Parents’ implicit theories of intelligence and how they relate to failure beliefs and parenting styles

Abstract

Parents’ beliefs about their children’s abilities shape their parenting practices and consequently their children’s development. The current study aims to explore parents’ implicit theories of intelligence. Two dimensions that are particularly important are: malleability and relevance for success. First, parents’ beliefs on these two dimensions of intelligence were explored in relation to demographic variables (gender, level of education). Second, the relation between parents’ implicit theories of intelligence and their failure beliefs was examined. Finally, we investigated whether different parenting styles could predict parents’ implicit theories of intelligence. Data was collected through a survey posted online and processed with the IBM® SPSS® software. Results indicated that neither parents’ gender not their educational level is related to their implicit theories of intelligence. Additionally, no connection was found between views on malleability of intelligence and specific failure beliefs. Finally, permissive and authoritative parenting styles did not predict incremental theories of intelligence but the authoritarian style did. Suggestions for future research are also discussed.