig. 1, green boxes) (18,19). ...
Student self-beliefs regarding intelligence and ability have been shown to correspond to achievement and persistence in an academic domain. Specifically, previous research has suggested that a growth mindset-or the belief that intelligence is malleable and can increase with effort-is associated with student success. Locus of control is a related but distinct self-belief regarding personal agency over various academic and nonacademic outcomes and has also been associated with study skills and academic persistence. However, academic interventions targeting student mindsets and loci of control have remained relatively underexplored, specifically in the context of undergraduate STEM education. Here, we describe the development and assessment of an intervention encouraging students to adopt a growth mindset and internal locus of control. This five-part intervention is administered entirely online and is therefore independent of individual instructor variability. We administered the intervention in five introductory biology courses and show that the intervention was successful in impacting student mindsets and loci of control across various demographics.
... Participants of this study were assumed to believe that their behaviours in moral dilemmas led to cultivating and altering moral values and definitions for learners and finally influencing the development of their mindset. Therefore, it can be implied that ELT teachers in this study tended to have faith in the malleability of social morality and focusing on improving the behaviour of wrongdoers rather than imposing standards of justice and simply sticking to the rules (Plaks, Levy, and Dweck 2009). ...
... An amalgamation of different factors (e.g. personality characteristics, situational needs, presumptions, and even religious beliefs) is connected to each other to form the structure based on which morality is interpreted (Plaks, Levy, and Dweck 2009). Participants of this study were Muslim and their justifications for what they deem to be morality of teaching could easily be found in their Islamic ideologies, though it might well be explicated in terms of personal or family values. ...
In this study, we attempt to explore a distinctive worldview as it pertains to Iranian education. We do this by focusing on the moral component implicit in English Language Teaching (ELT) in Iran and the challenges that might be experienced among ELT teachers when engaging in moral teacher practice, including making moral decisions in relation to their teaching. For this purpose, 30 ELT teachers working at Shiraz University’s Language Learning Centre volunteered to describe morality in teaching and used narrative to elicit their personal stories and understandings of the challenges entailed in making moral decisions and their justifications. The article aims to determine: how ELT teachers’ perceived morality is manifested in their teaching; what kinds of moral conflicts they identify in ELT; and, how they set out to resolve these conflicts. Through content analyses, we concluded that ELT teachers defined the moral component in teaching as consisting of: a balanced relationship with the learners; being on time; and, effective teaching. Moreover, they stated that mismatches between their ideologies and external codes are the biggest challenges they experience in making moral decisions. To resolve these challenges, they mostly referred to the cultural values cultivated by their religion, together with their family backgrounds, in order to justify their decisions.
... An alternative factor that likely contributed to the observed increase in self-compassion is the impact of implicit expectations or lay theories about change (e.g., Plaks et al., 2009). Walking a path is one of the most powerful symbols for change and development (e.g., life path, healing path, pilgrimage path, path towards enlightenment). ...
Objectives
The present longitudinal field study investigated whether hiking the Camino Francés strengthened self-compassion and tested covered distance, hikers’ motives, and walking alone vs. with other hikers as predictors of the increase.
Method
In the prospective main study with 104 hikers, 67.3% female, M = 36.3 years (SD = 14.2), change was measured by the difference between the first measurement taken on the way and the second measurement at arrival. Additionally, 21 participants, 52.4% female, M = 34.3 years (SD = 14), were recruited upon arrival and reported their actual and their retrospectively rated self-compassion at the start of their tour. Two follow-ups were conducted after 3 weeks and 6 months. Participants completed the Self-Compassion Scale (SCS) along with measures for mood and life satisfaction.
Results
An increase in self-compassion was observed with d = 0.22 (p = 0.024) in the prospective data, and d = 0.56 (p = 0.018) in the retrospective data, which persisted throughout the follow-ups. In the prospective study, self-compassion was a stronger predictor of mood across time than vice versa. The increase in self-compassion was stronger in participants who walked longer distances (β = .25) and underwent a critical life event (β = .21).
Conclusions
The results suggest long-distance walking as a promising additional means to strengthen self-compassion that could be integrated into compassion training programs. Future research should replicate the observed change across settings and related constructs, determine its causes, and investigate the interdependence of walking and meditation practices in stimulating self-compassion.
Preregistration
This study was not preregistered.
... The key distinction between lay and scientific theories is that lay theories are not necessarily explicit and are typically not rigorously formulated (Heider, 1958). That said, people usually have no difficulty reporting their lay theories (Plaks et al., 2009). Importantly, our lay theory does not assume that there is a one-to-one relationship between individuals' appearance and character but instead asks whether people believe that there is some relationship versus no relationship. ...
People are excessively confident that they can judge others’ characteristics from their
appearance. This research identifies a novel antecedent of this phenomenon. Ten studies
(N=2,967, four pre-registered) find that the more people believe that appearance reveals
character, the more confident they are in their appearance-based judgments, and therefore, the more they support the use of facial profiling technologies in law enforcement, education, and business. Specifically, people who believe that appearance reveals character support the use of facial profiling in general (Studies 1a-1b), and even when they themselves are the target of profiling (Studies 1c-1d). Experimentally inducing people to believe that appearance reveals character increases their support for facial profiling (Study 2) because it increases their confidence in the ability to make appearance-based judgments (Study 3). An intervention that undermines people’s confidence in their appearance-based judgments reduces their support for facial profiling (Study 4). The relationship between the lay theory and support for facial profiling is weaker among people with a growth mindset about personality, as facial profiling presumes a
relatively unchanging character (Study 5a). This relationship is also weaker among people who believe in free will, as facial profiling presumes that individuals have limited free will (Study 5b). The appearance reveals character lay theory is a stronger predictor of support for profiling than analogous beliefs in other domains, such as the belief that FacebookTM likes reveal personality (Study 6). These findings identify a novel lay theory that underpins people’s meta-cognitions about their confidence in appearance-related judgments and their policy positions.
... According to the literature, individuals have personal, underlying beliefs as to whether certain components of their lives are changeable (i.e., growth orientation) and fixed (i.e., destiny orientation; Dweck, 2012). Growth and destiny beliefs have been studied across various contexts, including intelligence, personality, and relationships and play a key role in shaping individuals' responses to life challenges (Costa & Faria, 2018;Dupeyrat & Mariné, 2005;Franiuk et al., 2002;Plaks et al., 2009;Yeager et al., 2014). These beliefs have also been studied in relation to sexual difficulties (Bohns et al., 2015;Maxwell et al., 2017;Sutherland & Rehman, 2018). ...
Beliefs about sexuality tend to become more salient during sexual challenges and are associated with how individuals respond to these difficulties and, in turn, their sexual well-being. The transition to parenthood is marked by significant changes to couples’ sexuality. As such, this period of vulnerability may be an important context in which these beliefs impact how couples manage sexual stressors and may have implications for their sexual well-being. In a longitudinal dyadic study, we examined whether couples’ sexual growth beliefs (e.g., beliefs that sexual problems can be resolved through effort) and sexual destiny beliefs (e.g., beliefs that sexual problems reflect incompatibility with their partner) correspond with changes to various facets of couples’ sexual well-being over time. First-time parent couples (N = 203) completed online surveys assessing these beliefs in pregnancy (32 weeks) and measures of sexual well-being (satisfaction, desire, and distress) in pregnancy (20 and 32 weeks) and across the postpartum period (3, 6, 9, 12 months). Dyadic latent growth curve models showed that expectant mothers who reported stronger sexual destiny beliefs in pregnancy reported higher sexual distress and lower sexual satisfaction at 3 months postpartum. When partners reported stronger sexual destiny beliefs in pregnancy, both they and new mothers reported greater sexual desire at 3 months postpartum. Unexpectedly, partners’ higher sexual growth beliefs in pregnancy predicted mothers’ lower sexual desire at 3 months postpartum. Sexual growth and destiny beliefs were not associated with change in couples’ sexual well-being beyond 3 months postpartum. Findings shed light on the potential benefits and costs of sexual growth and destiny beliefs for couples’ sexual well-being early in the postpartum period, but not over time.
... Dweck developed her MT to include growth and fixed mindsets; both help children understand themselves, creating paths for learning (Plaks et al., 2009). Growth mindset (incremental theory) is when a child sees ability as flexible, something developed through hard work and instruction from others to maximise potential (Dweck & Leggett,988;Dweck,999;Boylan et al.,208). ...
Growth mindset continues to be a popular topic of conversation in the field of education and Physical Education (PE). However, despite the existence of various schemes for delivering curriculum PE, there are limited studies analysing how they seek to directly develop children’s mindsets. This study analyses the process taken for one of these frameworks, Real PE, to be implemented within a school to develop their growth mindset culture, drawing upon the theories of key educational thinkers. The study is based upon the authors’ experiences as PE Subject Leader and member of the school Senior Leadership Team (SLT) within a single-form entry primary school in Leicestershire, United Kingdom; testimonials from other schools who utilise Real PE and existing literature on the effectiveness of growth mindset.
