Implicit Theories: Assumptions That Shape Social and Moral Cognition

Implicit theories are a priori beliefs about the features and properties of objects, including humans. In this chapter, I describe research examining the effects of implicit theories on different points of the social information processing stream. Much of this research has focused on comparing people with an "entity theory" (the belief that human qualities are fixed) to people with an "incremental theory" (the belief that human qualities are malleable). I also review research that has focused on people's theories about intentionality, as well as their theories about genetics. I describe each type of theory's influence on such processes as attention allocation, encoding, retrieval, and attributional reasoning. I also summarize evidence indicating that the activation of an implicit theory creates a motivated bias that privileges information that is consistent with the theory. Taken together, I suggest ways in which taking an implicit theories approach sheds new light on foundational social information processes.