Implicit Theories: Assumptions That Shape Social and Moral Cognition

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Implicit Theories: Assumptions That Shape Social and Moral Cognition Jason E. Plaks1 University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada 1 Corresponding author: e-mail address: [email protected]

Contents 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Implicit Theories: A Definition Theories of Trait Stability/Malleability: The Entity/Incremental Dimension Part I: Attribution Implications for Empathy Attributions About Groups Attributions About the Self Implicit Theories of the Thought–Action Link 7.1 The Moderating Role of Implicit Theories 8. Interim Summary 9. Part II: Person Memory 10. The Role of Epistemic Motivations 11. Part III: Attention Allocation 12. The Double-Edged Sword of Accountability 13. Interim Summary 14. Part IV: Encoding Processes 15. Theories About Genetic Variation and the Encoding of Race 16. Encoding of Theory-Confirming and Theory-Violating Behavior: Neural Substrates 17. Interim Summary 18. Conclusion and Suggestions for Future Work References

3 5 7 10 13 14 16 17 19 20 21 29 32 34 34 34 39 42 42 43

Abstract 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

Advances in Experimental Social Psychology ISSN 0065-2601 http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2017.02.003

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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.

Social cognition research has yielded a rich and detailed understanding of many of the discrete processes that comprise person perception, including attention allocation (e.g., Hashtroudi, Mutter, Cole, & Green, 1984), behavioral encoding (e.g., Sherman, Conrey, & Groom, 2004), causal attribution (e.g., Weiner, 1985), person memory (e.g., Stangor & McMillan, 1992), and impression formation (e.g., Skowronski & Carlston, 1989). Less research has investigated how such processes are meaningfully shaped by laypeople’s a priori assumptions about human traits and behavior. In this chapter, I will review nearly 20 years of research that has directly investigated the relation between lay perceivers’ theories and specific subprocesses that are hallmarks of social cognition. I will present evidence that different starting assumptions can alter such processes in subtle, but significant ways. The notion that basic information processing is influenced by stored assumptions is not a new idea. von Helmholtz (1910/1962) noted that the human perceptual system disambiguates ambiguous stimuli with the help of stored assumptions that yield “unconscious inferences.” For example, people’s assumptions about color constancy lead them to perceive that snow possesses uniform whiteness at different times of day, despite vastly differing levels of luminance. By analogy, social psychologists have argued that when people observe an actor, they use stored assumptions about human traits and behavior to effortlessly disambiguate ambiguous behavior and generate wide-ranging inferences about the actor’s goals, attitudes, beliefs, and desires (e.g., Gilbert, 1998; Malle & Holbrook, 2012; Todd, Molden, Ham, & Vonk, 2011; Tskhay & Rule, 2013). In recent decades, researchers have begun to identify such cornerstone assumptions of social cognition. Although, in theory, there is infinite variety in the specific content of such theories, my colleagues and I have suggested that it is possible—and helpful—to find underlying structural themes to lend order to the dizzying array. In this respect, we have been inspired by Weiner’s (1985, 1986) attempt to organize the potentially infinite array of causal attributions a person might make into three core dimensions (locus,

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stability, controllability). Whereas Weiner focused on relatively downstream attributional processes, the implicit theories tradition begins one step earlier by asking, “Where do attributions come from?” In other words, what prior assumptions predict whether a given perceiver will make, for example, a “stable” or “unstable” attribution? We have argued that by systematically measuring and manipulating such upstream starting points, one might better understand, organize, and predict downstream attributions and judgments (Burton & Plaks, 2013; Plaks, Levy, & Dweck, 2009).

1. IMPLICIT THEORIES: A DEFINITION Although implicit theories have been defined in different ways by different researchers, most definitions refer to beliefs about the properties of classes of objects, including humans. Researchers have regarded implicit theories as both ontological assumptions and narrative frameworks that help to explain and organize the social environment (e.g., Levy, Chiu, & Hong, 2006; Levy, Plaks, Hong, Chiu, & Dweck, 2001; Plaks, Levy, et al., 2009). In contrast to constructs such as attitudes and values, which are, by definition, prescriptive or evaluative, implicit theories are often descriptive and evaluatively neutral. In contrast to stereotypes, which are beliefs about the traits of specific groups, implicit person theories are often operationalized as more general assumptions that apply to most or all of humanity. To capture these concepts, researchers have invoked a number of largely interchangeable terms over the years, including “lay theories,” “folk beliefs,” “naive theories,” and “mindsets.” We use the term “implicit” because these theories tend not to be clearly developed and articulated in people’s minds.a We prefer the term “theory” because, like scientific theories, implicit theories explain observable phenomena, add conceptual structure, generate hypotheses, and help to reduce “psychological entropy” (Hirsh, Mar, & Peterson, 2012). Moreover, continuing the analogy to scientific theories, implicit theories are rarely tested in an optimal manner. Instead, laypeople, like scientists, often fall prey to processing biases. These biases may be nonmotivated, in the sense that they involve ignorance of optimal a

Our use of the term “implicit” refers to the dictionary definition (“implied though not plainly expressed”; Implicit, 1989), rather than the technical definition used by social psychologists connoting “automatic” or “unconscious” (Greenwald & Banaji, 1995).

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hypothesis testing procedures (e.g., Wason, 1960), or they may be motivated, in the sense that they invoke defensive or compensatory processes aimed at reaching desired conclusions (e.g., Kruglanski & Webster, 1996; Kunda, 1990, Pyczczynski & Greenberg, 1987). Indeed, the philosopher Feyerabend (1978) drew explicit parallels between ordinary human information processing biases and professional scientific practices. Later, I outline several examples of systematic processing distortions associated with implicit theories. A good deal of research on implicit theories has been conducted by developmental psychologists. For example, some researchers have studied how infants’ naı¨ve understanding of physics constrains their perception of moving objects and, in turn, aids in the acquisition of knowledge about the physical world (e.g., Premack, 1990; Spelke, Katz, Purcell, Ehrlich, & Breinlinger, 1994). Others have examined children’s and adults’ conceptual understanding of category boundaries and the essential properties of objects (e.g., Gelman, 2003; Rothbart & Taylor, 1992). In social psychology, researchers of implicit theories have cast a wider net. For example, investigators have studied people’s intuitive beliefs about: cause and effect (Kidd, Palmeri, & Aslin, 2013; Morris & Larrick, 1995), intentionality (Malle & Knobe, 1997), justice (Hafer & Be`gue, 2005), happiness (Tullett & Plaks, 2016), self-control ( Job, Dweck, & Walton, 2010), catharsis (Bushman, Baumeister, & Phillips, 2001), the covariation of personality traits (Schneider, 1973; Srivastava, Guglielmo, & Beer, 2010), group essence (Haslam & Whelan, 2008; Wittenbrink, Hilton, & Gist, 1998; Yzerbyt, Leyens, & Schadron, 1997), and even one’s own cognition (Miele & Molden, 2010; Yzerbyt, Schadron, Leyens, & Rocher, 1994). In each of these domains, researchers have provided evidence that different starting assumptions—whether experimentally induced or measured as individual differences—initiate distinct cascades of processes that result in distinct sets of judgments. Much of the work I review in this chapter has focused on people’s theories about the stability/malleability of traits. I will also, however, describe research in my laboratory that has extended the investigation to theories about such topics as intentionality and genetics. In each of these domains, I will provide evidence of how different theories modulate basic information gathering, storage, retrieval, and judgment processes. I will also summarize research demonstrating the crucial motivational role that implicit theories play in creating and maintaining the subjective sense of prediction competence.

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2. THEORIES OF TRAIT STABILITY/MALLEABILITY: THE ENTITY/INCREMENTAL DIMENSION Since its introduction to the literature by Carol Dweck and colleagues in the mid-1980s, a large body of research has investigated the effects of the entity and incremental theories (also referred to as the “fixed” and “growth” mindsets; Dweck, 2006). The entity theory is the assumption that personal qualities such as intelligence, moral character, and self-control are largely fixed over time and across situations. According to this perspective, although individuals may at times exhibit behavior that is, say, more intelligent than their usual norm, their underlying level of intelligence remains constant. The incremental theory is the assumption that personal qualities are changeable through effort, new knowledge, or inputs from the environment. Typically, the incremental theory assumes that “change” takes the form of improvement—an idea captured by the term “growth mindset” (Dweck, 2006). As I will describe later, however, in certain cases, the change in question is assumed to be change for the worse. In much of this research, participants’ general preference for the entity or incremental theory has been measured using an eight-item questionnaire (the Implicit Person Theories Measure) that operationalizes entity– incremental endorsement as a single dimension. On this measure, participants rate their level of agreement/disagreement with statements such as, “People can do things differently, but the important parts of who they are cannot really be changed.” (For the complete questionnaire and scoring method, see Dweck, 1999.) Other researchers, however, have found it useful to operationalize similar concepts as two independent dimensions (e.g., “destiny” and “growth” beliefs of romantic relationships; Knee, 1998). Although data from such individual difference measures are typically analyzed as continuous variables, researchers often use the language of two distinct groups (“entity theorists” and “incremental theorists”) for the sake of convenience. Although there are reliable individual differences in entity–incremental endorsement, either theory may be temporarily activated (McConnell, 2001; Plaks & Halvorson, 2013). Methods for priming implicit theories include persuasive written passages (Chiu, Hong, & Dweck, 1997; Plaks & Chasteen, 2013), self-persuasion via autobiographical memories (Levy, Stroessner, & Dweck, 1998), and exposure to proverbs reflecting either

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theory (e.g., “a leopard never changes its spots”; Poon & Koehler, 2006). Given such data, several researchers (Burns & Isbell, 2007; Plaks & Stecher, 2007; Poon & Koehler, 2006) have conceptualized implicit theories as knowledge structures that follow the principles of knowledge activation (Bargh, Lombardi, & Higgins, 1988). In other words, although individuals may hold a chronic tendency to favor one theory, most people acknowledge the plausibility of both theories. Thus, persuasive messages may encourage people to adopt either theory as their working theory, at least temporarily. The preponderance of evidence suggests that whether theories are measured at the chronic level or the temporary level, the results turn out to be equivalent. A PsycINFO search on November 19, 2016 revealed 1067 publications reporting effects of entity–incremental endorsement in a broad range of important behavioral domains. Although much of the work has focused on measures related to academic performance (e.g., Aronson, Fried, & Good, 2002; Blackwell, Trzensniewski, & Dweck, 2007; Rattan, Savani, Chugh, & Dweck, 2015; Yeager et al., 2016), recent entity–incremental work has extended to such areas as mental health (Burnette, O’Boyle, Van Epps, Pollack, & Finkel, 2013; De Castella et al., 2014; Miu & Yeager, 2015; Schroder, Dawood, Yalch, Donnellan, & Moser, 2016), consumer behavior (Murphy & Dweck, 2016), organizational behavior (Keating & Heslin, 2015; Murphy & Dweck, 2010), athletics (Kasimatis, Miller, & Marcussen, 1996), shyness (Beer, 2002), self-regulation (Burnette et al., 2013; Job et al., 2010), intergroup conflict (Halperin, Russell, Trzesniewski, Gross, & Dweck, 2011), and sexual behavior (Bohns, Scholer, & Rehman, 2015; Maxwell et al., 2017). In general (though not always, see Park & Kim, 2015), endorsement of the incremental theory is associated with more adaptive outcomes (e.g., higher academic performance, less emotional dysfunction). This chapter takes a more circumscribed focus: the effects of implicit theories on social information processing. I will review studies demonstrating effects of implicit theory endorsement on different points in the social information processing stream, including attention allocation, visual encoding, retrieval, and attributional reasoning. I will describe evidence indicating that the activation of an implicit theory creates a bias that privileges information that is consistent with the theory and deemphasizes information that is inconsistent with it. The review begins with relatively downstream processes (attribution, memory) and then progresses upstream toward processes such as attention and encoding.

