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Fairy Tale Situation Test for Implicit Theories of Personality

Received: 9 December 2020     Accepted: 11 January 2021     Published: 22 January 2021
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Abstract

When judging others, individuals often unconsciously apply their own special knowledge and personal constructs about human beings, which eventually forms some implicit theories of personality (ITPs). On the basis of different implicit personality theories, these individuals thus divided into two categories: a type of people believe that personality attributes or traits are sequestration, namely entity theorists; another type of people believe that personality attributes or characteristics are gradient, i.e. incremental theorists. Unlike studies that focus on how personality traits interact, implicit personality theory explores people’s beliefs about the fixity and plasticity of personality traits. Based on projective techniques, a fairy tale situation test is developed to explore whether the implicit personality theories of college students have consistency across different personal attributes (such as characteristic or ability), as well as whether entity theory and incremental theory are two dimensions or two poles of the same dimension. The result of the pretest shows that the compiled fairy tale situation test could be a measurement to analyse the universality of implicit personality theory and the structural pattern of its dimension. A formal test separated the implicit personality theories of 120 college students. The results of both the pretest and the formal test indicated that (a) college students had a common and consistent implicit theory across five personal attributes including character, ability, temperament, morality, and emotion and that (b) entity theory and incremental theory were two inverse poles of the same dimension in implicit theories of personality. These results show that Implicit Theories of Personality has the characteristics of two dimensions (entity theory vs. gradient theory).

Published in American Journal of Applied Psychology (Volume 9, Issue 6)
DOI 10.11648/j.ajap.20200906.15
Page(s) 172-181
Creative Commons

This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.

Copyright

Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Implicit Theories of Personality, Entity Theory, Incremental Theory, Projective Test, Fairy Tale Situation Test

References
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Cite This Article
  • APA Style

    Yichen Cui, Zengkui Wan, Qi Xia, Yonghui Feng, Wentai Gu, et al. (2021). Fairy Tale Situation Test for Implicit Theories of Personality. American Journal of Applied Psychology, 9(6), 172-181. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajap.20200906.15

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    ACS Style

    Yichen Cui; Zengkui Wan; Qi Xia; Yonghui Feng; Wentai Gu, et al. Fairy Tale Situation Test for Implicit Theories of Personality. Am. J. Appl. Psychol. 2021, 9(6), 172-181. doi: 10.11648/j.ajap.20200906.15

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    AMA Style

    Yichen Cui, Zengkui Wan, Qi Xia, Yonghui Feng, Wentai Gu, et al. Fairy Tale Situation Test for Implicit Theories of Personality. Am J Appl Psychol. 2021;9(6):172-181. doi: 10.11648/j.ajap.20200906.15

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  • @article{10.11648/j.ajap.20200906.15,
      author = {Yichen Cui and Zengkui Wan and Qi Xia and Yonghui Feng and Wentai Gu and Lu Yang and Zhenzhong Zhou},
      title = {Fairy Tale Situation Test for Implicit Theories of Personality},
      journal = {American Journal of Applied Psychology},
      volume = {9},
      number = {6},
      pages = {172-181},
      doi = {10.11648/j.ajap.20200906.15},
      url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajap.20200906.15},
      eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ajap.20200906.15},
      abstract = {When judging others, individuals often unconsciously apply their own special knowledge and personal constructs about human beings, which eventually forms some implicit theories of personality (ITPs). On the basis of different implicit personality theories, these individuals thus divided into two categories: a type of people believe that personality attributes or traits are sequestration, namely entity theorists; another type of people believe that personality attributes or characteristics are gradient, i.e. incremental theorists. Unlike studies that focus on how personality traits interact, implicit personality theory explores people’s beliefs about the fixity and plasticity of personality traits. Based on projective techniques, a fairy tale situation test is developed to explore whether the implicit personality theories of college students have consistency across different personal attributes (such as characteristic or ability), as well as whether entity theory and incremental theory are two dimensions or two poles of the same dimension. The result of the pretest shows that the compiled fairy tale situation test could be a measurement to analyse the universality of implicit personality theory and the structural pattern of its dimension. A formal test separated the implicit personality theories of 120 college students. The results of both the pretest and the formal test indicated that (a) college students had a common and consistent implicit theory across five personal attributes including character, ability, temperament, morality, and emotion and that (b) entity theory and incremental theory were two inverse poles of the same dimension in implicit theories of personality. These results show that Implicit Theories of Personality has the characteristics of two dimensions (entity theory vs. gradient theory).},
     year = {2021}
    }
    

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    AU  - Yichen Cui
    AU  - Zengkui Wan
    AU  - Qi Xia
    AU  - Yonghui Feng
    AU  - Wentai Gu
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    AU  - Zhenzhong Zhou
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    JF  - American Journal of Applied Psychology
    JO  - American Journal of Applied Psychology
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    UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ajap.20200906.15
    AB  - When judging others, individuals often unconsciously apply their own special knowledge and personal constructs about human beings, which eventually forms some implicit theories of personality (ITPs). On the basis of different implicit personality theories, these individuals thus divided into two categories: a type of people believe that personality attributes or traits are sequestration, namely entity theorists; another type of people believe that personality attributes or characteristics are gradient, i.e. incremental theorists. Unlike studies that focus on how personality traits interact, implicit personality theory explores people’s beliefs about the fixity and plasticity of personality traits. Based on projective techniques, a fairy tale situation test is developed to explore whether the implicit personality theories of college students have consistency across different personal attributes (such as characteristic or ability), as well as whether entity theory and incremental theory are two dimensions or two poles of the same dimension. The result of the pretest shows that the compiled fairy tale situation test could be a measurement to analyse the universality of implicit personality theory and the structural pattern of its dimension. A formal test separated the implicit personality theories of 120 college students. The results of both the pretest and the formal test indicated that (a) college students had a common and consistent implicit theory across five personal attributes including character, ability, temperament, morality, and emotion and that (b) entity theory and incremental theory were two inverse poles of the same dimension in implicit theories of personality. These results show that Implicit Theories of Personality has the characteristics of two dimensions (entity theory vs. gradient theory).
    VL  - 9
    IS  - 6
    ER  - 

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Author Information
  • Nanjing Institute of Juvenile Mental Health, Nanjing Xiaozhuang University, Nanjing, China

  • Nanjing Institute of Juvenile Mental Health, Nanjing Xiaozhuang University, Nanjing, China

  • Department of Architectural and Environmental Engineering, Yangzhou Technical Vocational College, Yangzhou, China

  • School of Educational Science, Hunan Normal University, Changsha, China

  • Institute of Mental Health, Nanjing Xiaozhuang University, Nanjing, China

  • Institute of Mental Health, Nanjing Xiaozhuang University, Nanjing, China

  • Nanjing Institute of Juvenile Mental Health, Nanjing Xiaozhuang University, Nanjing, China

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