Jepson School and Department of Psychology, University of Richmond, Virginia, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of Richmond, Virginia, USA.
Br J Soc Psychol. 2018 Apr;57(2):448-460. doi: 10.1111/bjso.12238. Epub 2018 Jan 22.
In this work, we examine whether differences in social dominance orientation (SDO) moderate the effectiveness of mindsets of intelligence messages. We suggest that SDO is a foundational ideological belief system, on which individuals vary, that maintains the desire to endorse fixed beliefs about the nature of human intelligence. Thus, attempts to change individuals' mindsets should be met with resistance from those who strongly endorse the social dominance ideology - individuals high on SDO. In contrast, individuals low on SDO are less likely to use mindsets of intelligence to justify an ideological belief system, and thus, mindset manipulations should be effective for them. We test these predictions across three experimental studies (N = 271, N = 207, N = 313). Across the studies, we find that individuals who are high, relative to low, on SDO have more fixed beliefs about the nature of intelligence and show smaller effects of manipulations of mindsets. However, when comparing to a control condition, there was no evidence that high-SDO participants resisted the growth message that contradicts their ideology more than the fixed one that supports it; additionally, low-SDO participants showed heightened responsiveness to a fixed message. We discuss implications for theoretical advances in our understanding of mindsets.
在这项工作中，我们考察了社会支配倾向（SDO）的差异是否会影响智力信息心态的有效性。我们认为，SDO 是一种基础的意识形态信念体系，个体在这一体系上存在差异，它维持了对人类智力本质的固定信念的认可。因此，试图改变个体的心态应该会遭到那些强烈支持社会支配意识形态的人的抵制——那些 SDO 得分高的人。相比之下，SDO 得分低的个体不太可能用智力心态来证明意识形态信念体系的合理性，因此，心态操纵对他们应该是有效的。我们通过三个实验研究（N=271，N=207，N=313）来检验这些预测。在这些研究中，我们发现，与 SDO 得分低的个体相比，SDO 得分高的个体对智力本质的固定信念更多，并且心态操纵的效果更小。然而，与对照组相比，没有证据表明高 SDO 参与者比支持他们意识形态的固定信息更抵制与他们的意识形态相悖的增长信息；此外，低 SDO 参与者对固定信息表现出更高的反应性。我们讨论了这些发现对我们理解心态的理论进展的意义。