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3. PART I: ATTRIBUTION A central theme of the entity–incremental literature is that entity theorists are more inclined than incremental theorists to view underlying traits as principal causes of behavior. For example, a student’s low score on a test is presumed to be a direct consequence of his low intelligence. From the incremental perspective, the causes of a given actor’s behavior are more varied and less enduring. Candidates include intrapsychic forces such as feelings, goals, and beliefs. From the entity perspective, such dynamic psychological processes are mere effects or epiphenomena of underlying dispositions. Initial evidence for these ideas came from Chiu et al. (1997, Study 3), who asked participants to rate numerous behaviors on their moral goodness/badness and the degree to which each behavior reflected the actor’s good/bad moral character. Chiu et al. found that entity theorists rated the behaviors significantly more indicative of the actor’s true personality than did incremental theorists. This difference was evident for both morally positive and negative behaviors. Moreover, when the actor performed even a single behavior, entity theorists made more extreme predictions about the actor’s future behavior (Chiu et al., 1997, Study 2). Poon and Koehler (2006) found similar results when the entity and incremental theories were manipulated experimentally. We (Molden, Plaks, & Dweck, 2006) took these ideas a step further by pinpointing where in the process entity and incremental theorists diverge, according to stage models of dispositional inference (e.g., Gilbert, Pelham, & Krull, 1988; Trope, 1986). Participants made judgments about a target person’s traits when provided with information about the situation that could plausibly explain the observed behavior (e.g., a person acting anxiously while talking on camera about her sexual fantasies). Participants observed the target person while memorizing an eight-digit number (high cognitive load) or without memorizing the number (low cognitive load). As depicted in Fig. 1A, Molden et al. (2006) found that under low cognitive load, both entity and incremental theorists performed situational discountingb—i.e., they took the nature of the situation (stressful vs mundane) into account when rating the actor’s trait anxiety. Under high cognitive b

According to Kelley (1973), people use the discounting principle when they give less weight to a particular cause if there are other plausible causes simultaneously present. People use the augmentation principle when they give more weight than usual to a particular cause if there are other constraints that reduce the likelihood of the effect simultaneously present.

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A 8

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5.5 Calm actor Anxious actor 5

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Fig. 1 (A) Ratings of actor’s trait anxiety as a function of implicit theories, topic of conversation, and cognitive load (Molden et al., 2006, Study 1). (B) Ratings of the anxiety of the situation as a function of implicit theories, trait anxiety of the actor, and cognitive load (Molden et al., 2006, Study 2).

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load, however, entity theorists were more likely than incremental theorists to explain the target’s behavior in terms of her underlying trait anxiety. In other words, high cognitive load prevented entity theorists from accessing information about the situation, but did not impede incremental theorists, who continued to attribute the actor’s behavior to the situation. Thus, the pattern reported in well-known studies by Gilbert et al. (1988) was replicated for entity theorists, but not for incremental theorists. A second study (Molden et al., 2006, Study 2), however, revealed a further complication. In this study, Molden et al. reversed the task so that participants were asked to rate how anxious the situation was given the actor’s high/low trait anxiety. In this case, it was the incremental theorists whose access was blocked by cognitive load (see Fig. 1B). These data indicated that incremental theorists are not simply more rigorous than entity theorists. Instead, different starting assumptions elicit differential sensitivity to different types of information. Incremental theorists “go the extra mile” to access information about the situation because they consider such information more dynamic and changeable, and therefore more diagnostic. In contrast, entity theorists go the extra mile to access information about traits because they consider such information more fixed and unchanging, and therefore more diagnostic. It is a mistake, however, to assume that incremental theorists never invoke traits. In fact, incremental theorists’ higher sensitivity to dynamic, contextual influences on behavior may, in certain cases, lead them to make the more extreme trait attributions. Molden et al. (2006, Study 3) hypothesized that the extremity of entity and incremental theorists’ trait attributions under high cognitive load should depend on whether the information about the situation discounts or augments the implied trait (Kelley, 1973). As predicted, when situational information discounted the implied trait (e.g., anxious behavior in a stressful situation), high cognitive load incremental theorists’ trait attributions were attenuated (i.e., discounted), whereas those of high cognitive load entity theorists remained firm. However, when situational information augmented the implied trait (e.g., anxious behavior in mundane situation), high cognitive load incremental theorists’ trait attributions were, in fact, more extreme (i.e., augmented) than those of high cognitive load entity theorists. According to Molden et al. (2006), this is because incremental theorists, to a greater extent than entity theorists, acknowledge that norm-conforming behavior is not diagnostic of the individual’s underlying character, whereas norm-violating behavior is indicative of the individual’s personality (i.e., the Law of Noncommon Effects; Jones &

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Davis, 1965). Entity theorists, in contrast, attributed the cause of the behavior to the actor’s personality to an equivalent degree, regardless of whether the situation called for discounting or augmentation.

4. IMPLICATIONS FOR EMPATHY Does the fact that entity and incremental theorists follow different attributional pathways translate into meaningful interpersonal consequences? To begin to answer this question, recent research has examined entity–incremental differences in cognition, emotion, and behavior associated with empathy (Schumann, Zaki, & Dweck, 2014; Tullett & Plaks, 2016). The literature on empathy has focused on cognitive and emotional processes that occur in the perceiver’s mind and brain after a suffering individual has been encountered. For example, Weiner’s (1980) “cognition (attribution)– emotion–action” model proposed that attributing the target’s plight to stable, uncontrollable causes activates feelings of sympathy and, in turn, a higher likelihood of helping. More recently, Gill, Andreychik, and Getty (2013) demonstrated that external (vs internal) attributions were associated with higher empathy toward members of an outgroup. But what leads people to “land on” one particular attribution over another? Much of the research on empathy has been relatively silent on this question. Recently, researchers have suggested a potential answer: implicit theories (Schumann et al., 2014; Tullett & Plaks, 2016). These researchers have argued that observers bring preexisting theories with them into each potential help-giving situation. Such theories shape observers’ attributions and, in turn, behavior toward individuals in need. For example, Schumann et al. (2014) found that those with an incremental theory of empathy (i.e., one’s empathic capacity can be developed) displayed more empathic cognitions and emotions and provided more help toward suffering individuals than did those with an entity theory of empathy. This was the case even when providing help required difficult emotional investment. Why did this occur? In one study (Schumann et al., 2014, Study 7), participants with an incremental view of empathy expressed a greater interest in improving their empathy. According to Schumann et al.’s account, most people acknowledge that empathy can be difficult—that one could always empathize more. Such widespread acknowledgement of the difficulty of empathy is evident in the literature on the “collapse of compassion,” in

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which people display less compassion toward many victims than toward one victim (Cameron & Payne, 2011). However, the belief that empathic capacity can be cultivated appears to encourage people to face (rather than avoid) the difficult experience of empathy. From the incremental perspective, difficult experiences and negative emotions are sometimes necessary steppingstones to growth. From the entity perspective, difficult experiences and negative emotions are a signal that one simply does not have what it takes to empathize with the victim. More recently, Tullett and Plaks (2016) focused not on beliefs about empathic capacity, but beliefs about happiness. Why beliefs about happiness? We reasoned that the empathy situation is an encounter with an unhappy person. The perceiver’s calculation of whether providing help is a wise expenditure of money, time, and emotional strain should be influenced by an assessment of whether the help will, in fact, improve the target person’s happiness. To answer that question, the perceiver needs to invoke his or her underlying assumptions about the mutability and controllability of happiness itself. In this work, we expanded the palette of theories beyond the entity– incremental dimension. Taking inspiration from Weiner (1980), we created and validated an individual difference measure of beliefs about happiness along three dimensions of causality: locus (internal/external), flexibility (corresponding to entity/incremental), and controllability (controllable/ uncontrollable). Importantly, according to Weiner’s (1985, 1986) framework, these three dimensions are conceptually and empirically orthogonal. To illustrate the independence of flexibility and controllability, consider the following examples about Bob, who works for a mean boss. If Bob’s happiness level is low, it might change for the better (i.e., be flexible) due to controllable causes (he leaves to work for another company) or to uncontrollable causes (the mean boss leaves the company). If Bob’s happiness level starts high, it might remain fixed (i.e., be inflexible) due to controllable causes (he leaves to work for another company) or to uncontrollable causes (the mean boss leaves the company). We suspected that distinguishing among locus, flexibility, and controllability would yield distinct sets of empathy-related attributions. For instance, many people subscribe to the popular notion that happiness “comes from within.” In other words, happiness is less a question of finding the right external circumstances (e.g., the right job, the right house) than of adopting the right internal frame of mind. How might such a belief relate to empathy? To the extent that an internal (vs external) theory is associated