Implementing a growth mindset culture is not straightforward; although important, it is not solely about intelligence and praising effort, nor a battle of fixed versus growth mindsets as within PE, mixed mindsets exist, and, the fixed mindset should be legitimised. Therefore, a long-term, rigorous approach to change considering policies, individual beliefs, training needs, strategies and feedback methods needs to be developed. This study adds to the growing conversation about growth mindset and seeks to support other school settings considering embedding mindset culture within their school setting and PE provision.
... We derive Model 4 from research on consumers' use of lay theories about brands, brands' origin and brand users (Fournier and Alvarez, 2019;Kardes et al., 2008;Luedicke, Thompson and Giesler, 2010;Thompson and Haytko, 1997). 'Lay theories (also referred to as "implicit theories", "naïve theories" and "folk theories") have been defined both as ontological assumptions (beliefs about what is true in the world) and as narrative representations (frameworks that explain and organize the world)' (Plaks, Levy andDweck, 2009, p. 1069). Stereotypes can be conceptualized as lay theories because they capture both the ontological assumptions about warmth and competence of social targets and the narrative assumptions about how social targets acquire warmth and competence (Fiske et al., 2002;Schneider, 2005). ...
Although the importance of various brand‐related stereotypes held by consumers has been acknowledged in the marketing literature, their interplay has not yet been considered. We derive four alternative theoretical models of the relationships between brand, brand origin and brand user stereotypes and their effects on consumers’ value perceptions. The four models are subsequently tested on two nationally representative samples in Germany and Serbia, respectively. The best‐performing model in both studies predicts that brand origin and brand user stereotypes act as complementary drivers of the brand stereotype. In turn, value perceptions mediate the positive impact of the brand stereotype on purchase intent. This investigation is the first to: (a) juxtapose and empirically assess alternative theoretical perspectives on the interplay of brand‐related stereotypes; (b) reveal the combined influence of multiple stereotypes on consumers’ value perceptions and through them, on intentions to buy the brand; (c) determine the relative influence of distinct stereotype content dimensions (i.e. warmth vs. competence) on consumers’ perceptions of value; and (d) highlight the extent to which the interplay among different stereotypes in influencing consumer outcomes is stable across different market settings. Implications of the findings are considered and future research directions identified.
... We then discuss interviews-based Study 1 and survey-based Study 2. Last, we share our conclusion and discuss directions for future research. Plaks, Levy, and Dweck 2009;Schleider and Schroder 2018). According to this research, people generate assumptions about their environments and constantly test their utility to understand, predict, and control their environments (Parke, Marsden, and Connolly 2017). ...
We used the folk theory perspective to investigate Internet users’ understanding of algorithms during their Internet use. Empirically, we conducted a mixed-method study. First, we carried out semi-structured in-person interviews with 30 German Internet users. Our analysis of these interviews enabled us to identity five folk theories – economic orientation theory, personal interaction theory, popularity theory, categorization theory, and algorithmic thinking theory. In a second step, we created a standardized survey questionnaire with 19 illustrative statements for these five folk theories, relying on participants’ explanations in the interviews to develop statements that reflected lay users’ ideas as much as possible. Participants (N = 331) were recruited through a commercial online access panel using quota criteria for age, gender, and education level to have a sample representative of the German population. Our survey findings indicate the prevalence of such folk theories among a broader population of Internet users, except for the algorithmic thinking theory, which is likely due to it being based on inaccurate assumptions about algorithms’ capabilities.
... They use these subjective views to make sense of often complex and ambiguous social situations. Research (Plaks et al., 2009) demonstrates that differences in these meaning systems can result in systematic differences in various social cognition processes including in how information is encoded, integrated, and interpreted to explain others' behaviors. ...
Increasing reliance on the Internet's perpetual memory has raised concerns regarding how dated information that would otherwise be forgotten or inaccessible can unduly or disproportionally influence current assessments and decisions. I investigate aspects of this topic for two major business entity types: one-person businesses (i.e., sole proprietors) and firms. Results show that one-person businesses tend to be more severely impacted by past adverse information than firms, and furthermore their improvement trends over time are more likely to be dismissed as noise than recognized as signals of change. While firms can offset old unfavorable conduct by engaging in new favorable behaviors, a sole proprietor's current favorable operations can remain dominated by decades-old actions. Results also indicate that decision makers perceive firms as more capable of truly changing. Moreover, while only decision makers with certain personality characteristics recognize signs of positive change from a sole proprietor, all decision makers detect and appreciate such changes in a firm's conduct. This study finds that limiting access to adverse past information is likely to be more helpful (or necessary) for one-person businesses, or more generally for individuals, than for firms.
... Theories of Intelligence Questionnaire (Dweck, 1999) and work conducted by Plaks et al. (2009) assessed beliefs in growth-as opposed to fixed-mindsets (e.g., With effort and practice, you can keep your mental ability from deteriorating.). Growth mindsets reflect the belief in the ability to change, and thus should reflect approach tendencies. ...
Engagement in potentially beneficial activities is assumed to be based partially on perceived costs and benefits. Mental fatigue may be one factor that affects perceived costs. We examined age differences in both chronic and situational mental fatigue, and their relation to task perceptions and engagement levels. Younger (M age = 32.6) and older (M age = 73.1) adults completed questionnaires measuring subjective mental fatigue, physical and mental health, and motivational states, along with several assessments of cognitive ability. In addition, assessments of effort expenditure (systolic blood pressure) and task difficulty were collected during performance of a cognitively demanding memory-scan task. Two components of chronic mental fatigue (CMF) relating to affect and motivation were identified. Although the structure of CMF did not vary with age, CMF was differentially predictive of engagement and appraisal levels across groups. As CMF-Affect levels increased, older adults' task-difficulty appraisals increased more than those of younger adults. In addition, CMF-Affect was positively associated with levels of engagement in the young, but negatively associated in the old as memory load increased. Older adults also exhibited higher levels of situational fatigue than did the young, as evidenced by increased levels of effort expenditure as both time on task and objective demands increased. However, little relationship existed between chronic and situational mental fatigue in either age group. These findings suggest that the affective aspect of CMF is particularly consequential in older adults, with both task appraisals and engagement levels being negatively affected when fatigue is high.
... Beliefs about whether spending implies wealth can be seen as a type of lay theory, or a belief about how aspects of the world work. Unlike attitudes or values, lay theories need not be evaluative-they do not necessarily indicate a behavior like spending is good or bad-they can be simply descriptive, telling "how things work" in ways that allow observers to make sense of ambiguous behavior and outcomes (Hong, Levy, and Chiu 2001;Plaks, Levy, and Dweck 2009). ...
Spending is influenced by many factors. One that has received little attention is the meaning that people give to the act of spending. Spending money might imply that someone is relatively wealthy—since they have money to spend—or relatively poor—since spending can deplete assets. We show that people differ in the extent to which they believe that spending implies wealth (SIW beliefs). We develop a scale to measure these beliefs and find that people who more strongly believe that spending implies wealth spend their own money relatively lavishly and are, on average, more financially vulnerable. We find correlational evidence for these relationships using objective financial-transaction data, including over 2 million transaction records from the bank accounts of over 2,000 users of a money management app, as well as self-reported financial well-being. We also find experimental evidence by manipulating SIW beliefs and observing causal effects on spending intentions. These results show how underlying beliefs about the link between spending and wealth play a role in consumption decisions, and point to beliefs about the meaning of spending as a fruitful direction for further research.
... In order to orient within our social environment, we implicitly develop or adapt theories that provide "common-sense" explanations for complex and/or ambiguous behaviors, commonly referred to as implicit theories or lay theories (Plaks, Levy, & Dweck, 2009;Furnham, 1988;Levy et al., 2006). In this context, implicit means that the explanatory models ("theories") need not necessarily be consciously represented, and are derived from everyday experience rather than systematic observation. ...
In public discourse, narcissism is often portrayed one-sidedly and overly negative,
rendering a picture of narcissistic individuals as “toxic people” or “evil characters”.
Beyond these salient associations, psychological theories point to a more complex
phenomenon, and different developmental mechanisms are being discussed in relation
to it. We investigated the prevalence of different implicit theories on narcissism
including beliefs about its developmental antecedents. We put forward the question
whether grandiose and vulnerable narcissistic behaviors are regarded as congruent or
incongruent expressions of underlying feelings and motives, that is whether grandiose
behavior is attributed to underlying grandiosity or underlying vulnerability, and vice
versa. Results of an online survey ( N = 177) show higher agreement with congruent
rather than incongruent theories (i.e., grandiose narcissism is attributed to feelings of
superiority rather than inferiority, vulnerable narcissism is attributed to inferiority rather
than superiority). In line with this, participants displayed predominant beliefs in parental
overvaluation as a developmental antecedent of grandiose narcissism / parental
coldness as an antecedent of vulnerable narcissism. With higher self-reported prior
knowledge of narcissism, endorsement of theories assuming incongruencies
increased. The likability of narcissism was not associated with endorsement of the
different implicit theories, but instead with perceivers’ own narcissism levels. Results
suggest that laypeople employ an “it is what it seems” - heuristic facing both grandiose
and vulnerable narcissistic behaviors and are less likely to attribute grandiose or
vulnerable behavior to incongruent motivational states. Findings might help to better
understand the public image of narcissism and its social consequences.
