Implicit theories about personality and intelligence and their relationship to actual personality and intelligence

Implicit theories about the malleability of human attributes have proven to be valuable predictors of cognitions, affects, and behavior in the field of achievement motivation and social judgments (see Dweck, 1999). Implicit theories in the sense used by Dweck distinguish between the belief that human attributes are fixed (entity theory) or malleable (incremental theory). The present study examined to what extent implicit theories are related to personality and intelligence. A sample of 592 adults completed self-report measures of implicit theories and the Big Five factors of personality as well as two short forms of intelligence tests. The results support the notion that implicit theories about the malleability of personality and intelligence are largely unrelated to actual personality and intelligence. Thus, the results represent further evidence for the high discriminant validity of the implicit theories construct.