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with perceptions of target responsibility, attributing a person’s unhappiness to an internal source should reduce observers’ willingness to help. How might flexibility (entity–incremental) beliefs relate to empathy? One might think that viewing happiness as fixed would predict higher empathy. According to this logic, if a person’s level of unhappiness is ultimately unalterable, there should be little grounds to blame that person for his or her unhappiness. Data from several sources, however, provide evidence for the opposite: a positive relation between flexibility beliefs and empathy. For example, Miller, Burgoon, and Hall (2007) found that, compared with incremental theorists, entity theorists judge wrongdoers more harshly, due in part to their greater tendency to generate stable trait attributions. In a similar vein, Gervey, Chiu, Hong, and Dweck (1999) found that entity theorists used a more person-centered form of judgment when determining a defendant’s guilt/innocence. Entity theorists may believe that just as a person who commits an immoral act is a chronically immoral person, a person who is unhappy right now is a chronically unhappy person. How might belief in the controllability of happiness predict empathy? On the one hand, the association could be positive if people who consider happiness controllable tend to believe optimistically that unhappy people can change their emotional state through force of will. On the other hand, the association could be negative if people who consider happiness controllable assign personal responsibility to people who are unhappy. To test which of these hypotheses would be best supported by the data, we developed and validated the Lay Theories of Happiness Scale (LTHS). (For the scale items and validation details, see Tullett & Plaks, 2016, Studies 1a–1b.) On the LTHS, participants rate their level of agreement with statements such as “In reality, happiness depends mostly on the environment a person lives in” (locus), “Although happiness can change in the short term, it stays pretty much the same in the long term” (flexibility), and “Everyone has the power to make themselves happier” (controllability). In one study, participants read a vignette describing one person’s experience with depression. We selected depression as the form of suffering because there is no clear popular consensus about whether depression stems from internal vs external, stable vs flexible, and controllable vs uncontrollable sources. After completing items assessing empathy toward the target, participants were given the opportunity to donate a portion of their participation payment (from $0.00 to $0.50 in $0.05 increments) to support depression research.

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The data revealed that belief in the flexibility of happiness was positively correlated with perspective taking (a component of empathy; Davis, 1983) and negatively correlated with blame of the target (associated with low empathy; Lerner & Simmons, 1966). In contrast, belief in the controllability of happiness was negatively correlated with perspective taking and positively correlated with blame. Moreover, in one study (Tullett & Plaks, 2016, Study 3), belief that happiness is controllable was associated with smaller donations to depression research. Finally, belief that happiness is internal was negatively associated with perspective taking. In summary, Tullett and Plaks (2016) provided evidence that individual differences in a priori assumptions about the properties of happiness predict distinct patterns of empathy-related reasoning. Importantly, the data indicate that when it comes to implicit theories, the three classic dimensions of attribution (locus, flexibility, controllability) are not collapsible. Instead, each exerts its own measure of independent, predictive power. For example, believing that happiness is flexible is associated with higher empathy. Indeed, such a belief might be a prerequisite for empathy; if happiness cannot change, providing help is pointless. In contrast, believing that happiness is controllable predicted lower empathy. Why? It appears that people with this belief hold that the unhappy person had the power to improve his or her emotional state but failed to do so. Such a perception of squandered opportunity violates “just world” beliefs (Hafer & Be`gue, 2005) and thus encourages moral condemnation.

5. ATTRIBUTIONS ABOUT GROUPS Many of the attributional processes studied with respect to individual targets apply to group targets as well. For example, Pettigrew (1979) noted that perceivers often seek to characterize groups in terms of underlying dispositions with insufficient regard for situational forces, a practice he termed “the ultimate attribution error.” Although there is clear evidence that groups are associated with different degrees of inherent “entitativity” (Lickel et al., 2000), studies in the entity–incremental tradition have focused on variability between perceivers, rather than differences between targets (Plaks, Levy, Dweck, & Stroessner, 2004). Levy et al. (1998) were the first to document entity theorists’ greater endorsement of ethnic and gender stereotypes, greater tendency to ascribe group differences to biological (vs environmental) sources, and higher estimates of group homogeneity. Levy et al. (1998) provided evidence that these

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entity–incremental differences were not due to differential intelligence, knowledge about the groups in question, or experience with the groups in question. Moreover, Levy et al. (1998) found analogous effects when the theories were manipulated experimentally, rather than measured at the individual differences level. Later work by Rydell, Hugenberg, Ray, and Mackie (2007) operationalized the entity–incremental construct explicitly with respect to groups. In one study, they altered the wording of the entity–incremental questionnaire so that it referred to groups, rather than individuals. They found that, like the individual-focused measure, the group-focused measure predicted stereotype endorsement (for lawyers and mechanics). Unlike the individual measure, the group measure also predicted perceptions of group entitativity (i.e., entity theorists were more likely to perceive group members to possess shared goals). These perceptions of entitativity, in turn, mediated the relation between implicit theories and stereotype endorsement. More recently, Neel and Lassetter (2015) reported that, in general, participants considered the target group “younger people” more malleable than “older people.” Moreover, variation in beliefs about the malleability of older people predicted endorsement of learning-based services for seniors. Do different beliefs about the fixedness/malleability of groups affect attitudes outside the laboratory, with participants in an ongoing intergroup conflict? Halperin et al. (2011) collected samples of Jewish Israelis, Palestinian citizens of Israel, and Palestinian West Bank residents. These researchers found that those with incremental beliefs about groups in general (without mentioning the groups involved in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict) expressed more positive attitudes toward their respective outgroup and were more willing to make compromises in the name of peace. Moreover, in two of the studies, entity–incremental beliefs were manipulated using written text, yielding results that were equivalent to the individual difference results. These results were recently replicated and extended (Goldenberg et al., 2017). These results represent a hopeful approach to making headway toward resolving seemingly intractable intergroup conflicts.

6. ATTRIBUTIONS ABOUT THE SELF Much of the literature on attribution has focused on people’s explanations for the behavior of others. One of Weiner’s (1980, 1985) insights was that people use similar processes when analyzing the causes of their own behavior. Many of the studies in the implicit theories tradition have

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similarly found analogies between the attributions entity and incremental theorists make about others and the attributions they make about themselves. Much of this work has examined how the implicit theory-toattribution sequence predicts the academic performance of school age and undergraduate students (e.g., Aronson et al., 2002; Blackwell et al., 2007; Rattan et al., 2015; Yeager et al., 2016). In recent years, my colleague and I have, for the first time, examined whether similar processes occur with older adults. Plaks and Chasteen (2013) examined whether older adults’ entity/incremental theories about memory would influence their memory performance. With older adults, however, the conceptualization of “entity” and “incremental” takes on a different form. We assumed that older adults do not associate the future with improved cognitive performance. Instead, they generally assume a high likelihood of cognitive decline. Thus, the entity perspective would hold that memory decline is a biologically based, fixed inevitability. In contrast, the incremental perspective would hold that the rate of decline is modifiable via, for example, mental exercises or medical interventions. Thus, it is, in fact, the entity theorists who believe that the trait in question will change (for the worse), and it is the incremental theorists who believe that it can remain relatively constant. We examined whether older adults hold such notions about the modifiability of the decline in their cognitive abilities. More importantly, we examined whether variation in such beliefs would predict participants’ actual performance on commonly used tests of memory. We hypothesized that the entity belief in the fixedness of the downward trajectory would help to foster a self-fulfilling prophecy of poorer memory performance, whereas the incremental belief in the modifiability of that trajectory would help to foster a comparatively positive cycle leading to higher performance. Plaks and Chasteen (2013) tested this hypothesis with three studies. In two of the studies, implicit theories were measured at the individual differences level. To do so, we created a modified version of the standard Implicit Person Theories Measure that worded the items in terms of aging and memory (e.g., “No matter how old you are, you can change your memory ability considerably”). In another study, we sought to manipulate implicit theories. To do so, we created two versions of a mock New York Times article. The entity version touted new research indicating evidence of neuronal degeneration. In other words, the brain’s tendency to deteriorate (without the creation of new neurons) suggests that cognitive decline is an inevitability. The incremental version touted new research indicating evidence of neuronal

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regeneration. In other words, the brain’s ability to create new neurons suggests that rapid cognitive decline is not an inevitability. In all three studies, participants completed common memory tasks such as recall of words or digits. In all three studies, incremental theorists outperformed entity theorists. Why did this occur? One contributing mediator appears to be anxiety. In one study in which we measured participants’ emotions, the difference between entity and incremental theorists was mediated by self-reported anxiety. Thus, this work may begin to provide an explanation for the stereotype threat effects found in older adults (e.g., Chasteen, Bhattacharya, Horhota, Tam, & Hasher, 2005; Hess, Hinson, & Hodges, 2009). As with undergraduates (Aronson et al., 2002), a starting assumption of trait fixedness means that one’s score on a test is a reflection of whether one “has it” or not. In other words, there is more riding on each test. This introduces a degree of anxiety that, in turn, impairs performance. In contrast, starting with the assumption of malleability means that each test is viewed as a marker of one’s progress. Because the test score is not taken as a deep-seated reflection of an unchangeable ability, there is less riding on each test. Thus, incremental theorists adopt a comparatively serene approach to the test which, in turn, may translate into higher performance.

7. IMPLICIT THEORIES OF THE THOUGHT–ACTION LINK In recent years, my students and I have examined another important but understudied element of attribution: intuitions about intentionality. An assessment of the focal act’s degree of intentionality lies at the heart of classic and contemporary theories of attribution (e.g., Jones & Davis, 1965; Reeder, 2009), law (e.g., Duff, 1990; Hart, 1968), and moral judgment (e.g., Cushman, Sheketoff, Wharton, & Carey, 2013; Malle, Guglielmo, & Monroe, 2014; Young & Saxe, 2009). In many cases, however, the distinction between an “intentional” and “unintentional” act is not immediately obvious. For example, imagine that John wishes to kill his uncle. He drives his car to his uncle’s house in order to kill him, but on the way, a pedestrian accidently strays into the path of his car. John hits and kills the pedestrian. The pedestrian turns out to be his uncle. How do people handle such a situation? More generally, how do people calculate the degree to which an act was performed intentionally, unintentionally, or somewhere in between?