... That is, it refers to people's conscious perceptions of their own experiences alone/"with others." It differs from the use of "mindset" to describe "lay theories" or "implicit theories," which address abstract concepts that people hold (often implicitly) to account for complex or ambiguous behaviors by others (e.g., Plaks et al., 2009). 2 Alas, testing this specific prediction was not feasible in the present research, because the LIWC dictionary does not break the positive emotions category into low and high-arousal emotions as it does for negative emotions (but in line with deficiencies the literature; Sauter, 2010). ...
This article explores people's perception of their experience while being alone or being with others. To that aim, data from 9 studies (total N = 1717) were meta-analyzed. In each study, participants performed a sentence-completion task referring to their experience alone/'with others'. The responses were analyzed using a text analysis software. Results showed that in a 'with others' (vs. alone) mindset, people are more focused on the present, and less focused on the past or the future. When 'with others', more anxiety but less sadness are expressed. Social motives—affiliation and power—are more pronounced in the 'with others' mindset, whereas leisure activities are salient in the alone mindset. Conclusions are derived regarding the nature of the experience in these basic conditions.
... Based on the aforementioned evidence, we propose that people apply a different mindset in organizational contexts than in personal contexts. Mindsets reflect people's fundamental assumptions about the world and how it operates; they help people make sense of the world and how they should behave in the situation they are in (Blackwell, Trzesniewksi, & Dweck, 2007;Dweck, Chiu, & Hong, 1995;Plaks, Levy, & Dweck, 2009;Yeager & Dweck, 2012). We propose that one relevant mindset that people tend to use in organizational contexts is calculative and strategic thinking, whereby people assume that the best course of action can be derived by computing the costs and benefits of the available possible options (Belmi & Pfeffer, 2015;Wang, Zhong, & Murnighan, 2014; see also, Fiske, 1992). ...
People behave differently when at work than not at work; for example, they are less interested in making close friends and use more transactional language (networking vs. socializing). These examples hint at a broader phenomenon: that people engage in more objectification-treating people akin to objects-in work contexts than non work contexts. We propose that objectification is more prevalent at work because people engage in more calculative and strategic thinking (i.e., making decisions by computing the costs and benefits). Seven studies (N = 2,712) test this. In Study 1, participants objectified the same individuals more when they were pictured at work (e.g., in an office) than not at work (e.g., in a coffee shop). In Study 2, there was more objectification when the same event was framed as more (vs. less) work-related. Studies 3a and 3b (experience-sampling studies with 2,300 data points) show that working adults objectify others more during work than non work interactions and demonstrate which situational characteristics enhance objectification. Study 4 manipulates the proposed mechanism: Participants nudged to think less calculatively and strategically showed a reduced tendency to objectify others in work contexts. Considering consequences, job applicants in Study 5 who read company mission statements containing more calculative language expected more objectification and were less interested in applying. Moreover, employees who perceived more objectification in their workplace reported more negative work experiences (e.g., feeling lower belonging, experiencing more incivility; Study 6). Together, these studies provide insight into how objectification arises, where it occurs, and its consequences. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
... Accordingly, the present study attempts to contribute to this discussion by looking at consumer mindsets. Consumer mindsets-or implicit theories-reflect people's lay beliefs about the perpetuation of human characteristics, which substantially affect consumer shopping motivations and behaviors (Dweck, 2000;Murphy & Dweck, 2016;Plaks, Levy, & Dweck, 2009). Given the substantive effect of mindsets on motivations and behaviors, the following question arises: do mindsets influence compulsive buying behavior? ...
This study investigates how mindsets (i.e., the beliefs that individuals have about the nature of human characteristics) are associated with compulsive buying behavior (i.e., the tendency to buy impulsively and obsessively). In particular, we test the relationships between consumer mindsets, three shopping motivations (deal proneness, social comparison, and hedonic motives) and compulsive buying. Based on a survey of 421 respondents conducted in China, our findings reveal the mechanism through which mindsets affect compulsive buying. The results show that when consumers believe in the consistency of personal traits (fixed mindset), they tend to be more vulnerable to deal offers and social comparison. These motivations increase the desire to seek hedonic pleasure, which is associated with a greater propensity for compulsive buying. However, when consumers believe that personal traits can be changed and developed (growth mindset), they seek hedonic pleasure in shopping, which result in a greater tendency to engage in compulsive buying. The present study adds to the existing body of knowledge by unveiling how different mindsets are associated with compulsive buying. In terms of practical implications, this study provides policy makers and marketers with a better understanding of the different motivations that lead to compulsive buying.
... Specifically, the LMMS synthetizes a set of descriptive and prescriptive functions for meaning-making (e.g., "What do effort and failure mean?"; "What are the reasons I can't speak the language well?"; "Should I continue learning?"), which are different from evaluative meaning-making structures (e.g., attitudes and values) (Plaks, Levy, & Dweck, 2009) . Table 26.2 ...
“Mindset”, or beliefs concerning whether a psychological characteristic is more or less malleable, is an influential psychological concept that has had a wide impact on motivation research and educational practices. This chapter surveys research on mindsets in language learning, which shows that mindsets predict how learners make sense of their learning situations and their motivation during second/foreign language development. Synthesizing research in language learning and other domains, the “Language-Mindset Meaning System (LMMS)” framework highlights how language mindsets, as a fundamental belief about the nature of language, relate to aspects of language learning motivation (e.g., effort beliefs, attribution, achievement goal orientation, failure mindset, self-regulatory tendency, and competence-based emotions). A research agenda designed to better understand the LMMS’s content, impact, contextual influences, and dynamics is presented.
... For example, we could not assess the magnitude of the association of mindsets with psychological distress while also controlling for the association through treatment value or coping strategies. Additionally, mindsets are "knowledge structures that follow the basic principles of knowledge activation" and are thus susceptible to similar theoretical processes of change (Plaks, Levy, & Dweck, 2009, p. 1071. And, importantly this means that relations are likely bi-directional. ...
We investigated if growth mindsets—the belief in the malleable nature of human attributes—are negatively related to psychological distress and if they are positively related to treatment value and active coping. In the meta-analysis, we included articles published between 1988 and 2019, written in English, that reported on mindsets as well as a qualifying dependent variable and included information required to calculate an effect size. With a random effects approach, meta-analytic results (k = 72 samples, N = 17,692) demonstrated that mindsets relate to, albeit with minimal effects, to distress, treatment and coping. Specifically, there is a negative relation between growth mindsets and psychological distress (r = −0.220), a positive relation between growth mindsets and treatment value (r = 0.137) and a positive relation between growth mindsets and active coping (r = 0.207). Differences in mindset domain, assessment method of mindsets and timing of assessments moderated effects. There were not differences based on operationalization of psychological distress outcome or sample characteristics (i.e., developmental stage, diagnostic status, ethnicity). We discuss theoretical and practical applications of the findings.
... Using both top-down and bottom-up approaches is based on a theory where entity theorists may well believe that traits are fixed; however, the effects of these traits on behavior could be comparatively small when they are equated to influential contexts and situations (Plaks, et al., 2009). The context in this investigation is where learner-centered teaching is implemented in the English language classroom and how it is mediated by Thai culture. ...
This research explores the relationship between Thai culture and the learning and teaching of English in north-eastern Thailand, by focusing on the adoption of learner-centeredness in the English language classroom, and whether it is mediated by Thai culture. This qualitative study employs observations, and individual/group interviews, using a socio-cultural framework to investigate primary school teachers’ perceptions of learner-centered teaching, how they implement learner-centeredness in the classroom and how this is negotiated by Thai culture. In addition, students’ perceptions of their learning preferences, and how they relate to learner-centeredness are both investigated in relation to Thai culture.
The research findings reveal that most Thai teachers of English taking part in this investigation were able to demonstrate aspects of learner-centered teaching, for example, engaging students, varied use of content, a learner-centered environment, some student autonomy, and assessment to reach student goals; however, they were not particularly adept at explaining theory during their interviews. Teachers highlighted a lack of confidence, a perceived deficit of pronunciation ability and the lack of opportunities to use English outside the classroom as having an influence on their effectiveness. In addition, a shortage of qualified English teachers, and excessive extracurricular activities in schools were also emphasised as having an impact.
Furthermore, the students liked to learn English by singing songs and playing games, and preferred their teacher marking their work, and working in groups, although teachers believed that their students also lacked confidence in using English.
This research has possible implications for teacher training, in that there may be a requirement for Thai culture, as well as the local context, to be taken into consideration when implementing educational change, including the involvement of all stakeholders in the educational process if it is to succeed.
