Life Is a Roller Coaster When You View the World Through Entity Glasses

Abstract

In their model of implicit theories, Dweck, Chiu, and Hong articulate an ambitious conceptual framework with far-ranging implications for personality, motivation, and social behavior. The authors identify two fundamentally different world views that influence how individuals process and respond to social information, and they detail the motivational and social consequences of these world views in two important domains of human behavior (achievement and moral judgment). Dweck et al. have marshalled an extensive array of empirical evidence demonstrating that an individual's beliefs about the malleability of intelligence and morality have a major impact on the way impressions are formed, information is processed, goals are adopted, setbacks are handled, and social reward and punishment is administered. The elegance, simplicity, and scope of the model are truly impressive. In the following, we outline some questions and concerns about the model as presently articulated. One important question about this model, which is essentially a theory about individuals' theories about traits, is whether Dweck et al. themselves hold an entity or incremental theory in conceptualizing this individual difference variable. That is, do theories of intelligence and morality represent fixed world views, or are these perspectives malleable? The data indicate that the entity-incremental dimension is domain specific but reliable over time within domains. These data and the use of global and stable terms like world view and immutable suggest that once an entity theorist, always an entity (within domains, of course). However, the authors also cite evidence that entity and incremental theories can be experimentally manipulated, suggesting that these theories are, to some degree, malleable. These seemingly discrepant positions-that implicit theories represent stable world views within domains, yet they can be experimentally manipulated-are difficult for us to reconcile. Intuitively, it seems odd that an individual who views the world through entity glasses could be persuaded to adopt an incremental theory as a function of a brief experimental manipulation. We have additional questions regarding the precise nature of the incremental and entity theories, based on the manner in which Dweck et al. assess the two world views. Although the authors claim that approximately 85% of participants can be classified as holding a clear theory within each domain, we are not convinced that they have actually established a clear dichotomy between entity and incremental theorists. Individuals identified as incremental theorists are defined by virtue of their rejection of entity theories rather than their espousal of incremental beliefs. Does rejection of an entity theory necessarily or logically imply endorsement of an incremental theory? This method of classification makes it difficult to know whether incremental theorists show their distinct patterns of judgments, affective reactions, and adaptive responses because they reject the entity world view or because they have actively embraced the incremental world view. The Boyum (1988) and Leggett (1985) data cited in the target article seem to indicate that the latter is true, but these data also demonstrate that entity theorists widely endorse incremental beliefs as well. Thus, everyone appears to adhere to the incremental world view, one subset of whom (approximately 40%) additionally endorse the entity theory. An interesting possibility raised by the Boyum (1988) and Leggett (1985) data is that entity theorists may actually have both incremental and entity theories available in memory, but the relative accessibility of the two beliefs varies (see Nicholls, 1984, 1989). Perhaps the entity theory is chronically accessible for individuals characterized as entity theorists and typically determines their judgments and reactions in the manner outlined by Dweck et al. However, these individuals may be able to access the incremental theory in situations that make a different world view salient (e.g., questionnaires that ask about incremental beliefs, studies that manipulate theories), and entity theorists may thus become incremental theorists in some situations. In this sense, entity theorists might have the potential to be more flexible than incremental theorists who only have one theory available. Our analysis suggests that it should be easier to alter the world view of an entity theorist than one of an incremental theorist, and an interesting direction for future research would be to examine whether entity theorists can learn to change their theories on the basis of anticipated feedback. For example, perhaps entity theorists could learn to switch