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We have suggested that laypeople mentally divide intentionality into two independent dimensions: one that focuses on the means (proximal intent) and one that focuses on the end (distal intent) (Plaks, Fortune, Liang, & Robinson, 2016; Plaks, McNichols, et al., 2009; Plaks & Robinson, 2015). In a series of studies, we have provided evidence that laypeople consider each type of intent independently. That is, “keeping one’s eye on the prize” (distal intent) is distinct from focusing on the mechanics of successful execution (proximal intent). In several studies, Plaks, McNichols, et al. (2009) manipulated both forms of intent, using between-subjects and within-subjects designs. In one study, all participants read about an actor ( J.G.) who desired to murder his uncle to gain inheritance money (motive), believed he could murder his uncle, formed a plan to murder his uncle, and had the skill to murder his uncle. In all cases, J.G. caused his uncle’s death by running over his uncle with a car. What differed among the scenarios was the degree to which proximal and distal intent were present in J.G.’s mind during the act. In the Both High condition, J.G. was explicitly thinking about killing his uncle at the moment when he pressed the accelerator with precision and control and ran over his uncle. In the Distal Intent Higher condition, J.G. was explicitly thinking about killing his uncle at the moment when he accidentally pressed the accelerator instead of the brake and killed an unknown pedestrian who turned out to be his uncle. In the Proximal Intent Higher condition, J.G. was thinking about his favorite song at the moment when he pressed the accelerator with precision and control, killing an unknown pedestrian who turned out to be his uncle. In the Both Low condition, J.G. was thinking about his favorite song at the moment when he accidentally pressed the accelerator instead of the brake, killing an unknown pedestrian who turned out to be his uncle. After reading these scenarios, participants rated J.G. on moral responsibility, blame, negativity, and how intentional the action was. We found that participants rated the Both High actor most culpable, the Both Low actor least culpable, and the Distal Intent Higher and Proximal Intent Higher actors partially culpable (and equivalent to each other). This general pattern of two main effects has been replicated in all subsequent studies (N > 2000).

7.1 The Moderating Role of Implicit Theories The more interesting question to us, however, was whether different implicit theories about the link between thought and action might

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systematically moderate this basic pattern. One prevalent theory in Western culture is that people’s deepest desires inevitably become expressed in action; there is a slippery slope between wanting and acting. This idea finds expression in laypeople’s understanding of psychoanalytic thought—e.g., the concept of the “Freudian slip” or the notion that “there are no accidents.” At the same time, an opposing theory is also commonplace: people have the power to exert control over their desires and prevent the corresponding action from occurring. The Western assumptions of individual autonomy and free will most likely contribute to such a belief. Given that both beliefs are intuitive to most people, Plaks, Levy, et al. (2009) and Plaks, McNichols, et al. (2009 Study 3) hypothesized that it would be possible to temporarily prime either theory via persuasive written passages. Participants randomly assigned to the Lay Psychoanalyst condition read a passage containing text such as, “No wish or desire stays unexpressed for long. In short order, the suppressed wish will slip out in behavior.” Participants assigned to the Cognitive Control condition read a passage containing text such as, “Although our desires exert a powerful pull, we are able to defer and control our thoughts and behavior.” Next, participants read one of four scenarios about an actor who committed a homicide with proximal and distal intent independently varied. Dependent variables included participants’ ratings of the actor’s moral responsibility and culpability. As predicted, the two groups did not differ in the Both High and Both Low conditions. However, in the Distal Intent Higher condition, the lay psychoanalysts rated the target more culpable than did the cognitive control theorists. Also as predicted, in the Proximal Intent Higher condition, the effect reversed as the cognitive control theorists rated the actor more culpable than did the lay psychoanalysts. This pattern is presented in Fig. 2. In other words, priming a psychoanalytic theory appeared to activate the notion that thoughts unavoidably spill over into action. Thus, the most important moral consideration is whether a malevolent aim (i.e., distal intent) was active in the actor’s mind at the moment of the act. In contrast, priming a cognitive control theory appeared to activate the notion that, through willpower, people can block malevolent wishes from turning into malevolent actions. In other words, this theory holds that evil thought is not a crime; the most important moral consideration is whether the actor produced the corresponding act with awareness and control (i.e., proximal intent). In summary, different theories about the relation between thought and action shifted participants’ focus to different aspects of intent. These

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Both high

Distal intent higher

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Both low

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Fig. 2 Ratings of actor’s moral responsibility as a function of the actor’s proximal and distal intent and observers’ implicit theories (Plaks, Levy, et al., 2009; Plaks, McNichols, & Fortune, 2009, Study 3).

shifts led to systematic and meaningful divergences in judgment, divergences that hold significant moral and legal implications.

8. INTERIM SUMMARY Different implicit theories about human traits and behavior underlie distinct patterns of attribution. For example, starting with the assumption of trait fixedness (the entity theory) encourages the use of traits as the currency of attribution. According to the entity perspective, if traits are fixed, they are meaningful, causal influences on behavior. In contrast, starting with the assumption of trait malleability encourages the use of dynamic causes such as goals, emotions, and situational cues. For incremental theorists, these are the real causes of behavior. Similarly, starting with the assumption that malevolent thoughts inevitably “leak out” into behavior encourages a moral system that prioritizes those prior thoughts. In contrast, starting with the assumption that people can, through the application of mental control, prevent thoughts from turning into the corresponding behavior, encourages a moral system that prioritizes the action itself. Attributions are relatively downstream products of the processing chain. What processes help to generate and sustain attributions? Do implicit theories systematically affect such intermediary processes as well? For example,

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do implicit theories systematically alter the kinds of information that people remember? Might implicit theory-related differences in memory contribute to the differences in attribution described in Part I? We turn next to research that addresses this question.

9. PART II: PERSON MEMORY Jane has a reputation for being good at math. One day at a restaurant, she expertly demonstrates an advanced mathematical proof to her friends. Later, however, she cannot calculate how much tip to leave. Which behavior will leave a greater impression on her friends: the trait-consistent behavior or the trait-inconsistent behavior? Since its inception in the late 1970s, the literature on Person Memory has used a range of methods to generate influential models to address this question (e.g., Hastie & Kumar, 1979; Sherman, Lee, Bessenoff, & Frost, 1998; Srull, 1981; Stangor & McMillan, 1992). Certain approaches have suggested that people generally display an “incongruency effect,” or a memory bias toward trait- or stereotype-inconsistent behavior, such as an intelligent person displaying unintelligent behavior (e.g., Hastie & Kumar, 1979; Sherman et al., 1998; Srull, 1981). According to such approaches, trait- or stereotype-inconsistent behavior is inherently more attention-grabbing and stimulates higher effort to verify and understand it (e.g., Sherman et al., 1998). In contrast, other models have suggested that trait-based expectancies and stereotypes enable consistent information to be processed more efficiently and elaborately, while inconsistent information is “filtered” out (e.g., Bodenhausen, 1988; Miller & Turnbull, 1986). The end result of such processes is a “congruency effect.” With some studies pointing to an incongruency effect and others to a congruency effect, Plaks, Stroessner, Dweck, and Sherman (2001) examined whether considering perceivers’ implicit theories might offer a measure of reconciliation. We hypothesized that entity theorists, with their assumption of trait fixedness, would find trait-consistent behavior to be especially meaningful and diagnostic. After all, such behavior helps to maintain and solidify both the perceived accuracy of the expectation and the larger notion that people are, in fact, generally fixed. In contrast, we suggested that incremental theorists, with their assumption of trait malleability, would find traitinconsistent behavior especially meaningful and diagnostic (Bassok & Trope, 1984). After all, scrutinizing a person’s unexpected behavior may

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lend important nuance to their evolving impression of the person, an impression that is comparatively open to change and even contradiction. To test this hypothesis, in one study, we presented participants with a randomized list of positive and negative behaviors about a person named Robert who was described as either a skinhead (connoting negative moral character) or a priest (connoting positive moral character). In another study, participants read the same list of behaviors, but they were attributed to members of an unnamed group that was explicitly described as either “friendly, kind, and considerate” or “unfriendly, unkind, and inconsiderate.” In the latter study, implicit theories were manipulated, rather than measured as an individual difference variable. In both studies, participants later completed a surprise recognition memory test in which the task was to indicate which behaviors had been presented previously and which were new behaviors. The dependent measure was recognition accuracy (the ability to discriminate hits from false alarms). In both studies, entity theorists showed a clear congruency effect: better ability to discriminate hits from false alarms for stereotype-consistent behaviors than for stereotype-inconsistent behaviors. Incremental theorists, in contrast, if anything, displayed an incongruency effect. [This pattern was later replicated by Plaks, Grant, and Dweck (2005).] Of note, this pattern was particularly evident under conditions of depleted processing capacity (high cognitive load). According to Plaks et al. (2001), when perceivers are operating with depleted resources, they are especially likely to draw upon their stored theories about traits to guide their processing. Such data suggest that when entity theorists observe a trait- or stereotype-inconsistent act such as a skinhead behaving kindly, they represent the anomalous behavior as an uninformative aberration that is not worthy of extensive cognitive elaboration. In contrast, incremental theorists appear to be comparatively attracted to such behavior, perhaps due to its higher informational value, or diagnosticity (e.g., Bassok & Trope, 1984). Thus, understanding a person’s anomalous behavior as the consequence of dynamic, mediating processes implies that closer attention to trait-or stereotype-inconsistent information may yield a richer, context-sensitive portrait of this particular individual.