... It is also noteworthy that implicit theories may apply not only to intelligence but to other domains of human functioning as well, including personality. For example, Plaks, Levy, and Dweck (2009) discussed evidence that an implicit theory that personality is relatively fixed (or malleable), has powerful effects on human behavior. For example, people with an implicit theory that personality is relatively malleable are more likely to engage in social action to help the homeless (Karafantis & Levy, 2004), to constructively attempt to rectify a partner's transgression (Kammrath & Dweck, 2006), to assist underperforming employees (Heslin, VandeWalle, & Latham, 2006), and to be less likely to stereotype a person based on race, gender, or occupation (Bastian & Haslam, 2006). ...
In a rooftop office, above a Minneapolis flour mill in 1943, B. F. Skinner discovered “shaping” by training a pigeon to send a small wooden ball down a miniature alley to hit a set of toy pins. Skinner recalled that the day was one of great illumination and emboldened his later suggestions that human behaviors may arise from behavior–environment interactions that are relatively malleable (selectionism) rather than arising from hypothetical inner constructs that are relatively fixed (essentialism). The present article extends selectionism to 4 current topics in psychology (personality change, implicit theories of intelligence, skill learning, and language) and highlights the advantages of selectionism, in contrast to essentialism.
While eating disorders have been estimated to affect at least 4% of the Australian population, research demonstrates that feeding difficulties and eating disorders are overrepresented in neurodivergent people, including in autism, ADHD, intellectual disability, giftedness, and Tourette’s disorder. However, despite there being a substantial body of literature spanning decades evidencing links between neurodivergence and eating disorders, awareness among clinicians and researchers of this existing knowledge base is only emerging in Australia.
NEDC commissioned Eating Disorders Neurodiversity Australia (EDNA) to write a report, Eating Disorders and Neurodivergence: A Stepped Care Approach, that synthesizes research and lived experience evidence regarding the prevention, early identification and treatment of eating disorders and disordered eating for neurodivergent people.
This report aims to encourage collaboration among stakeholders to co-produce and co-design appropriate, effective, culturally valid, and safe neurodiversity-affirming support systems and care pathways. It is designed for the use of a wide range of stakeholders, especially health care professionals (e.g., psychiatrists, psychologists, dietitians, general practitioners, paediatricians, occupational therapists), researchers, academics, educators (e.g., teachers), service managers, and lived experience experts.
This report draws on fundamental constructs relating to human rights, bioethics, humanistic psychology, phenomenology, and social justice. It challenges traditional understandings of neurodivergence as pathological. It seeks to destigamtise neurodivergent body awareness and image, feeding, and eating experiences and behaviours. It is a call to action for all eating disorder stakeholders to engage in a radical rethink of how neuronormative feeding and eating practices, which influence research and clinical practice across all levels of eating disorder care, may prove harmful for neurodivergent people.
In forty-nine states, the federal system, and the District of Columbia, individuals with a felony conviction are statutorily restricted from serving as jurors. Proponents of felon-juror exclusion justify the practice by suggesting that those with a felony criminal history lack character, and if allowed to serve, would ‘taint’ the appearance of the jury system. This study assesses that claim by measuring the public’s opinion of juries that include a juror with a felony criminal history. Using a two-by-two vignette design and drawing on a sample of 200 participants, we vary two experimental factors: the presence of a felon-juror on the jury and the verdict rendered by the jury (guilty/not guilty). Results show that participants’ views of ‘illicit’ juries do not differ statistically from homogeneous juries without a felon-juror, for either verdict condition, undermining the ‘taint’ argument. Results also suggest that under certain conditions, the inclusion of a felon-juror may bolster views of the jury and resulting verdicts. Adding to a growing literature on felon-juror exclusion, these findings call into question the character rationale for felon-juror exclusion and suggest that diversity of experience in the form of a criminal history does not undermine the appearance of the jury.
Die Entwicklung der persönlichen, sozialen und ethnisch-kulturellen Identität stellt eine zentrale Entwicklungsaufgabe im Jugendalter dar. Insbesondere für Schüler*innen aus sozial und ethnisch-kulturell unterrepräsentierten oder marginalisierten Gruppen gestaltet sich dieser Entwicklungsprozess zwischen Erwartungen von Lehrer*innen, Mitschüler*innen und persönlichen Vorstellungen sowie dem Umgang mit Vielfalt in Schul- und Klassenkontext als zunehmend komplex. Dies kann mit einem erhöhten Belastungserleben und verminderten Schulleistungen durch Stereotype und Diskriminierung einhergehen. Entwicklungs- und sozialpsychologisch fundierte Ansätze bieten eine Möglichkeit, diesen Herausforderungen zu begegnen und das Belastungserleben zu reduzieren sowie Lernmotivation, Lernleistungen und Wohlbefinden zu steigern. Die dargestellten Interventionen heben dabei die Stabilisierung eines wachstumsorientierten Intelligenzkonzepts, die Fokussierung auf intrinsisch motivierende Werte und die Reflexion gesellschaftlich vorhandener Stereotype und Vorurteile auf die Stärkung persönlicher oder gruppenbezogener Identitätsanteile, das Wohlbefinden und die Lernmotivation hervor. Zudem werden Anforderungen, Gelingensbedingungen, Gemeinsamkeiten und Schnittstellen der Interventionen als identitätsschützende und -fördernde Anwendungen im Schulkontext diskutiert.
I summarize an early effort to provide a conceptual basis for psychology. Natural science studies material objects, and its methods and assumptions may not be appropriate for the study of persons. Persons exist within the natural attitude and are characterized by such properties as temporality, responsibility, normality, and identity. Contemporary theories of mind focus on people’s understanding of how minds make decisions and shape behavior, but say little about the nature of the entity that possesses a mind; ethnopsychologies are concerned with cultural variations in beliefs about accidental rather than essential aspects of human psychology. The lay philosophical view of the person sketched here is intended to be broader and deeper. It is particularly relevant to trait psychology, appears to have been implicit in much trait research, and is generally consistent with empirical findings on personality traits.
Two studies examined younger and older adults’ lay theories for life satisfaction (LS). In a correlational study (Study 1, N = 744; 356 younger adults: M age = 30.11 years, 46% male; 388 older adults: M age = 65.17 years, 32% male), more incremental (vs. entity) lay theories for LS were strongly related to perceptions concerning the possibility of improving one’s LS (more so than worsening). In a preregistered experiment (Study 2, N = 750; 428 younger adults: M age = 30.07 years, 43% male; 322 older adults: M age = 65.04 years, 32% male), a lay theories manipulation (incremental, entity, or control) impacted the perceived possibility of improving and worsening one’s LS. In both studies incremental (vs. entity) lay theories were positively linked with psychological adjustment and goal striving, as were perceptions concerning the possibility of improving (vs. worsening) one’s LS. Findings support the value of an incremental mindset, regardless of age.
Educational institutions need to respond to global competitive problems, and branding has become a method for higher education institutions to differentiate themselves. Thus, this study attempted to investigate predictors of employee brand-based equity. A cross-sectional research design has been used to record the perception of the teachers, and data are collected using a convenience sampling technique. Before administrating the study on large scale, a pilot testing was conducted, and reliability of the scale and their items was ensured. Pilot testing results indicated a satisfactory reliability level, and constructs correlations were in the assumed directions, which allowed to conduct the study on a large scale. A sample size of 400 was set, and questionnaires were distributed among the participants, out of which, 376 were received back, while 351 were left at the end after discarding incomplete responses. The left over and completed questionnaires indicate 88% response rate. Data have been analyzed through the Smart PLS software by applying the structural equation modeling technique. After establishment of the measurement model through reliability and validity, the structural model was used to test study hypotheses. All the study hypotheses were found statistically significant on the basis of t and p statistics. Results indicate that teacher’s emotional intelligence enhances teachers’ self-efficacy, which further improves their brand-based equity. Similarly, emotional intelligence increases teacher’s performance, which also increases their brand-based equity. Limitations and future directions of the study are also reported.
Attitudinal and Behavioural Commitment can have high impact on achievement of academic goals; it must be present in supervisors and the students. In this study, an experiential learning research was conducted to find the nurturing of Open Source Understanding (OSU) through the preconditioned nature of Close Source Understanding (CSU) that enables to enhance the students' level of commitment. Qualitative method was applied through open interview structured questions at two levels prior to the completion and post completion of report writings. Respondents were ten students and constant supervisions were carried out. Crystallization and triangulation analysis method were performed to analyse and interpret the data and giving meaning to it. Theoretical construction were designed with commitment theories and reflections of personality and styles/approaches were verified to arrive at this experiential learning study conducted at the St. Xavier's College, with Bachelor's Degree students. The findings suggest that commitment level changes are like the personality that changes in any adult. The results suggest that commitment can be nurtured but have the attributes of personality and styles. Among these two commitment OSU and CSU in students, CSU is grounded in behavioural attributes and directly connected to personality and has high flexibility stretch, whereas OSU is a mind-setting attribute which is time-bound and can be nurtured and can remain consistent. This creates a vibration between their attitudinal and behavioural commitments, which is the pivotal to enhance the Collision of Acceptance (CoA). Alike psychological paradigm, the personality can also have an immense impact on shaping their commitment level, which can be understood by the Collision of Ignorance (CoI) stage.
