Belief in negative change in intelligence: Whether and (if so) how it can add to the implicit theories of intelligence

초록

The implicit theories of intelligence consist of two beliefs, namely the belief that intelligence is fixed (entity belief) and the belief that intelligence is malleable (incremental belief). By recruiting undergraduates (N = 292; M-age = 21.89; SDage = 2.70) and older adults (N = 287; M-age = 64.31; SDage = 3.85), we examined whether the original incremental belief can be divided into two beliefs that differ by the direction of change, namely increase-focused and decrease-focused beliefs. Correlations within mindset beliefs and the differences between age-groups suggest that increase-focused and decrease-focused beliefs are independent of each other. Moreover, we demonstrate that specifying the direction of change may have additional benefits in predicting academic adaptations (i.e., effort-based strategies after failure) and life satisfaction among undergraduate samples. Also, decrease-focused belief had significant implications in predicting affects among older adults compared to younger adults. These results may contribute to the existing literature on mindset theory by showing a complementary role of decrease-focused beliefs.

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