10. THE ROLE OF EPISTEMIC MOTIVATIONS In subsequent studies, Plaks et al. (2005) examined whether these divergent patterns might be due not only to “cold” processes (e.g., assumptions

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about informational value), but to “warm” processes, as well. What motivations might be involved? We have argued that the fundamental need to maintain a sense of prediction competence may play a central role (Burton & Plaks, 2013; Plaks, Levy, et al., 2009; Plaks & Stecher, 2007). Increasingly, social and personality psychologists have documented the role epistemic motivations play in everyday social cognition. Updating classic concepts such as “effectance” (White, 1959), “intolerance of ambiguity” (Frenkel-Brunswik, 1949), and cognitive dissonance reduction (Festinger, 1957), contemporary researchers have demonstrated that the human need to maintain a structured, orderly psychological environment results in measurable compensatory processes when such structure is upset (e.g., Kay, Gaucher, McGregor, & Nash, 2010; Landau, Kay, & Whitson, 2015; Proulx & Inzlicht, 2012; Xu, Plaks, & Peterson, 2016). Might such processes play a role in the congruency/incongruency memory effects displayed by entity/incremental theorists? Specifically, might all people—both entity and incremental theorists—be highly motivated to preserve their theory in the face of countervailing evidence? Might they engage in motivated processing distortions to accomplish this task? If so, this would suggest that incremental theorists are not necessarily more methodical or insightful processors than are entity theorists. Instead, each group engages in parallel forms of motivated processing distortions in response to information that violates their respective theories. We have tested these ideas in several ways. First, Plaks et al. (2005) adapted the paradigm used in Plaks et al. (2001) by creating and validating two varieties of stereotype-consistent behaviors and two varieties of stereotype-inconsistent behaviors. These behaviors varied along two dimensions, labeled “trait” and “associate.” “Trait” behaviors were consistent and inconsistent with the defining trait of the target. “Associate” behaviors were consistent and inconsistent with the actor’s stereotypic preferences and tendencies, without speaking to the defining trait. To illustrate, consider Brad, a stereotypic “math geek” who is strong in math/sciences but weak in the humanities/arts. A “consistent:trait” behavior would be “Brad scored a 790 Math, 420 Verbal on the GRE.” An “inconsistent: trait” behavior would be “Brad scored a 420 Math, 790 Verbal on the GRE.” A “consistent:associate” behavior would be “Brad eagerly awaited the Star Trek marathon on TV.” An “inconsistent:associate” behavior would be “Brad eagerly read his volume of Shakespeare sonnets.” In several studies, we have presented such information to participants. In addition, prior to the presentation of the behaviors, participants read that Brad

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enrolled in a remedial course designed to strengthen his academic weaknesses. This added information allowed for a potential violation of the incremental theory. (No previous studies in the Person Memory literature, to our knowledge, had included this element of potential improvement in the expectation setup for the target.) If participants read that Brad sincerely underwent the remedial course, but showed no improvement, this would violate the incremental theory’s assumption that abilities are changeable. We hypothesized that if the divergent congruency/incongruency effects of entity and incremental theorists described by Plaks et al. (2001) are driven in part by motivated processes, then such effects should be more pronounced for behaviors that directly support or contradict their respective assumptions about trait fixedness or malleability (the “trait” behaviors) than for behaviors that do not (the “associate” behaviors). This is what we found. For example, in one study (Plaks et al., 2005, Study 2), under high cognitive load, entity theorists displayed greater recognition sensitivity to consistent:trait behaviors than to inconsistent:trait behaviors, but no preference for consistent: associate behaviors vs inconsistent:associate behaviors. At the same time, incremental theorists displayed greater recognition sensitivity to inconsistent:trait behaviors than to consistent:trait behaviors, but no preference for consistent:associate behaviors vs inconsistent:associate behaviors. In other words, as depicted in Fig. 3A, each group displayed memory distortions only toward information that directly confirmed/violated their respective theories. At times, however, theory-violating information may be too clear and emphatic to plausibly avoid. In such cases, perceivers may adopt an alternative means of motivated processing: debunking (Chaiken, Giner-Sorolla, & Chen, 1996; Ditto, Scepansky, Munro, Apanovitch, & Lockhart, 1998). Attitudes researchers have raised the distinction between approach and avoidance forms of defense (e.g., Eagly, Chen, Chaiken, & Shaw-Barnes, 1999). Building on data indicating that passive, attentional avoidance strategies are more resource independent (MacLeod, Matthews, & Tata, 1986) than active, debunking strategies (Ditto et al., 1998; F€ orster,Higgins, & Strack, 2000), we hypothesized that if perceivers were provided with clear, unambiguous, theory-violating information and plentiful processing resources, they would intensify their scrutiny of such information. This added scrutiny would translate into added memorability. The result would be a reversal of the typical effect: an incongruency effect for entity theorists and a congruency effects for entity theorists.

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A 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Entity theorists Trait:consistent

Trait:inconsistent

Incremental theorists Associate:consistent

Associate:inconsistent

B 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Entity theorists Trait:consistent

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0

Fig. 3 (A) High cognitive load recognition accuracy (d ) as function of type of information and perceivers’ implicit theory (Plaks et al., 2005, Study 2). (B) Low cognitive load recognition accuracy (d0 ) as function of type of information and perceivers’ implicit theory (Plaks et al., 2005, Study 2).

In one study (Plaks et al., 2005, Study 2), we tested this idea by adding an extremely low cognitive load condition. Sentences in this condition were presented for eight seconds at a time (compared to four seconds plus a concurrent eight-digit memorization task in the high load condition). We found

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that in the low load condition, the effects reversed, as predicted (See Fig. 3B). In other words, when afforded the time and opportunity, participants did not avoid information that violated their theory, but instead devoted extra scrutiny to such information, presumably with the intent of verifying or debunking such information. (Compare Fig. 3B to A.) In another study (Plaks et al., 2005, Study 3), we approached the question of motivated responses to theory violation from a different angle. Multiple research groups have demonstrated that when people experience a loss in subjective prediction confidence, they engage in more thorough information-gathering processes in order to restore their sense of prediction and control mastery (e.g., Pittman & D’Agostino, 1989; Weary, Jacobson, Edwards, & Tobin, 2001). We argued that if implicit theories truly are central to people’s subjective sense of prediction mastery, when their operating theory has been contradicted, they should initiate rigorous processing aimed at restoring this sense of mastery. To test this idea, we adapted a paradigm used by previous researchers to assess the efforts of control-deprived participants to regain a subjective sense of mastery (D’Agostino & Pittman, 1982). In this task, participants’ task is to estimate the proportion of trials on which their button press controls whether the stimulus on the screen (a row of As) changes (to a row of Bs). Participants are permitted to observe as many trials as they wish before making their estimate. According to the logic of the task, forming an accurate prediction should be particularly important to control-deprived people, given that detecting patterns of covariation represents a central piece of prediction and control mastery (Anderson, 1995; Ji, Peng, & Nisbett, 2000). Thus, the experience of control deprivation should lead participants to engage in more methodical and systematic information gathering as a means of restoring subjective prediction competence. We reasoned that if theory violation undermines subjective prediction competence, then when incremental theorists, for example, learn that a math geek, after taking a rigorous remedial course, still scored a 420 on the Verbal GRE (reflecting an inability to learn new skills), they should take more trials before rendering their estimate. Similarly, when entity theorists learn that a math geek scored poorly on the Math GRE (reflecting inconsistency in his core, defining trait), they should intensify their compensatory effort on the control estimation task. Participants were informed that “Brad” was either a math/sciences geek or an “artsy/humanities type.” Participants were also informed that Brad enrolled in a remedial course to improve his academic weaknesses. This

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established the possibility of improvement or nonimprovement that would confirm or violate the incremental theory. Participants were randomly assigned to read one of four behaviors performed by Brad (consistent:trait, inconsistent:trait, consistent:associate, inconsistent:associate). Next, they performed the control estimation task, the main dependent measure. Participants were instructed that after viewing a number of trials, their task was to estimate the percentage of trials on which they had control over whether the As turned into Bs. (The actual percentage was 35%.) Participants were instructed to sample both the “press” and “not-press” options. They were told that they could take as few or as many trials as they wished. Once they felt they had collected enough information, they could feel free to press the Esc key to end the program. The program recorded the number of trials taken by each participant before providing an estimate (on a 0%–100% scale). As predicted, entity theorists took more trials when faced with inconsistent:trait behavior than with consistent:trait behavior. Also as predicted, incremental theorists took more trials when faced with consistent:trait behavior than with inconsistent:trait behavior. In this case, because the protagonist in the vignette was given an opportunity to change, consistent:trait behavior indicated a failure to change (e.g., Brad the math geek who failed to improve his English writing skills). In other words, a failure to change, despite the desire and opportunity, would represent evidence of “too much” trait consistency—a state of affairs that violates the incremental theory’s assumption that people can alter their abilities. Finally, neither entity nor incremental theorists exhibited differences in trials taken after reading associate: consistent vs associate:inconsistent behaviors. Thus, both groups showed motivated responses only toward information that directly supported or violated their respective theories. Additional data indicated that both entity and incremental theorists reported corresponding increases in anxiety only in their respective theory-violating conditions, and in no other conditions. These data demonstrated that motivated processing distortions are not limited to entity theorists. Instead, both entity and incremental theorists appear to be bothered by information that violates their respective theories. In subsequent work, Plaks and Stecher (2007) found an analogous pattern when the target person was not “Brad” the fictional math geek/artsy type, but the participant him or herself. In three studies, participants took three iterations of a short “intelligence test” (actually the Remote Associations test; Mednick, 1962). The aim on this task is to find the commonality

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among three words (e.g., BOOK-HOOK-APPLE [answer: WORM]). Between Test 1 and Test 2, participants were given a lesson filled with helpful pointers on how to improve at the task. Then participants were randomly assigned to one of three false-feedback conditions. In the “decline” condition, participants’ percentile performance declined from Test 1 to Test 2 (62%–29%). In the “no change” condition, participants’ performance remained static (62%–61%). In the “improve” condition, participants’ performance improved from 62% to 91%. Dependent measures included number of trials taken on the control estimation task described earlier, self-reported affect (including anxiety), and performance on Test 3. Plaks and Stecher (2007) found that both entity and incremental theorists reacted strongly—and predictably—to feedback that violated their respective theories. As presented in Fig. 4A, when entity theorists were faced with A

B

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Fig. 4 (A) Mean trials taken on control estimation task as a function of type of feedback and implicit theories (Plaks & Stecher, 2007, Study 1). (B) Self-reported anxiety as a function of type of feedback and implicit theories (Plaks & Stecher, 2007, Study 1). (C) Test 3 performance as a function of type of feedback and implicit theories (Plaks & Stecher, 2007, Study 3).