Psychologists are uniquely positioned to help with our collective obligation to advance scientific knowledge in ways that help individuals to flourish. Growth mindsets may offer one such tool for improving lives, yet some research questions the potential to replicate key findings. The aims in the current work are to help explain mixed results and outline ways to improve intervention impact. To reach these goals, we first offer a brief overview of the links between growth mindsets and psychological flourishing. Second, we outline key theories of causal mechanisms and summarize sources of meaningful heterogeneity in growth mindset interventions, with a focus on those designed to improve mental health. Third, we provide cautionary notes that highlight nuances of growth mindset messaging in contexts with stigmatized social identities. Fourth, to conclude, we suggest areas for future research aimed at understanding how to most powerfully harness growth mindsets to help individuals reach optimal psychological functioning.
Causal Modeling of the relationship
among the Implicit theories of moral character, Moral Motivation, and Moral Behavior
النمذجة السببية للعلاقة بين النظريات الضمنية في الشخصية الأخلاقية والدافعية الأخلاقية والسلوك الأخلاقي
The goal of the current manuscript is to embed the theory of mindsets about malleability in workplace contexts. We first define fixed-growth mindsets and the methods that have to date been used to study them. We then briefly review the domains in which mindsets have been documented to shape outcomes meaningfully, linking each to exciting research questions that we hope will soon be studied in workplace contexts. We also highlight some of the fascinating, new questions scholars can study by considering how mindsets might shape outcomes across a diversity of workplaces (e.g., the workforce of low wage and vulnerable populations). We further propose that studying mindsets in workplace contexts can develop mindset theory. We first ask whether workplace contexts provide opportunities to test for moderation on mindset expression. Second, we see opportunity for studying moderation of mindset processes – evaluating whether the psychological processes through which mindsets shape outcomes may differ based on contextual factors that vary across workplaces. We argue that investigating these possibilities will advance both the theory of mindsets about malleability and the study of human flourishing in the workplace. We invite scholars to join us in this endeavour.
The goals of the present study were to assess (1) adults’ patterns of beliefs about and attitudes toward children, adolescents, and adults who are obese and (2) their attitudes toward hypothetical tax-funded programs designed to combat obesity in children, adolescents, and adults. A total of 267 participants, ranging in age from 19 to 88 years old, were recruited through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk) to participate online in the present study. The participants rated adults who are obese less favorably, and as less malleable, than children or adolescents who are obese. Furthermore, they were less supportive of tax-funded programs designed to combat obesity in adults than children or adolescents. In general, the participants’ relatively unfavorable response to adults who are obese appears to be associated with the beliefs that older individuals who are obese are relatively unchangeable and have heightened personal fault for their plight.
Research Summary:
In The Eternal Criminal Record, James Jacobs detailed how it has become increasingly difficult for ex-offenders to escape the mark of their criminal record. One way to “wipe the slate clean” is through the official expungement of criminal records. We assess public views toward this policy using a national sample of American adults (N = 1,000). Public support for expungement is high for persons convicted of property and substance-related offenses, who stay crime free for 7 to 10 years, and who “signal” their reform through stable employment and completion of a rehabilitation program. Members of the public are also concerned about unfettered public access to criminal records and want to ensure that any available criminal record information is accurate. The strongest predictor of support for expungement is a belief in redeemability.
Policy Implications:
There is a growing movement in the United States that seeks to curtail the effects of criminal records through their expungement. In recent years, most states have enacted bills creating, expanding, or streamlining criminal record relief. Public opinion is important in this context, because it can motivate or constrain reform efforts. Our findings show that, when the risk to public safety appears low, the American public favors providing second chances by using expungement to wipe clean the record of a criminal offense committed years previously. Further, knowledge about the public’s belief in redeemability may be key to understanding and promoting reform efforts that seek to include rather than exclude offenders back into society.
People’s mindsets are considered vital since mindsets influence their behaviours. Surprisingly, research investigating how mindsets influence tourists’ behaviours is very scarce. The present study examines the effects of tourists’ mindsets on the choice of holiday activities in a scenario-based experiment. In a 2 × 2 study, which includes tourist mindsets (fixed, growth) and the perception of adventurousness (high, low) of the holiday activities, we show that mindsets influence the choice of holiday activities. Tourists who endorsed growth mindset tend to choose more adventurous activities, while tourists who endorsed fixed mindset seem to be indifferent. The implications for these findings for destination managers are discussed.
This paper concerns the practice of leadership workplace courage in contemporary organizations. Like character, courage is one of the hallmarks of authentic, ethical, shared, collective and effective leadership. Workplace courage is also critical to manage workplace bullying and harassment, and other types of aggressive, humiliating, destructive or psychologically manipulative work behavior. In a corporate world driven by self-interest rather than the peruse of the collective good, where the lack of trust in business leaders is growing, the extant literature highlights the importance of further investigating why and how workplace courage happens while considering multiple research pathways. To address this gap following these research suggestions, and using a scoping critical literature review design, this paper offers a new integrated model to better understand and exercise collective leadership workplace courage in contemporary organizations. Implications, contributions, limitations, suggestions for future research and conclusions are also offered.
In 2009, Maruna and King presented results from a British survey showing that the public’s belief in the redeemability of people who committed offenses curbed their level of punitiveness. Based on a 2017 national survey in the United States (n = 1,000), the current study confirms that redeemability is negatively related to punitive attitudes. In addition, the analyses reveal that this belief predicts support for rehabilitation and specific inclusionary policies (i.e., ban the box in employment, expungement of criminal records, and voting rights for people with a felony conviction). Findings regarding measures for punishment and rehabilitation were confirmed by a 2019 MTurk survey. These results suggest that beliefs about capacity for change among people who committed offenses are key to understanding crime-control public policy.
The belief that others can or cannot change powerfully guides social judgment and behavior. Recent research suggests that perceivers hold target-specific malleability beliefs that certain people, but not others, can change. Six experiments and an internal meta-analysis demonstrate that political orientation operates as a target-specific cue to malleability, with liberals judged as slightly more malleable than conservatives. We test whether target age, gender, and political ideological extremity account for the effect, and find that target ideological extremity independently predicts greater perceived fixedness. A final experiment finds that political prejudice influences malleability beliefs: political outgroup members are judged less favorably than political ingroup members and as a result, are judged to be more fixed. This research contributes to a growing body of work illustrating that some people are believed to be more malleable than others.
Background:
Lay belief systems about the malleability of human attributes have been shown to impact behavior change in multiple domains. Addiction mindset-i.e., beliefs about the permanence (vs. malleability) of addiction - may affect cigarette smokers' ability to quit, but this has never been examined.
Objectives:
The aims of the present research were to develop a measure of addiction mindset (study 1) and examine its associations with various psychological aspects of quitting smoking (study 2).
Methods:
In Study 1, using factor analysis of current smokers' and nonsmokers' (n = 600) responses to 22 items designed to measure addiction mindset, we developed a reliable six-item Addiction Mindset Scale (AMS). In Study 2, adult smokers (n = 200) completed the AMS, and measures of a number of psychological processes related to smoking.
Results:
Higher scores on the AMS, indicative of the belief that addiction is malleable (referred to as a growth mindset), were positively and significantly associated with greater motivation to quit, greater commitment to quitting, greater self-efficacy to abstain, less attribution of failure to lack of ability to change addiction, and fewer self-reported barriers to cessation (all p's < .05).
Conclusions:
The results of this study show a relationship between the beliefs about the permanence of addiction and psychological processes relevant to quitting smoking. The findings underscore the potential of future research exploring how addiction mindsets relate to successful smoking cessation as well as other types of addictive behavior and how they can be applied to change people's behavior.
The nature of free will is a philosophical issue; whether people believe they have it is a psychological one; and whether people actually have it is in the terrain in between. This chapter shows how people's self-theories - their conceptions of human qualities as fixed or as malleable - create different perceptions and experiences of free will. Interestingly, these different perceptions mirror those of different philosophical traditions. The chapter then shows how self-theories lead people to different psychological solutions for issues allied with free will, such as issues of moral responsibility and blame. How much free will do people actually have? The debate has often turned on whether the physical laws of nature allow for free will. To a psychologist, this seems surprising. Thus, the chapter ends by proposing that the issue of free will may, at least in part, turn on questions of human nature and how best to conceive of it.
Much of psychology focuses on universal principles of thought and action. Although an extremely productive pursuit, this approach, by describing only the "average person," risks describing no one in particular. This article discusses an alternate approach that complements interests in universal principles with analyses of the unique psychological meaning that individuals find in their experiences and interactions. Rooted in research on social cognition, this approach examines how people's lay theories about the stability or malleability of human attributes alter the meaning they give to basic psychological processes such as self-regulation and social perception. Following a review of research on this lay theories perspective in the field of social psychology, the implications of analyzing psychological meaning for other fields such as developmental, cultural, and personality psychology are discussed.
