The Effect Of Implicit Theories Of Personality On Social Information Processing

In the field of interpersonal perception, implicit theories of personality are a belief system about whether personal attributes and traits are inherited or not, by which people are categorized as entity theorists or incremental theorists. The entity believe that individuals have stable traits, while the incremental regard traits as malleable.Implicit theories are an important variable of personality on social perception and judgment. On one hand, implicit theories affect social information processing in perceivers' impression forming. On the other, they influence how people evaluate asocial target.College studests took part in the study as participants. Two kinds of implicittheories were dissociated by projective test. Based on the effects of valence matching and illusory correlation, the experiments probed the effect of implicit theories of personality on social information processing for individuals. The main results are as follows:a) There were common and consistent implicit theorists between character, ability and other personal attributes.b) Entity theory was opposite to incremental theory, and they were two inverse poles of the same dimensionality.c) Entity theorists formed on-line judgments, and incremental theorists formed memory-based judgments of target individuals.d) Compared with incremental theorists, entity theorists would process person information in a more evaluative manner.