Using implicit measures to highlight science teachers’ implicit theories of intelligence

The role of preservice teachers’ implicit attitudes and causal attributions: a deeper look into students’ ethnicity

Previous research has provided evidence that teachers implicitly hold more negative attitudes toward ethnic minority students than toward ethnic majority students. Furthermore, they attribute the lower educational success of ethnic minority students predominantly to internal causes. So far, it is not known how implicit attitudes and causal attributions are related to preservice teachers’ judgments of students’ academic competencies. We conducted a study to close this research gap. In a sample of preservice teachers, our study showed mainly negative implicit attitudes toward ethnic minority students. On general, the preservice teachers made external attributions. Implicit attitudes as well as causal attributions predicted the judgments. Preservice teachers with more negative attitudes and preservice teachers, who attributed the failure of ethnic minority students to these students’ abilities, less favorably judged the competence of ethnic minority students. Our results highlight the role of teachers’ attitudes and causal attributions in determining the disadvantages that ethnic minority students experience in school.

Implicit theories concerning the intelligence of individuals with Down syndrome

Studies over the past three decades have shown that learning difficulties are not only determined by neurological disorders, but also by motivational and/or socio-cognitive factors Among these factors, implicit theories of intelligence (also referred to as conceptions, mindsets or beliefs about intelligence) are key elements. The belief that intelligence is fixed (entity theory), as opposed to malleable (incremental theory), is generally associated with negative teaching practices and poorer student outcomes, yet beliefs about the intelligence of individuals with intellectual disabilities have not received much attention. We propose the first study on conceptions of intelligence of persons with intellectual disabilities, here people with Down syndrome. Participants were 55 professionally qualified people working with individuals with intellectual disabilities and 81 adults from the community. We compared what both groups of participants believe about intelligence of typical people and what they believe about the intelligence of individuals with Down syndrome. We also investigated implicit theories of intelligence as predictors of explicit judgments about intelligence and implicit attitudes toward people with Down syndrome. Whatever the work experience in the field of intellectual disability, implicit theories of intelligence were found to be less incremental when considering people with Down syndrome than when considering typical people; and the stronger the belief in entity theory, the more negative (and less positive) the judgments expressed explicitly. Implicit theories of intelligence were also found to be predictors of negative implicit attitude but only in adults from the community. These findings offer prospects for improving practices by people working in the field of intellectual disability. They might interest a wide range of people caring for people with intellectual disabilities, such as teachers, but also other professional caregivers, and other scientists focusing on intellectual disabilities or social cognition.

Faces Tell Everything in a Just and Biologically Determined World: Lay Theories Behind Face Reading

The present research investigated an often presumed but rarely assessed construct named the physiognomic belief—a generic belief that various traits can be inferred from faces. Studies in Japan and the United States have demonstrated that this belief can be measured reliably and invariantly across cultures and that those having stronger beliefs make more extreme trait inferences from faces. Of note, in both countries, the physiognomic belief is positively associated with a biologically deterministic view of personality traits and a belief in a just world. These findings suggest two types of naive justifications for the physiognomic belief: faces and traits should be related because they are both manifestations of biological essences and because the world is an orderly place wherein people get faces they deserve. This highlights an understudied role of folk concepts involving faces and traits in the popularity of face-based trait inference among laypeople.

Conceptual Issues and Assessment of Implicit Theories

Abstract. We reviewed fundamental conceptual issues and the state of research on the definition and assessment of implicit theories. We grappled with the following controversies related to the construct: (a) Are entity theory and incremental theory opposite ends of the same continuum? (b) How can scholars use more sophisticated methodologies to classify individuals into either the entity or incremental theory? (c) Given shifting conceptions of what intelligence is, how can scholars refine the implicit theory of intelligence construct? Given these conceptual issues, we then addressed practical issues related to the assessment of implicit theories. We point to the need for more sophisticated methods such as implicit association tests and the use of virtual environments as more “stealthy” ways to assess the construct.