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evidence of declining performance, they (compared to incremental theorists) took more trials on the control estimation task. In addition, they reported a greater rise in anxiety (Fig. 4B). Moreover, in one study (Plaks & Stecher, 2007, Study 3), these affective and cognitive consequences influenced participants’ subsequent behavior; entity theorists in this condition performed worse than incremental theorists on a third iteration of the test (Fig. 4C). This is consistent with previous studies demonstrating entity theorists’ plunging affect and expectations following poor academic performance (e.g., Blackwell et al., 2007; Mueller & Dweck, 1998). However, when participants’ performance remained static despite the lesson aimed at improvement, it was incremental theorists who took more trials on the control estimation task, felt more anxiety, and ultimately performed worse on a third iteration of the test. Why? Relentlessly unchanging performance, even despite the effort and opportunity to improve, violates the incremental theory’s assumption that people can improve their skills and talents. Indeed, incremental theorists reported feeling more anxious after unchanging performance than after declining performance. These data suggest that the most troubling state of affairs to an incremental theorist is to be “stuck in a rut.” Finally, for participants in the improvement condition, entity theorists (relative to incremental theorists) again displayed greater anxiety, took more trials on the control estimation task, and performed worse on the next test. Note that this does not mean that entity theorists prefer not to improve. Indeed, their rise in self-reported anxiety was accompanied by a parallel rise in self-reported happiness. However, unexpected improvement can be truly destabilizing as the individual attempts to understand how the success occurred in order to maintain the new performance level going forward (Where did I go right?). Such results find echoes in research demonstrating that individuals often display surprising resistance to good news about themselves or their group (e.g., Major, Kaiser, O’Brien, & McCoy, 2007; Swann, Stein-Seroussi, & Giesler, 1992). To summarize, these data speak to the power of the fundamental human drive to maintain a subjective sense of order, predictability, and control (Landau et al., 2015; White, 1959; Xu et al., 2016). The Plaks and Stecher (2007) data suggest that terms such as “improvement,” “stasis,” and “decline” are not objective, numeric givens. Instead, the meaning of different performance trajectories over time is shaped by each individual’s implicit theoretical framework. For example, no change in performance may be subjectively viewed as either theory-confirming stasis (for entity

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theorists) or theory-violating failure to change (for incremental theorists). Even improvement may be viewed as theory-confirming (for incremental theorists) or theory-violating (for entity theorists). The Plaks et al. (2005, 2001) data also suggest significant ways of reconceptualizing the literature on Person Memory. First, moving beyond main effects (i.e., a general congruency effect or incongruency effect), this work suggests that it is useful to consider consistency  implicit theory interactions. That is, different starting assumptions about the mutability of human traits effectively predict who will exhibit a congruency effect and who will exhibit an incongruency effect. Second, these data suggest that laypeople do not necessarily define behavioral consistency with respect to the expectancy or stereotype furnished by the experimenters. Instead, they define consistency with respect to their own intuitive theories of human behavior. That is, theory-consistent/inconsistent behavior is more motivationally engaging than garden variety, stereotype-consistent/inconsistent behavior (Plaks et al., 2005). As I describe next, this phenomenon extends to earlier points in the processing stream.

11. PART III: ATTENTION ALLOCATION In order to be encoded and remembered, behavior must be attended to. However, with a virtually infinite array of potential targets of attention at any given moment, people’s cognitive system must make difficult decisions about where to shine the attentional spotlight. How do people make such decisions? To be sure, inherent features of a stimulus (e.g., size, brightness, novelty) can make it more vs less attention-grabbing. However, there is increasing evidence that motivational variables on the perceiver end also play an important role in directing the spotlight toward certain types of information and away from others (e.g., Calcott & Berkman, 2014; Friedman & F€ orster, 2005; Koch, Holland, & van Knippenberg, 2008). In several studies, we have investigated whether the motivation to confirm one’s active theory (entity or incremental) might similarly bias attention in systematic ways. In one early study (Plaks et al., 2001, Study 1), we assessed attention allocation using an attentional probe paradigm (Hashtroudi et al., 1984; Sherman et al., 1998). Participants read a randomized series of kind, unkind, and neutral behaviors performed by someone identified as either a skinhead or a priest. During the presentation of nine of the sentences (three from each type), the computer emitted a tone. Participants’ task was to press the

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spacebar as quickly as possible upon hearing each tone. According to the logic of this task, when people are highly engaged with the stimulus on the screen (the actor’s behavior) at the moment of the tone, their reaction time is slower than that of people who are not as engaged. This task assumes that when perceivers are highly engaged with a stimulus, it requires more effort (and time) to disengage and redirect one’s attention elsewhere. Plaks et al. (2001, Study 1) found that entity theorists’ reaction times to the tone were slower when the tone sounded during trait-consistent behaviors than during trait-inconsistent behaviors. In other words, entity theorists’ congruency effect extended to the attention allocation stage. In contrast, incremental theorists’ reaction times were slower when the tone sounded during trait-inconsistent behaviors than during trait-consistent behaviors. In other words, incremental theorists’ incongruency effect manifested itself at attention allocation as well. This pattern was later replicated using different target groups (Plaks et al., 2005; Plaks & Halvorson, 2013). Plaks et al. (2001, Study 3) attempted a conceptual replication of this effect using a classic attention allocation paradigm: dichotic listening (Cherry, 1953). To set up the initial expectations about the target’s traits, participants were provided with information about two 10-year-old boys. One boy’s grades and teachers’ comments suggested low intelligence, the other suggested average intelligence. Participants were told that they would hear the boys simultaneously taking an oral exam in geography, one child in each ear of headphones. The cover story stated that the task was meant to simulate the real-life attention demands of a teacher in a crowded classroom. Participants’ task was to accurately track the performance of each child by ticking marks in the appropriate column on a piece of paper. Participants were told to skip questions that they did not hear. All of the questions on the oral exam had clear, objective answers that undergraduates would be expected to easily know (e.g., “Is Georgia in the north or south of United States?”). One advantage of this paradigm is that it involved direct attention to the target’s ongoing stream of behavior, rather than the impoverished, secondhand behavioral descriptions typically provided in studies of this nature. Afterward, participants answered several questions assessing their impressions of the boys. The performance of the target child (with the poor prior track record) was varied across three conditions. In one condition, he answered 13 of 20 correct (moderate performance), in a second condition, he answered 16 of 20 correct (good performance), and in the third, he answered 19 of

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the 20 items correctly (outstanding performance). In all conditions, the neutral boy (left ear) answered 14 of 20 items correctly. In other words, in the moderate and good conditions, participants heard the target boy provide a mix of trait-consistent and -inconsistent behavior. In the outstanding condition, however, they heard almost exclusively trait-inconsistent behavior. The primary dependent variable was the number of checkmarks participants made in the column representing the target child. More marks were taken to indicate greater attention. The second dependent variable was participants’ rating of the target’s academic potential on a 1–12 scale. The results revealed a clear divergence between entity and incremental theorists. Entity theorists’ attention to the target displayed a linear decline as his performance became increasingly trait-inconsistent. In contrast, incremental theorists’ attention to the target remained constant regardless of his performance. How did this difference in attention translate into judgments of the target’s ability? Incremental theorists’ judgments of the target’s intelligence became gradually more favorable, commensurate with his improving performance. In contrast, entity theorists’ judgments of the target remained static across the moderate and good conditions (Ms ¼ 6.67 and 6.53, respectively), before increasing significantly in the outstanding condition (M ¼ 9.28), P < 0.001. This pattern suggests that entity theorists attempted to preserve their initial (low) opinion of the target for longer than incremental theorists did. Specifically, when the target scored 16/20, entity theorists paid less attention than incremental theorists to his performance and rated him less positively. However, it is also clear that entity theorists were not delusional. When faced with a critical mass of counter-expectant information (19/20), they evinced a willingness to revise their initial, negative impression. These data shed light on how people’s largely unconscious decisions about attention allocation help to actively shape the pool of evidence available for making person judgments. For entity theorists, trait-consistent information (Brad scored a 790 on the math GRE and 460 on the verbal) is also theory-consistent information (i.e., a confirmation of the assumption that people’s intelligence does not vary). But when incremental theorists learn about someone who sincerely wishes to improve, has the opportunity to improve, but still remains the same, such trait-consistent information is theory-inconsistent. These data suggest that what truly engages people’s motivated processing is not so much a desire to confirm a narrower stereotype, but a desire to confirm their broader theories of human traits. In subsequent studies, my colleagues and I found that, in certain cases, exposure to

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theory-inconsistent information may, in fact, lead people to “double down” on their theory. One such case involves accountability.

12. THE DOUBLE-EDGED SWORD OF ACCOUNTABILITY Accountability refers to the expectation that one will be called upon to explain or justify a decision or conclusion. Accountability is widely assumed to induce more careful, systematic decision-making procedures that result in less bias. Indeed, early studies provided evidence for accountability’s debiasing effect. For example, Tetlock reported that accountability reduced primacy effects in impression formation (Tetlock, 1983) and the magnitude of the fundamental attribution error (Tetlock, 1985). Subsequent work, however, revealed a more complex picture as studies reported evidence that accountability can exacerbate certain processing biases (Bodenhausen, Kramer, & Susser, 1994; Lambert, Cronen, & Chasteen, 1996; Lambert et al., 2003). Plaks and Halvorson (2013) hypothesized that an analysis that included perceivers’ implicit theories might provide some measure of reconciliation to the conflicting findings. In particular, we examined whether accountability would differentially influence the way entity and incremental theorists’ process stereotype-consistent and stereotype-inconsistent information. Do the congruency and incongruency effects revealed by Plaks et al. (2005, 2001) disappear when there is a mandate to process each incoming piece of information rigorously and even-handedly? Alternatively, do perceivers engage in subtle, motivated processing strategies that “tip one’s hat” toward objectivity while at the same time preserving or even strengthening their processing preferences? To test which hypothesis would be better supported by the data, Plaks and Halvorson (2013) used the attentional probe task used in Plaks et al. (2001), but with an accountability manipulation included. Half of the participants were instructed that after reading the target’s behaviors, they would be asked to state and justify their opinion of the target in a conversation with other people. The other half received no such instructions. As in previous studies, participants responded to a tone that sounded during randomly selected stereotype-consistent and stereotype-inconsistent behaviors performed by “Brad,” a stereotypic “math geek.” After reading all of the behaviors, participants rated Brad’s mathematical and verbal intelligence (among 14 other traits).

