Implicit Theories of Intelligence in Elementary School Eighth-Grade Pupils

The questionnaire ITI-VIII (Kopie, Vranic & Zarevski, 2007.), examining the implicit theories of intelligence, was applied to the sample of 330 eighth-grade pupils. When describing the intelligent person they list characteristics that can be categorized as cognitive abilities (28%), practical intelligence (27%), interpersonal characteristics (18%), motivation (10%), "academic" intelligence and verbal abilities (8%), and other personality traits and physical characteristics (8%). The majority of participants believe that: in determining intelligence inheritance and environment contribute equally (64%), significant enhancement of intelligence is possible (57%), education can have significant beneficial effects on intelligence (51%), intelligence is very important for school success (49%), as well as for job success (61%), intelligence has the highest importance for accomplishment in mathematics (45%) and physics (25%), there are no sex differences in intelligence neither in their age (48%), nor in adulthood (45%), people reach the peak of their intelligence between ages of 21 and 39, i.e. in the period of early adulthood (43%). Some aspects of the implicit theories of intelligence are in the expected, but low correlations. This is the first research in the field of the implicit theories of intelligence conducted in Croatia on a sample of early adolescents. The most important finding is that pupils have implicit theories of intelligence similar to those found in high-school graduates. This implicates early formation and development of the concepts concerning the nature of intelligence.