The question of whether lay attributors are biased in their discounting of 1 cause given an alternative cause has not been resolved by decades of research, largely due to the lack of a clear standard for the rational amount of discounting. The authors propose a normative model in which the attributor's causal schemas and discounting inferences are represented in terms of subjective probability. The analysis examines Kelley's (1972b) proposed causal schemas and then other schemas for multiple causes (varying in assumptions about prior probability, sufficiency, correlation, and number of causes) to determine when discounting is rational. It reveals that discounting is implied from most, but not all, possible causal schemas, albeit at varying amounts. Hence, certain patterns of discounting previously interpreted as biases may, in fact, reflect coherent inferences from causal schemas. Results of 2 studies, which measured causal assumptions and inferences, support this interpretation (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
When perceiving, explaining, or criticizing human behavior, people distinguish between intentional and unintentional actions. To do so, they rely on a shared folk concept of intentionality. In contrast to past speculative models, this article provides an empirically based model of this concept. Study 1 demonstrates that people agree substantially in their judgments of intentionality, suggesting a shared underlying concept. Study 2 reveals that when asked to define directly the termintentional,people mention four components of intentionality: desire, belief, intention, and awareness. Study 3 confirms the importance of a fifth component, namely skill. In light of these findings, the authors propose a model of the folk concept of intentionality and provide a further test in Study 4. The discussion compares the proposed model to past ones and examines its implications for social perception, attribution, and cognitive development.
This special issue highlights the contribution of the lay theories approach to the study of groups. Six articles address the nature, development, and consequences of a variety of lay theories for group perception and behavior. First, these articles illuminate the structural, functional, and dynamic properties of lay theories as well as their scope. Second, the articles address the development of lay theories from diverse theoretical perspectives, including evolutionary, cognitive, developmental, and sociocultural learning. Third, each article documents the consequences of different lay theories for understanding group inferences and judgments. Taken together, these articles pro- pose theoretical extensions of the lay theories approach and suggest practical impli- cations of the lay theories approach for reducing prejudice.
Lay theory research on intergroup relations has rapidly grown over the past two decades. Drawing on articles in this Special Issue, we showcase the latest developments. First, we define lay theories, addressing the extent of overlap with scientific theories and differences among lay theories in terms of type of representation, level of articulation, frequency of activation and use, range of applicability, and degree of universality. Second, we describe advances in the understanding of the functions of lay theories. Third, we review the far-reaching implications of lay theories for group and intergroup processes. Fourth, we discuss the movement toward comparing and contrasting related lay theories. Taken together, these articles suggest the study of lay theories provides a fuller understanding of intergroup relations.
Implicit theories of moral character (ITM) was manipulated in an experiment examining the association between individuals' implicit attribution position and their responses to various social transgressions. As hypothesized, entity theorists, who tend to base their attributions on internal dispositional information, responded with significantly higher levels of negative affect after transgressive episodes than did incremental theorists, who tend to use more external situation-relevant information. Responding more critically to perceived moral transgressions may offer those holding an entity theory a simple alternative to the more effortful processing of situation-relevant information. Findings are presented in light of the social intuitionist model of moral judgment.
The authors hypothesize that different people would use information differently in their social decision making depending on their implicit theory about human character traits. Past research has shown that entity theorists (who believe traits are fixed entities) tend to make more rapid, global trait judgments and to accord traits greater weight in explaining behavior as compared to incremental theorists (who believe traits are more malleable qualities). This article examines how potentially trait-relevant information might influence the decision making (verdicts in a fictitious murder case) of entity versus incremental theorists. Results from three studies showed that such information (e.g., the defendant’s dress at the crime) had a marked effect on entity theorists’ verdicts but little effect on incremental theorists’ verdicts. In addition, entity theorists were more likely than incremental theorists to request additional character information. Implications for the role of implicit theories in social decision making are explored.
Two studies investigate manipulating implicit theories as a function of participants' self-theories. Women were primed with a malleable or fixed view of math intelligence before completing a math test. Study 1 utilized highly skilled participants and revealed that entity theorists experienced less anxiety when exposed to a malleable prime versus a fixed prime; however, entity theorists in the fixed condition performed better on the math test than incremental theorists. Incremental theorists were unaffected by the malleable prime. Study 2 utilized moderately skilled participants and found that incremental theorists attempted more math questions when exposed to a malleable prime versus a fixed prime, whereas entity theorists were unaffected by the primes. The relationship between self-theories and different ability levels is discussed.
This study supported hypotheses derived from Dweck's model about the implications of two implicit self-theories: Entity theorists believe their intelligence is fixed, whereas Incremental theorists believe their intelligence can be increased. Findings showed no normative change in implicit self-theories from high school through college and relatively stable individual differences during college. Entity theorists tended to adopt performance goals, whereas Incremental theorists tended to adopt learning goals. In terms of attributions, affect, and behavioral response to challenge, Entity theorists displayed a helpless response pattern and Incremental theorists displayed a mastery-oriented response pattern. Finally, Entity theorists declined in self-esteem during college whereas Incremental theorists increased self-esteem, and path analyses showed that this effect was mediated by goal orientation and the helpless versus mastery response patterns.
People possess idiosyncratic, self-serving definitions of traits and abilities. This observation was supported by 6 studies in which people articulated the performances along behavioral criteria (e.g., math Scholastic Achievement Test score) necessary to "qualify" for relevant traits (e.g., math ability) or made judgments about performances attained by other people. When making judgments of others, high-performing Ss tended to rate target performances less favorably than did low-performing Ss, with these disagreements most pronounced when the target's performance was low. These disagreements were mediated neither by perceptions of trait importance nor by differing beliefs about the distribution of performances along the behavioral metrics. Discussion centers on avenues for further study and on similarities and differences between these studies and classic work on attitudinal judgment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Five experiments supported the hypothesis that peoples' implicit theories about the fixedness versus malleability of human attributes (entity versus incremental theories) predict differences in degree of social stereotyping. Relative to those holding an incremental theory, people holding an entity theory made more stereotypical trait judgments of ethnic and occupational groups (Experiments 1, 2, and 5 ) and formed more extreme trait judgments of novel groups ( Experiment 3 ). Implicit theories also predicted the degree to which people attributed stereotyped traits to inborn group qualities versus environmental forces (Experiment 2). Manipulating implicit theories affected level of stereotyping (Experiment 4), suggesting that implicit theories can play a causal role. Finally, implicit theories predicted unique and substantial variance in stereotype endorsement after controlling for the contributions of other stereotype-relevant individual difference variables (Experiment 5). These results highlight the importance of people's basic assumptions about personality in stereotyping. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Tested the proposition that variations in experience with lack of control ought to cause variations in the tendency to engage in attribution processes. 158 university students were first given 1 of 3 levels of experience with lack of control (high, low, or no helplessness training); in a 2nd study, their utilization of information that had previously been shown to be sensitive to motivational variations was measured. Results indicate the expected effects on mood and performance: Low helplessness Ss were hostile and showed performance gains, and high helplessness Ss were depressed and showed performance deficits. However, the attributions of both low and high helplessness Ss were significantly more affected by variations in the description of a communicator than were the attributions of Ss who had not been given experience with lack of control. Findings are consistent with the general control motivation hypothesis. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
outline our subjective essentialistic view of stereotypes and propose that stereotypes enable perceivers to understand why the instances of the category are what they are and thus justify their being treated the way they are / review the current debate on categorization in cognitive psychology showing that the validity of classic similarity approaches is largely questioned and that the use of essentialistic theories is now offered as an alternative account for categorization learning and use / examine a series of theoretical . . . contributions showing the importance of essentialistic explanations in social categorization / suggest that a functional view of explanations as they underlie stereotypic beliefs has come of age / argue that stereotypes play a key role in the rationalization of the existing social order / spell out differences between essentialistic vs non-essentialistic categorization / examine how subjective essentialism relates to group perception phenomena
suggest a continuum of social categorization and conclude by proposing a syndrome of essentialistic categorization / brings subjective essentialism and the rationalization function of stereotypes together (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In this article, the authors propose that individuals' moral beliefs are linked to their implicit theories about the nature (i.e., malleability) of their social-moral reality. Specifically, it was hypothesized that when individuals believe in a fixed reality (entity theory), they tend to hold moral beliefs in which duties within the given system are seen as fundamental. In contrast, when individuals believe in a malleable reality (incremental theory), one that can be shaped by individuals, they hold moral beliefs that focus on moral principles, such as human rights, around which that reality should be organized. Results from 5 studies supported the proposed framework: Implicit theories about the malleability of one's social-moral reality predicted duty-based vs. rights-based moral beliefs.
Although coaching can facilitate employee development and performance, the stark reality is that managers often differ substantially in their inclination to coach their subordinates. To address this issue, we draw from and build upon a body of social psychology research that finds that implicit person theories (IPTs) about the malleability of personal attributes (e.g., personality and ability) affect one's willingness to help others. Specifically, individuals holding an “entity theory” that human attributes are innate and unalterable are disinclined to invest in helping others to develop and improve, relative to individuals who hold the “incremental theory” that personal attributes can be developed. Three studies examined how managers' IPTs influence the extent of their employee coaching. First, a longitudinal field study found that managers' IPTs predicted employee evaluations of their subsequent employee coaching. This finding was replicated in a second field study. Third, an experimental study found that using self-persuasion principles to induce incremental IPTs increased entity theorist managers' willingness to coach a poor performing employee, as well as the quantity and quality of their performance improvement suggestions.