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First, in the nonaccountable condition, Plaks and Halvorson (2013) replicated the attention allocation pattern of Plaks et al. (2005, 2001): a congruency effect for entity theorists and an incongruency effect for incremental theorists. What happened when accountability instructions were introduced? Entity theorists’ congruency effect was eliminated, while incremental theorists’ incongruency effect remained. Thus far, the data might seem to suggest that accountability reduced bias for entity theorists, but not incremental theorists. When we examined participants’ judgments of Brad’s traits and abilities, however, the picture became more complicated. Accountability led entity theorists to a more stereotypic judgment of the target, whereas incremental theorists’ judgments remained equivalent whether they were accountable or nonaccountable. Thus, taken together, accountability led entity theorists to pay more attention than they otherwise would have to information that was inconsistent with the stereotype and, in turn, their theory of trait fixedness. However, this added attention did not lead them to attenuate their impressions of the target. In fact, it made their impressions more extreme. Why might this be? In a second study, Plaks and Halvorson (2013) investigated a possible mechanism: social judgeability, or the metacognitive sense of feeling entitled to judge a person (Leyens, Yzerbyt, & Schadron, 1992). Several studies have demonstrated that people generally believe that person judgments are more valid when they are based on at least a minimum quantity of specific, individuating information (Leyens et al., 1992; Yzerbyt, Leyens, & Corneille, 1998). We suspected that to the extent that accountable entity theorists sense that they have acknowledged the existence of stereotype-inconsistent information, this activates a subjective sense of legitimacy for stereotype-driven judgments. Thus, in Study 2, we measured social judgeability by asking participants questions such as: “To what extent do you feel that you are making an informed judgment about Brad?” and “To what extent do you feel entitled to make judgments about Brad’s traits based on the information you have received?” The pattern of participants’ judgments of Brad replicated the pattern in Study 1: The introduction of accountability led entity theorists’ judgments to become more extreme but did not affect the judgments of incremental theorists. As predicted, this effect was mediated by social judgeability: the more entitled entity theorists felt to judge the target, the more extreme their judgments became. This pattern suggested that accountability caused more (rather than less) bias in entity theorists’ judgments because it encouraged a

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superficial form of attention to stereotype-inconsistent information. At the same time, the metacognitive experience of having done their due diligence strengthened their sense that the judgment was based on evenhanded datagathering procedures. This sort of increased judgmental extremity due to increased self-credibility has been documented in the literature on attitudes (e.g., Lord, Ross, & Lepper, 1979; Williams, Bourgeois, & Croyle, 1993; Wood & Eagly, 1981) and other areas of motivated cognition (e.g., Ditto & Lopez, 1992; F€ orster et al., 2000; Sherman, Stroessner, Conrey, & Azam, 2005). Put differently, “preemptive self-criticism” may have disguised “defensive bolstering” (Lerner & Tetlock, 1999).

13. INTERIM SUMMARY Implicit theories help the attentional system to identify which pieces of information to approach and to avoid. As such, people are able to shape the pool of “data” about a target person from which to generate judgments. However, these studies also demonstrate that the relation between attention and judgment is subtle and complex. Attentional exposure to theoryviolating information can at times strengthen the conviction with which one holds one’s theory.

14. PART IV: ENCODING PROCESSES People are often forced to face stimuli that are not easy to avoid through shifting attention. In this section, I describe research on how implicit theories influence encoding processes once the spotlight of attention has landed on a particular stimulus. I will provide evidence that implicit theories systematically shift processes at this stage, as well. In so doing, I will continue to describe research with the entity and incremental theories. But I will begin with research on a related lay theory construct: beliefs about genetics.

15. THEORIES ABOUT GENETIC VARIATION AND THE ENCODING OF RACE In recent years, my collaborators and I have begun further explorations of intuitions that may be associated with—and may even help to buttress—the entity and incremental theories. Several researchers have reported that laypeople find fixedness rooted in biological/genetic

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explanations to be particularly compelling (e.g., Dar-Nimrod & Heine, 2006; Williams & Eberhardt, 2008; for a recent review, see Heine, Dar-Nimrod, Cheung, & Proulx, 2017). We have conducted a research program that seeks to uncover in more detail what people believe about genetics and race and how such beliefs may come to influence basic encoding and memory processes. The complete mapping of the human genome in 2001 enabled scientists to measure human genomic variability with unprecedented precision. Analyses of large data sets containing human genomic data from around the world have yielded between-group genomic variability estimates as low as 0.1% (see Fujimura et al., 2014; Ossorio & Duster, 2005). Such findings have led many geneticists to question the usefulness of race as a biological construct. Laypeople often see things differently. My colleagues and I have found that laypeople’s estimates of between-group genetic variability tend to average around 45% (Kang, Plaks, & Remedios, 2015; Plaks, Malahy, Sedlins, & Shoda, 2012). This is consistent with the well-documented tendency to view racial groups as “natural kinds” (Keller, 2005; Rothbart & Taylor, 1992). It appears that people view DNA as a, if not the, mechanism through which racial essences are created (Dar-Nimrod & Heine, 2011; Heine et al., 2017). In many respects, DNA has replaced medieval notions of blood as the transmitter of biological information across generations (Fredrickson, 2002). We have found that people possess widely differing theories about what the genomic record actually says about human genetic variation. A “low genetic overlap” theory holds that although people with different ancestral origins may share enough DNA to qualify as members of the same species, the genetic differences are significant and meaningful. These differences are assumed to be expressed across a range of physical traits (e.g., skin and hair color) and personality traits (e.g., intelligence, aggression). In contrast, others hold the “high genetic overlap” theory. According to this theory, genetic similarity between individuals is already so close to the 100% ceiling that any added effect of group membership is inconsequential. Thus, those with the high genetic overlap theory consider traditional race categories to be of little use when it comes to understanding specific individuals. We typically assess genetic overlap beliefs (GOBs) by asking participants to provide a numeric estimate between 0% and 100% on questions such as, “If you were to draw two people at random from the whole world’s population, what percentage of genetic material would they have in common?” In all studies conducted so far, the distribution of estimates of genetic overlap

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tends to be bimodal with a mean around 55%. We have investigated whether variability in these genetic overlap estimates predicts differential encoding of monoracial and biracial human faces (Kang et al., 2015; Plaks et al., 2012). A target person’s racial identity can often be ambiguous. How do perceivers deal with such ambiguity? There is evidence that perceivers often treat racially ambiguous faces like they treat any other kind of perceptually ambiguous stimulus (e.g., a Necker cube); by rapidly and efficiently slotting such faces into one of the two competing racial categories (e.g., Halberstadt, Sherman, & Sherman, 2011; Peery & Bodenhausen, 2008). At the same time, the data also reveal significant individual differences in this tendency (e.g., Eberhardt, Dasgupta, & Banaszynski, 2003; Malahy, Sedlins, Plaks, & Shoda, 2010). Some perceivers, it appears, operate with a less binary, either/or form of racial categorization, one that allows for incremental gradations. Rather than treating such individual difference variation as noise, my colleagues and I examined whether implicit theories about genetic overlap would predict participants’ continuous vs discrete racial categorization. In Plaks et al. (2012, Study 1), we collected participants’ estimates of intergroup genetic overlap and presented them with a series of faces that had been digitally morphed to vary continuously between Black and White. We tested whether GOBs would predict the degree to which subjective racial categorization conformed to the objective change in racial composition. Why might different assumptions about genetic overlap predict differences in the racial categorization of faces? Plaks et al. (2012) suggested that the assumption that races are genetically distinct (low genetic overlap) creates a perceptual expectancy of clear boundaries between categories. This either/or threshold encourages perceivers to “shoehorn” ambiguous targets into one category or the other. In contrast, the high overlap theory assumes that racial categories are comparatively permeable. Thus, high overlap participants should be less inclined to assimilate ambiguous faces into a defined category. We tested this hypothesis by using a version of the “two-back,” shortterm memory task (Smith, Jonides, Marshuetz, & Koeppe, 1998). This task assumes that once a face has been encoded as a member of one category, it becomes more easily confusable with same-category faces than with crosscategory faces. Thus, the dependent measure was participants’ pattern of confusion rates. Participants were presented with two types of stimuli, faces and numbers. The faces were randomly drawn from a continuum of digitally morphed

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faces: 0% Black–100% White, 16.67% Black–83.33% White, 33.33% Black– 66.67% White, 50% Black–50% White, 66.67% Black–33.33% White, 83.33% Black–16.67% White, and 100% Black–0% White. On the first trial, a randomly selected stimulus (e.g., a 66.67% Black face) was presented for 1000 ms. On the next trial, a randomly selected stimulus of the other type (e.g., the number 3) was presented for 1000 ms. This alternating sequence continued for an average of 93.13 trials per participant. (The total number of trials varied slightly from participant to participant, because we set the program to conclude only after each participant had viewed all of the 49 possible sequences of faces at least once.) On each trial, the target (either a number or a face) remained on the screen until the participant pressed a key indicating whether it was the same as the previous stimulus of that type. For example, if the stimulus on a given trial was a face, participants’ task was to indicate whether it was identical to the last face presented. We calculated confusion rates for each of the six pairs of neighboring faces on the continuum (e.g., confusions between 100% Black and 83.33% Black, confusions between 83.33% Black and 66.67% Black, etc.). The results revealed, first of all, that participants gave widely varying estimates of genetic overlap (range ¼ 5%–100%) with a mean of 56.01% (SD ¼ 41.62). We found that this variable predicted striking differences in where along the Black–White continuum participants made their confusion errors. The error rate of the low overlap group was highly influenced by the racial composition of the faces [quadratic contrast: F ¼ 79.41, P < 0.001, η2 p ¼ 0:68]. In contrast, this effect was significantly smaller for the high overlap group [quadratic contrast: F ¼ 9.38, P < 0.01, η2 p ¼ 0:18]. In other words, the lower the estimate of genetic overlap, the more likely participants were to confuse perceived Black faces with other perceived Black faces and perceived White faces with other perceived White faces. They were less likely to confuse perceived Blacks with perceived Whites. This suggests that these participants’ short-term memory for a given face was meaningfully influenced by racial cues. This pattern reflects a more dichotomous representation of the categories Black and White. In contrast, high overlap participants’ confusion rates were not as strongly affected by the faces’ racial percentage. This suggests that their memory for each face was (compared to low overlap participants) based less on racial cues and more on individuating features. It should be added that these results could not be explained by a relation between participants’ estimates of genetic overlap and other predictors of stereotyping such as political orientation and Need for Cognition.

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In another study (Kang et al., 2015, Study 2), we addressed this idea from a different angle, using a paradigm reported by Halberstadt and Winkielman (2014). Halberstadt and Winkielman found that, in general, people are slower to classify biracial faces than monoracial faces. We suspected that this effect would be especially strong for people with low GOBs (relative to people with high GOBs). Presumably, the expectation of clear-cut category differences established by the assumption of low genetic overlap would render biracial faces more of a challenge to processing fluency—one that would translate into longer reaction times as participants attempted to solve the categorization puzzle. Participants viewed a series of faces on the computer screen. Some of the faces were monoracial (White or East Asian), some were biracial morphs. Participants in one condition (the Race Classification condition) were instructed on each trial to press one key if the face was Caucasian and another key if the face was Asian. Those in the Emotion Classification condition were instructed on each trial to press one key if the person presented on the screen was “feeling positive” and the other key if the person was “feeling negative.” Immediately after each classification, participants were asked to rate the attractiveness of the face just presented (1 “not attractive”…9 “very attractive”). Half of the participants completed the genetic overlap questionnaire prior to the session, half completed the questionnaire at the end. We again found a high degree of variability in participants’ estimates of genetic overlap (M ¼ 51.28%, SD ¼ 35.78). How did this variability affect response times on the classification task? As presented in Fig. 5, when 1900 1800 1700 1600 1500 1400 1300 1200 1100 1000 Monoracial targets

Biracial targets High overlap belief

Low overlap belief

Fig. 5 Mean response times in milliseconds to categorize biracial and monoracial faces as a function of genetic overlap beliefs (Kang et al., 2015, Study 2).

