Department of Psychology, Stanford University
Department of Psychology, Stanford University.
Psychol Sci. 2016 Jun;27(6):859-69. doi: 10.1177/0956797616639727. Epub 2016 Apr 25.
Children's intelligence mind-sets (i.e., their beliefs about whether intelligence is fixed or malleable) robustly influence their motivation and learning. Yet, surprisingly, research has not linked parents' intelligence mind-sets to their children's. We tested the hypothesis that a different belief of parents-their failure mind-sets-may be more visible to children and therefore more prominent in shaping their beliefs. In Study 1, we found that parents can view failure as debilitating or enhancing, and that these failure mind-sets predict parenting practices and, in turn, children's intelligence mind-sets. Study 2 probed more deeply into how parents display failure mind-sets. In Study 3a, we found that children can indeed accurately perceive their parents' failure mind-sets but not their parents' intelligence mind-sets. Study 3b showed that children's perceptions of their parents' failure mind-sets also predicted their own intelligence mind-sets. Finally, Study 4 showed a causal effect of parents' failure mind-sets on their responses to their children's hypothetical failure. Overall, parents who see failure as debilitating focus on their children's performance and ability rather than on their children's learning, and their children, in turn, tend to believe that intelligence is fixed rather than malleable.
儿童的智力心态（即他们对智力是固定的还是可塑的信念）强烈影响他们的动机和学习。然而，令人惊讶的是，研究尚未将父母的智力心态与其子女的智力心态联系起来。我们检验了这样一种假设，即父母的另一种信念——他们的失败心态——可能对孩子更明显，因此在塑造孩子的信念方面更为突出。在研究 1 中，我们发现父母可以将失败视为削弱或增强的因素，并且这些失败心态可以预测父母的养育方式，进而预测孩子的智力心态。研究 2 更深入地探讨了父母如何表现出失败心态。在研究 3a 中，我们发现孩子们确实可以准确地感知到父母的失败心态，但无法感知到父母的智力心态。研究 3b 表明，孩子们对父母失败心态的感知也可以预测他们自己的智力心态。最后，研究 4 表明父母的失败心态对他们对孩子假设失败的反应有因果影响。总的来说，将失败视为削弱因素的父母更关注孩子的表现和能力，而不是孩子的学习，而孩子则倾向于认为智力是固定的，而不是可塑的。