Perceivers’ shared theories about the social world have long featured prominently in social inference research. Here, we investigate how fundamental differences in such theories influence basic inferential processes. Past work has typically shown that integrating multiple interpretations of behavior during social inference requires cognitive resources. However, three studies that measured or manipulated people’s beliefs about the stable versus dynamic nature of human attributes (i.e., their entity vs. incremental theory, respectively) qualify these past findings. Results revealed that, when interpreting others’ actions, perceivers’ theories selectively facilitate the consideration of interpretations that are especially theory-relevant. While experiencing cognitive load, entity theorists continued to incorporate information about stable dispositions (but not about dynamic social situations) in their social inferences, whereas incremental theorists continued to incorporate information about dynamic social situations (but not about stable traits). Implications of these results for how perceivers find meaning in behavior are discussed.
Models of Person X Situation influences on social behavior and judgement have invoked two distinct mechanisms: a personality disposition and a situational press. In this study we conceptualized both influences in terms of a single underlying mechanism, construct accessibility. We pitted the characteristic ways that individuals perceive others against situational influences on accessibility (i.e., contextual priming) and tracked over time the relative power of these competing influences on the outcome of an impression-formation task. Subjects possessed either a chronically accessible (chronics) or an inaccessible (nonchronics) construct for either outgoing or inconsiderate behavior. As predicted, as the delay since the priming event lengthened (from 15 to 180 s), chronics were progressively more likely to use the chronically accessible construct instead of the primed alternative construct to categorize an ambiguous target behavior, whereas nonchronics' relative use of the primed and alternative constructs did not change as a function of postpriming delay.
Lay dispositionism refers to lay people's tendency to use traits as the basic unit of analysis in social perception (L. Ross & R. E. Nisbett, 1991). Five studies explored the relation between the practices indicative of lay dispositionism and people's implicit theories about the nature of personal attributes. As predicted, compared with those who believed that personal attributes are malleable (incremental theorists), those who believed in fixed traits (entity theorists) used traits or trait-relevant information to make stronger future behavioral predictions (Studies 1 and 2) and made stronger trait inferences from behavior (Study 3). Moreover, the relation between implicit theories and lay dispositionism was found in both the United States (a more individualistic culture) and Hong Kong (a more collectivistic culture), suggesting this relation to be generalizable across cultures (Study 4). Finally, an experiment in which implicit theories were manipulated provided preliminary evidence for the possible causal role of implicit theories in lay dispositionism (Study 5).
How do people respond to information that counters a stereotype? Do they approach it or avoid it? Four experiments showed that attention to stereotype-consistent vs. -inconsistent information depends on people's implicit theories about human traits. Those holding an entity theory (the belief that traits are fixed) consistently displayed greater attention to (Experiments 1 and 4) and recognition of (Experiments 2 and 3) consistent information, whereas those holding an incremental (dynamic) theory tended to display greater attention to (Experiment 1) and recognition of (Experiment 3) inconsistent information. This was true whether implicit theories were measured as chronic structures (Experiments 1, 2, and 4) or were experimentally manipulated (Experiment 3). Thus, different a priori assumptions about human traits and behavior lead to processing that supports versus limits stereotype maintenance.
A meta-analysis of 54 experiments investigated the influence of social expectations on memory for information that is congruent and incongruent with those expectations. Results showed that overall, memory was better for expectancy-incongruent than expectancy-congruent information on recall and recognition sensitivity measures. Recognition measures that were uncorrected for response biases produced an overall tendency to report expectancy-congruent information as having been seen. A number of moderator variables influenced the strength of these overall effects, including the strength of the expectancy used to guide information processing, the complexity or cognitive demands of the processing task, set size, the type of expectancy, the type of target, Ss' information-processing goals, and the delay between exposure to the stimulus information and the memory test. The overall pattern of results appears to be most parsimoniously explained in terms of the influence of contextual variables on the perceiver's motivation to resolve incongruity.
In this article, the authors propose that individuals' moral beliefs are linked to their implicit theories about the nature (i.e., malleability) of their social-moral reality. Specifically, it was hypothesized that when individuals believe in a fixed reality (entity theory), they tend to hold moral beliefs in which duties within the given system are seen as fundamental. In contrast, when individuals believe in a malleable reality (incremental theory), one that can be shaped by individuals, they hold moral beliefs that focus on moral principles, such as human rights, around which that reality should be organized. Results from 5 studies supported the proposed framework: Implicit theories about the malleability of one's social-moral reality predicted duty-based vs. rights-based moral beliefs.
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We explicate a knowledge-activation framework depicting the link between lay personality knowledge and dispositional judgments, building on work by Dweck, Chiu, and Hong (1995a, 1995b). According to this framework, most people possess knowledge consistent with an entity theory (personality is fixed) and incremental theory (personality is malleable), which operates according to knowledge-activation principles. Consistent with this claim, we find that people render more confident dispositional judgments when their entity knowledge is made relatively more accessible through priming manipulations that activate aspects of their existing knowledge. Findings also illustrate the usefulness of incorporating both specific and general knowledge in our analysis. The present framework enhances and complements the individual-differences approach to the study of person theories prevalent in the literature.
Three experiments were designed to clarify the mechanisms underlying Eagly, Chen, Chaiken, and Shaw-Barnes’s (1999) meta-analytic demonstration that attitudinally congenial information has typically not been more memorable than uncongenial information. Participants remembered congenial and uncongenial messages equally well, despite their disapproval of the uncongenial information. This null congeniality effect was obtained regardless of whether (a) messages pertained to abortion or gays in the military or presented information on both sides or only one side of the issue; (b) recognition or recall measures were administered soon after the message or 2 weeks later; and (c) participants were or were not activists on the issue, had stronger or weaker attitudes, had more prior knowledge of counterattitudinal (vs. proattitudinal) arguments, or did or did not have their attention constrained to the message. Process findings suggested that participants’ thoughtful counterarguing of the uncongenial messages enhanced their memory for them.
In this target article, we present evidence for a new model of individual differences in judgments and reactions. The model holds that people's implicit theories about human attributes structure the way they understand and react to human actions and outcomes. We review research showing that when people believe that attributes (such as intelligence or moral character) are fixed, trait-like entities (an entity theory), they tend to understand outcomes and actions in terms of these fixed traits (''I failed the test because I am dumb'' or ''He stole the bread because he is dishonest''). In contrast, when people believe that attributes are more dynamic, malleable, and developable (an incremental theory), they tend refocus less on broad traits and, instead, tend to understand outcomes and actions in terms of more specific behavioral or psychological mediators (''I failed the test because of my effort or strategy'' or ''He stole the bread because he was desperate''). The two frameworks also appear to foster different reactions: helpless versus mastery-oriented responses to personal setbacks and an emphasis on retribution versus education or rehabilitation for transgressions. These findings are discussed in terms of their implications for personality, motivation, and social perception.
Research on implicit person theories shows that people who believe that human attributes are immutable (“entity theorists”) are particularly prone to endorse social stereotypes and to explain them with reference to innate factors. We argue that entity theories belong to a broader set of beliefs that represent differences between people in terms of underlying essences. New measures of three essentialist beliefs (i.e., in the biological basis, discreteness, and informativeness of human attributes) were developed in a pilot study. In the main study, these beliefs were found to covary with entity theories, and to predict the endorsement and innate explanation of stereotypes. Essentialist beliefs predicted stereotype endorsement independently of popular stereotyping-related individual difference measures, and in a way that was not reducible to the effect of entity theories. We propose that research on implicit person theories can be placed within an encompassing framework of psychological essentialism.
The implications of implicit theories for social information processing were examined. Implicit theory proposes that entity theorists see others' traits as fixed and stable, whereas incremental theorists see others' traits as malleable and changeable. It was found that entity theorists formed on-line judgments and incremental theorists formed memory-based judgments of target individuals. These process differences were observed in amount of recall, primacy effects in recall, memory–judgment relations, and illusory correlation formation using natural differences in perceivers' implicit theories (Experiment 1) and by manipulating their implicit theories (Experiment 2). Results indicate that implicit theories affect the process by which perceivers form impressions of others. The implications of these findings for the relation between implicit theory and social perception are discussed.