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the task was to classify the target’s race, we found that the lower the estimate of genetic overlap between two humans randomly selected from the whole world, the higher the response time to classify biracial faces. Genetic overlap estimates did not influence response times to categorize the monoracial faces. Also as predicted, genetic overlap estimates did not predict response times to categorize the faces’ emotional states. Finally, genetic overlap estimates did not predict differences in ratings of the faces’ attractiveness. In other words, as hypothesized, the effect of GOBs was restricted to racial classification. Belief in lower genetic overlap was associated with experiencing greater difficulty when racially classifying biracial (but not monoracial) faces. In other studies (Plaks et al., 2012, Study 2; Kang et al., 2015, Study 3), we successfully manipulated GOBs using mock scientific articles that participants read with a reading comprehension cover story. The high overlap article described evidence indicating that humans share 99.9% of their genome. The low overlap article described evidence indicating that humans share 21.4% of their genome. The results in both studies hewed closely to the results we obtained with the individual differences measure. The finding that GOBs are rather easily manipulable suggests that laypeople’s intuitions about genetics and race are not firm. Because people generally recognize their lack of knowledge about genetics, they appear receptive to material that teaches principles and findings of population genetics. These data suggest a promising approach to reducing racial bias. For example, media reports about genetics typically report the discovery of a “gene for X.” Such reports place the focus on interindividual and intergroup differences (Dar-Nimrod & Heine, 2011). They typically fail, however, to report that such differences occur within the minuscule portion of the genetic spectrum that is nonoverlapping. Thus, an intervention that focuses participants on the high degree of human genetic overlap, rather than the small amount of difference, may promote the tendency to classify all humans in the same biological category. More generally, these studies indicate that laypeople’s quantitative theories about the genetics of race are an important predictor of early, largely implicit categorization and encoding processes.

16. ENCODING OF THEORY-CONFIRMING AND THEORYVIOLATING BEHAVIOR: NEURAL SUBSTRATES Thus far, I have described behavioral evidence, using a wide range of paradigms, for the powerful effects of implicit theories on basic attention,

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encoding, retrieval, and judgment processes. In recent years, we have increasingly turned to the neurophysiological level of analysis to shed further insight on specific microprocesses underlying such effects. For example, Xu and Plaks (2015) adapted the paradigm of Plaks et al. (2005) to fit the specifications of electroencephalography (EEG). An advantage of EEG over traditional social cognition paradigms is its temporal acuity; it can register brain activity occurring as little as 10 ms after stimulus onset. As such, it is ideal for assessing instantaneous responses to expectancy violations, including implicit theory violations. An important question left unanswered by Plaks et al. (2005) and Plaks and Stecher (2007) concerned the specific cognitive processes that people marshal when faced with theory-violating information. Specifically, do people attempt to fit the incoming information into their theory (akin to the Piagetian concept of “assimilation”) or do they attempt to adjust their theory to fit the incoming information (akin to “accommodation”)? Fortunately, decades of research on EEG has established reliable associations between specific classes of waveforms and specific integrative processes. For example, the N400, a negative-going waveform peaking around 400 ms after stimulus that is primarily found in frontal regions, is commonly taken as a marker of effort to integrate incoming inconsistent information into existing schemas (e.g., Debruille, 2007; Kutas & Federmeier, 2000, 2011)—i.e., assimilation. In contrast, the P300 is often linked with “context updating” processes, in which the individual’s schema is updated in working memory in light of new information (Coulson, King, & Kutas, 1998; Donchin & Coles, 1988; Osterhout, Kim, & Kuperberg, 2012)—i.e., accommodation. Xu and Plaks (2015) presented participants with the expectation that “Brad” was a math geek. Participants were further informed that Brad sincerely put high effort into a remedial course aimed at improving his reading and writing skills. Then participants read a randomized list of 200 behaviors performed by Brad, while an EEG system recorded their continuous neural activity. The behaviors were divided into four types: stereotype-consistent (e.g., “Brad developed plans to create a robot last year”), stereotypeinconsistent (e.g., “Brad enjoys discussing literature at parties),” neutral (e.g., “Brad ate lunch in the school cafeteria”), and semantically anomalous (e.g., “Brad reads the hamburger every morning before he goes to school”). Xu and Plaks found that, compared to incremental theorists, entity theorists displayed more pronounced frontal N400 responses to stereotypeinconsistent behaviors. In contrast, incremental theorists exhibited more

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pronounced frontal N400 responses than entity theorists to stereotypeconsistent behaviors. The two groups did not differ in their responses to neutral or semantically anomalous behaviors. Nor did the two groups exhibit differences in P300 activity in response to any type of behaviors. In other words, entity and incremental theorists exhibited differential N400 responses only toward information that directly violated their respective theories. These data provided no evidence of P300 effects despite a sample large enough to detect a small effect with 90% power. Taken together, this pattern suggests more evidence for the “assimilation” route than the “accommodation” route. Most perceivers—whether incremental or entity theorists—appear to confront theory-violating information by activating processes aimed at shoehorning such information into the confines of their theory. What would it take to activate processes involving actual change in one’s theory? Although people are generally resistant to theory change, a critical mass of irrefutable theory-violating information can weaken such resistance. This is evident in the Plaks et al. (2001, Study 4) data in which entity theorists were ready and willing to abandon their fixed view of the target’s low intelligence in the condition when he scored 19/20 on a test. Such countertheoretical behavior may exert even greater impact if linked with an alternative theory that provides an intuitive explanation for the new data. In other words, lay scientists may behave much the way professional scientists behave. As the philosopher Kuhn (1962) noted in his work on “paradigm shifts,” scientific communities are generally hostile to new data that contradict the prevailing paradigm, but often come to accept the new data once a plausible, intuitive, theoretical alternative emerges. In addition to a sincere desire to hold the “correct” theory, people may selectively adopt either the entity or the incremental theory for selfenhancing reasons. For example, Leith et al. (2014) reported that participants’ responses on entity–incremental measures shifted toward the incremental end of the scale following threatening performance feedback or recall of a failure episode. Presumably, shifting toward a more malleable view cushions the blow of negative feedback by implying that improvement is possible. More recently, Steimer and Mata (2016) reported that participants rated a personal quality as more malleable if it was described in an unfavorable (vs favorable) manner. Such data indicating that implicit theory endorsement has a motivated component can further enhance the literature’s understanding of theory activation.

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17. INTERIM SUMMARY Implicit theories affect not only perceivers’ placement of the attentional spotlight but also the labels perceivers affix to a stimulus as it is encoded into memory. Given the tight linkages between encoding and retrieval (e.g., Tulving & Thompson, 1973), differences at the encoding stage most likely contribute to parallel differences that emerge at later stages (memory, attribution).

18. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS FOR FUTURE WORK Implicit theories systematically shape information processing at multiple points along the processing stream, ranging from the earliest processes such as attention and encoding to later processes such as attribution and memory. I have presented evidence for this idea using implicit theories regarding the fixedness–malleability of human attributes (the entity– incremental dimension), as well as theories regarding the controllability of happiness (Tullett & Plaks, 2016), human genetic variation (Kang et al., 2015; Plaks et al., 2012), and the thought–action link (Plaks, McNichols, et al., 2009). Although this body of work has advanced the field’s understanding of the interplay between perceivers’ a priori assumptions and basic social information processing, there remain numerous important avenues for future research. First, researchers should conduct a more comprehensive examination of how individual differences in entity–incremental endorsement relate to other important individual difference variables, such as personality traits, intelligence, socioeconomic status, and political orientation. Although there has been some work in this regard (Chiu, Morris, Hong, & Menon, 2000; Church et al., 2003), more rigorous replications and extensions are needed. Moreover, although there have been a handful of cross-cultural examinations of implicit theories (Chiu et al., 2000; Church et al., 2003), this literature is comparatively small, leaving many unanswered questions about (a) which theories different cultures adhere to and (b) how different cultures may differentially express the same theory. On the dependent variable side, researchers should continue to add to the list of processes that may be susceptible to influence from implicit theories. For example, no work, to my knowledge, has examined effects

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of implicit theories on spontaneous trait inference (e.g., Carlston & Skowronski, 1994; Winter & Uleman, 1984). If entity theorists truly traffic in the currency of traits, a reasonable hypothesis is that they will be quicker to go beyond the behavioral information given and infer traits as the invisible structure that explains the behavior. Moreover, no work, to my knowledge, has examined effects of implicit theories on trait inferences based on rapid “thin slice” presentations of human faces. There is growing evidence that perceivers quickly and effortlessly glean surprisingly rich inferences about a target’s personality based on the most impoverished of stimuli (e.g., presentation of a face for 50 ms; Tskhay & Rule, 2013). Might entity theorists be more inclined to do this? Finally, no work, to my knowledge, has examined the role of implicit theories in behavioral confirmation effects (e.g., Jussim & Harber, 2005). Does entity theorists’ readiness to make trait inferences translate into behavior that increases the likelihood of selffulfilling prophecies? Historically, much of the social cognition literature has adopted something of a “content-free” approach. For example, processes related to stereotyping have often been assumed to be largely identical regardless of whether the perceiver is using an ethnic stereotype, a gender stereotype, or an occupational stereotype. A “next-generation” approach has increasingly sought to inject content into the social-cognitive machinery. For example, several studies have documented that different stereotypes exert differential effects on processing, sometimes in an interactive fashion with other stereotypes (e.g., Galinsky, Hall, & Cuddy, 2013; Kang & Chasteen, 2009). I view the work described here as advancing an approach that integrates specific cognitive processes with specific content. I believe there is much value in this approach and encourage psychologists to continue to develop this synthesis between content and process.

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Jason E. Plaks

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