Person theories and attention allocation: preferences for stereotypic versus counterstereotypic information.

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.

Person versus process praise and criticism: implications for contingent self-worth and coping.

Conventional wisdom suggests that praising a child as a whole or praising his or her traits is beneficial. Two studies tested the hypothesis that both criticism and praise that conveyed person or trait judgments could send a message of contingent worth and undermine subsequent coping. In Study 1, 67 children (ages 5-6 years) role-played tasks involving a setback and received 1 of 3 forms of criticism after each task: person, outcome, or process criticism. In Study 2, 64 children role-played successful tasks and received either person, outcome, or process praise. In both studies, self-assessments, affect, and persistence were measured on a subsequent task involving a setback. Results indicated that children displayed significantly more "helpless" responses (including self-blame) on all dependent measures after person criticism or praise than after process criticism or praise. Thus person feedback, even when positive, can create vulnerability and a sense of contingent self-worth.

Praise for intelligence can undermine children's motivation and performance.

Praise for ability is commonly considered to have beneficial effects on motivation. Contrary to this popular belief, six studies demonstrated that praise for intelligence had more negative consequences for students' achievement motivation than praise for effort. Fifth graders praised for intelligence were found to care more about performance goals relative to learning goals than children praised for effort. After failure, they also displayed less task persistence, less task enjoyment, more low-ability attributions, and worse task performance than children praised for effort. Finally, children praised for intelligence described it as a fixed trait more than children praised for hard work, who believed it to be subject to improvement. These findings have important implications for how achievement is best encouraged, as well as for more theoretical issues, such as the potential cost of performance goals and the socialization of contingent self-worth.

Children's thinking about traits: implications for judgments of the self and others.

The relation between the way in which children interpret human behavior and their beliefs about the stability of human traits is investigated. In interviews with 202 7- and 8-year-olds across 2 studies, the belief that traits are stable predicted a greater tendency to make trait judgments, and an increased focus on outcomes and behaviors through which traits can be judged. In the academic domain, a belief in trait stability was associated with an emphasis on the evaluative meanings of performance outcomes, as opposed to mediating processes such as effort. In the sociomoral domain, the same belief was associated with an emphasis on the evaluative meanings of behaviors (e.g., whether the person is good or bad), as opposed to factors that mediate behavior, such as intention. Results suggest that beliefs about the stability of traits may serve an important role in thinking about and functioning within the academic and sociomoral domains.

Lay dispositionism and implicit theories of personality.

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).

Relations among children's social goals, implicit personality theories, and responses to social failure.

Two studies examined children's thought patterns in relation to their responses to social challenge. In Study 1, 4th and 5th graders tried out for a pen pal club under either a performance goal (stressing the evaluative nature of the tryout) or a learning goal (emphasizing the potential learning opportunities). In their behavior and attributions following rejection, children who were focused on a performance goal reacted with more helplessness, whereas children given a learning goal displayed a more mastery-oriented response. Study 2 found that in response to hypothetical socially challenging situations, 4th, 5th, and 6th graders who believed personality was nonmalleable (entity theorists) vs. malleable (incremental theorists) were more likely to endorse performance goals. Together, these studies indicate that children's goals in social situations are associated with their responses to social failure and are predicted by their implicit theories about their personality.

Helplessness in early childhood: the role of contingent worth.

This article presents an expanded view of the bases of helpless reactions to failure. This view stems from recent findings of helplessness in young children. Previous formulations have stressed the attainment of invariant trait conceptions as a necessary condition for helplessness to occur and have suggested that children are relatively invulnerable to helplessness prior to this attainment. We review a series of studies documenting that key aspects of helplessness are present in preschool and early elementary school children (ages 4-7). We then propose a preliminary model in which (a) a general conception of self and (b) the notion of this self as an object of contingent worth are sufficient conditions for helplessness. We integrate this view with Dweck and Leggett's model of helplessness in older individuals, in which more differentiated trait conceptions play an important role.

Individual differences in achievement goals among young children.

Developmental research has generally not found evidence of helpless responses to failure in young children; a prevailing view is that young children lack the cognitive prerequisite for helplessness. However, recent evidence suggests that even preschoolers are vulnerable to helplessness in some situations. In the present study with 4- and 5-year-olds, we tested a goal-confidence model that predicts achievement behavior during failure for older children. We first categorized preschoolers' orientations toward "learning" or "performance" goals based on their preference for a challenging or nonchallenging task. As for older children, goal orientation was independent of ability and predicted cognitions and emotions during failure. Further, consistent with the model, within a learning goal, children displayed the mastery-oriented pattern regardless of confidence level, whereas within a performance goal, children with low confidence were most susceptible to helplessness. These behavior patterns were found on a second task as well. Thus, our findings show that individual differences in achievement goals emerge very early.

Children's implicit personality theories as predictors of their social judgments.