This chapter describes the naive explanation of human actions, theory of correspondent inferences, personal involvement and correspondence, and the recent research concerning phenomenal causality and the attribution of intentions. The cognitive task of establishing sufficient reason for an action involves processing the available information about, or making assumptions about, the links between stable individual dispositions and observed action. The dispositional attributes are inferred from the effects of action, but not every effect is equally salient in the inference process. The perceiver's fundamental task is to interpret or infer the causal antecedents of action. When a person's actions have certain consequences, it is important for the perceiver to determine whether the person was capable of producing these consequences in response to his intentions. Where an actor fails to produce certain effects that might have been anticipated by the perceiver, there may be ambiguity as to whether the actor did not want to produce the effects, or wanted but was not able to. The attribution of intentions is that actions are informative to the extent that they have emerged out of a context of choice and reflect a selection of one among plural alternatives. However, the distinctiveness of the effects achieved and the extent to which they do not represent stereotypic cultural values, determine the likelihood that information about the actor can be extracted from an action. To say that an inference is correspondent, then, is to say that a disposition is being rather directly reflected in behavior, and that this disposition is unusual in its strength or intensity. In-role behavior is supported by too many reasons to be informative about the actor. However, out-of-role behavior is more informative because the effects of such actions are distinctive and not to be dismissed as culturally desirable.
• As the title suggests, this book examines the psychology of interpersonal relations. In the context of this book, the term "interpersonal relations" denotes relations between a few, usually between two, people. How one person thinks and feels about another person, how he perceives him and what he does to him, what he expects him to do or think, how he reacts to the actions of the other--these are some of the phenomena that will be treated. Our concern will be with "surface" matters, the events that occur in everyday life on a conscious level, rather than with the unconscious processes studied by psychoanalysis in "depth" psychology. These intuitively understood and "obvious" human relations can, as we shall see, be just as challenging and psychologically significant as the deeper and stranger phenomena. The discussion will center on the person as the basic unit to be investigated. That is to say, the two-person group and its properties as a superindividual unit will not be the focus of attention. Of course, in dealing with the person as a member of a dyad, he cannot be described as a lone subject in an impersonal environment, but must be represented as standing in relation to and interacting with another person. The chapter topics included in this book include: Perceiving the Other Person; The Other Person as Perceiver; The Naive Analysis of Action; Desire and Pleasure; Environmental Effects; Sentiment; Ought and Value; Request and Command; Benefit and Harm; and Reaction to the Lot of the Other Person. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
• As the title suggests, this book examines the psychology of interpersonal relations. In the context of this book, the term "interpersonal relations" denotes relations between a few, usually between two, people. How one person thinks and feels about another person, how he perceives him and what he does to him, what he expects him to do or think, how he reacts to the actions of the other--these are some of the phenomena that will be treated. Our concern will be with "surface" matters, the events that occur in everyday life on a conscious level, rather than with the unconscious processes studied by psychoanalysis in "depth" psychology. These intuitively understood and "obvious" human relations can, as we shall see, be just as challenging and psychologically significant as the deeper and stranger phenomena. The discussion will center on the person as the basic unit to be investigated. That is to say, the two-person group and its properties as a superindividual unit will not be the focus of attention. Of course, in dealing with the person as a member of a dyad, he cannot be described as a lone subject in an impersonal environment, but must be represented as standing in relation to and interacting with another person. The chapter topics included in this book include: Perceiving the Other Person; The Other Person as Perceiver; The Naive Analysis of Action; Desire and Pleasure; Environmental Effects; Sentiment; Ought and Value; Request and Command; Benefit and Harm; and Reaction to the Lot of the Other Person. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Two experiments examined trait judgments made from behaviors. Results from an initial experiment suggest that the informativeness of the behaviors, and not peoples' affective responses or approach/avoidance tendencies, best account for the impact of inconsistent information on trait judgments. The results of a second experiment yielded additional support for this idea by showing that when a target's behaviors were inconsistent in their trait implications: (1) negativity effects emerged in judgments of the target's honesty; (2) positivity effects emerged in judgments of the target's intelligence; (3) these effects diminished when the targets were groups rather than individuals; and (4) judgments made by entity theorists were less affected by inconsistent behavior than judgments made by incremental theorists. These effects did not emerge when a target's behaviors were consistent in their implications. Collectively, these results suggest that the usefulness of a behavior for a trait judgment depends on whether the judgment situation prompts participants to evaluate the extent to which a target fits a single trait category or forces a calculation of the target's relative fit to alternative trait categories. The results also suggest that some aspects of trait judgments cannot be explained by evaluative responses to behaviors or to targets.
People may believe that personal attributes are fixed entities that cannot be changed (hold an entity theory). Alternatively, they may believe that qualities of a person are malleable (hold an incremental theory). In the present research, the authors used Sternberg's (1966) memory search task to examine entity and incremental theorists' cognitive strategies in memory search. It was hypothesized that entity theorists, who have a greater tendency to make spontaneous evaluation of people, would organize impressions in short-term memory according to whether the stimulus persons are positively or negatively evaluated. Next, they might compare the probe only to the stimulus persons with matched valence or discard the ones that did not match the probe in valence. By comparison, incremental theorists, who tend not to make immediate evaluative trait judgments, should be less likely to use these evaluation-based strategies. These hypotheses were confirmed in two memory search experiments, in which the names of positive or negative persons were used as stimuli.
Presents a summary and synthesis of the author's work on attribution theory concerning the mechanisms involved in the process of causal explanations. The attribution theory is related to studies of social perception, self-perception, and psychological epistemology. Two systematic statements of attribution theory are described, discussed, and illustrated with empirical data: the covariation and the configuration concepts. Some problems for attribution theory are considered, including the interplay between preconceptions and new information, simple vs. complex schemata, attribution of covariation among causes, and illusions in attributions. The role of attribution in decision making and behavior is discussed. (56 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
In 3 experiments, a total of 96 undergraduates studied and recalled sentences describing behaviors while performing a laboratory impression-information task. Recall was high for behaviors that were incongruent with a personality-trait impression for a character, whereas recall was much lower for behaviors that were congruent or neutral with reference to the impression. Set size, the number of congruent and incongruent behaviors attributed to the character, was shown to be a major determinant of this result. The smaller the size of the incongruent set, the higher the probability of recalling an item from the set. There was no tendency for behaviors to cluster by trait category in recall output protocols. This result is interpreted as evidence that a simple analogy to hierarchical noun categories, studied in many verbal learning experiments on organization of memory, did not apply to the present results. Three theoretical analyses—an associative network model, a depth-of-processing model, and a schema model—are reviewed in light of these results. (56 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
According to a social judgeability analysis, a crucial determinant of impression formation is the extent to which people feel entitled to judge a target person. Two experiments, with a total of 113 undergraduates, tested the impact of the subjective availability of individuating information on a social judgment independent of its actual presence. In Exp 1, Ss made a stereotypical judgment when they believed individuating information was present even if no information was in fact given. In Exp 2, Ss who thought they received individuating information made more extreme and confident judgments than Ss who thought they received category information. This indicates that Ss' judgments were not simply a function of implicit demand: The illusion of receiving individuating information led Ss to believe they possessed the necessary evidence for legitimate decision making. This result supports the existence of rules in the social inference process. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
[suggests] that there is no more prototypical and fundamental source of uncertainty reduction motives than that associated with failure to understand the relatively unchanging causal conditions for events / introduces a model of motivation that builds upon this notion of "causal uncertainty"
the model outlined herein argues that some people in some situations are chronically more motivated than others to resolve causal uncertainty / such chronic individual differences in uncertainty about one's understanding of social causation, it is proposed, have fundamental consequences for the social information-processing goals adopted and for the manner in which information is encoded, interpreted, and stored / describe initial research findings with respect to the measurement of such individual differences in causal-uncertainty beliefs, as well as to the antecedents and consequences of such beliefs / briefly [discuss] historical and current treatments of uncertainty, some of which bear some similarity to our notion of causal uncertainty (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
A meta-analysis of 54 experiments investigated the influence of social expectations on memory for information that is congruent and incongruent with those expectations. Results showed that, overall, memory was better for expectancy-incongruent than expectancy-congruent information on recall and recognition sensitivity measures. Recognition measures that were uncorrected for response biases produced an overall tendency to report expectancy-congruent information as having been seen. A number of moderator variables influenced the strength of these overall effects, including the strength of the expectancy used to guide information processing, the complexity or cognitive demands of the processing task, set size, the type of expectancy, the type of target, Ss' information-processing goals, and the delay between exposure to the stimulus information and the memory test. Results appear to be most parsimoniously explained in terms of the influence of contextual variables on the perceiver's motivation to resolve incongruity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
408 undergraduates participated in 4 experiments examining an associative model of memory, according to which the encoding of an incongruent item will result in the formation of a large number of associative paths between items, facilitating subsequent recall. Ss were better at recalling items that were incongruent with a prior expectancy than those that were congruent, and the difference was as pronounced after a delay of 48 hrs as it was after only a few minutes. Adding incongruent items to the list increased the proportion of congruent items that were recalled, but adding congruent items had no effect on the recall of incongruent items. It is suggested that unexpected or incongruent behaviors are difficult to comprehend and are considered in relation to behaviors already known about the target person during the process of encoding. Requiring Ss to allocate a portion of their processing capacity to an irrelevant task interfered with their ability to form such linkages and reduced the advantage of incongruent over congruent items in a free-recall task. Although the results are consistent with a variety of associative models that allow for the formation of linkages between items, it is suggested that the data place important constraints on the way such models may be formulated. (67 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)