Implicit Theories in Broad Perspective

Abstract

In my view, the target article and the reviewed research can be summarized by four postulates. The first is that people have two main types of implicit theories: entity and incremental. The entity theorists view the world in dispositional terms, believing that stable traits exist, that these traits influence how people behave, and that behaviors reveal the presence or absence of such traits. The incremental theorists view the world in more fluid or dynamic terms, believing less in fixed traits and more in the power of current psychological statessuch as needs, goals, and intentions-as the proper way to understand behavior. Obvious parallels exist between entity theorists and the trait theories in personality psychology attacked by Mischel (1968) over 25 years ago and between incremental theorists and social learning theories of Mischel (1968, 1973) and other personality psychologists (e.g., Bandura, 1977). The second postulate is that these implicit theories influence both selfand social perception processes and sequela that flow from these perceptions, such as affective reactions and behavioral choices. The authors present an impressive array of empirical evidence that entity and incremental theorists makejudgments of self and of others that maps nicely onto their particular implicit theories of human behavior. The data presented in support of implicit theory effects on affect and behavior are equally impressive. The third postulate concerns the generality-specificity issue. The authors correctly note that implicit theories may be quite general in some individuals and more narrow in others. That is, some people seem to hold entity (or incremental) theories across achievement and moral domains, whereas others hold to one theory in one domain of human activity and the other theory in a different domain. The fourth postulate is that these implicit theories should relate to other individual difference variables in meaningful ways. This postulate awaits further research, but the suggestions provided by the authors seem right on target. The potential link to attributional style is especially intriguing. The possible links to constructs from Kruglanski's (1989) work on judgment, such as need for closure or for structure, and other individual difference constructs, such as need for cognition, also seem to be fruitful avenues for future research.