Social judgment and trait ascription have long been central issues in psychology. Two studies tested the hypothesis that children who believe that personality is a fixed quality (entity theorists) would make more rigid and long-term social judgments than those who believe that personality is malleable (incremental theorists). Fourth and fifth graders (mean age 10.2 years) viewed a slide show of a boy displaying negative behaviors (Study 1--being shy, clumsy, and nervous; Study 2--lying, cheating, and stealing) and then made a series of ratings. Half of the subjects saw a consistent (negative) ending, and half saw an inconsistent (more positive) ending. Even when they viewed positive counterevidence, entity theorists did not differ in their ratings of the focal traits, but incremental theorists did. Entity theorists in Study 2 also predicted significantly less change in the short term and the long term than did incremental theorists. Study 2 further revealed that, when the behaviors were more negative, entity theorists made more generalized and global negative trait evaluations of the target, showed less empathy, and recommended more punishment. Differences in the social judgment processes of entity and incremental theorists are discussed, and implications for issues (such as stereotyping) are explored.

Young children's vulnerability to self-blame and helplessness: relationship to beliefs about goodness.

Motivational helplessness, linked to conceptions of intelligence, has been well documented in older children. While some researchers have reported that children just starting school are motivationally invulnerable, others have found evidence of helplessness when these children encounter failure. The present study seeks to determine whether the reactions associated with helplessness can be identified in a new context, that of criticism, and whether any such responses are related to the child's conceptions of goodness. Subjects were 107 5- and 6-year-old children who enacted achievement situations in which teacher criticism was presented. The 39% of children whose own assessments were undermined by criticism exhibited the affect, task choices, and nonconstructive problem-solving strategies characteristic of helplessness. They were also more likely to make global negative self-judgments following criticism, including negative judgments of their goodness. Finally, these children were more likely to endorse stable and global beliefs about goodness.

Goals: an approach to motivation and achievement.

This study tested a framework in which goals are proposed to be central determinants of achievement patterns. Learning goals, in which individuals seek to increase their competence, were predicted to promote challenge-seeking and a mastery-oriented response to failure regardless of perceived ability. Performance goals, in which individuals seek to gain favorable judgments of their competence or avoid negative judgments, were predicted to produce challenge-avoidance and learned helplessness when perceived ability was low and to promote certain forms of risk-avoidance even when perceived ability was high. Manipulations of relative goal value (learning vs. performance) and perceived ability (high vs. low) resulted in the predicted differences on measures of task choice, performance during difficulty, and spontaneous verbalizations during difficulty. Particularly striking was the way in which the performance goal-low perceived ability condition produced the same pattern of strategy deterioration, failure attribution, and negative affect found in naturally occurring learned helplessness. Implications for theories of motivation and achievement are discussed.

The development of trait explanations and self-evaluations in the academic and social domains.

The present study was designed to investigate the development of children's trait explanations and self-evaluations in the 2 domains. 144 white, middle-class children in kindergarten, first, second, and fourth grades (mean ages 5-8, 7-0, 7-9, and 10-0 years, respectively) were interviewed individually about their explanations for both academic and social outcomes and their evaluations of their own outcomes. Trait explanations emerged earlier in the social domain. In addition, trait explanations emerged earlier for success than for failure. Self-evaluations became less positive in both domains and less similar across domains with increasing grade level. An experiential theory of the development of understanding of a domain is presented.

An analysis of learned helplessness: II. The processing of success.

Helpless children attribute their failures to lack of ability and view them as insurmountable. Mastery-oriented children, in contrast, tend to emphasize motivational factors and to view failure as surmountable. Although the performance of the two groups is usually identical during success of prior to failure, past research suggests that these groups may well differ in the degree to which they perceive that their successes are replicable and hence that their failures are avoidable. The present study was concerned with the nature of such differences. Children performed a task on which they encountered success and then failure. Half were asked a series of questions about their performance after success and half after failure. Striking differences emerged: Compared to mastery-oriented children, helpless children underestimated the number of success (and overestimated the number of failures), did not view successes as indicative of ability, and did not expect the successes to continue. subsequent failure led them to devalue ;their performance but left the mastery-oriented children undaunted. Thus, for helpless children, successes are less salient, less predictive, and less enduring--less successful.

Learned helplessness in social situations.

Helplessness in social situations was conceptualized as the perceived inability to surmount rejection, as revealed by causal attributions for rejection. Although current research on children's social adjustment emphasizes differences in social skills between popular and unpopular children or behavioral intervention as an aid for withdrawn children, the present study explores responses to rejection across popularity levels. The results show that individual differences in attributions for rejection are related to disruption of goal-directed behavior following rejection. As predicted, the most severe disruption of attempts to gain social approval (withdrawal and perseveration) was associated with the tendency to emphasize personal incompetence as the cause of rejection, regardless of popularity level. The findings suggest that cognitive mediators of overt social behavior and ability to solve problems when faced with difficulties need to be considered in the study of children's social relations.