situational lay theories

n. Lay theories (also referred to as implicit, naïve, or intuitive theories) are the underlying beliefs about objects, people, or events that help to define an individual's subjective reality. Situational lay theories are lay theories that have been recently or temporarily activated in an individual's mind by cues in the environment.

Evidence from research in social, cognitive, and clinical psychology indicates that individuals with different lay theories often construe the same stimulus or event in strikingly different manners. For example, research by Carol Dweck and colleagues has focused on entity theorists (who hold that human attributes such as intelligence and moral character are largely fixed over time and across situations) and incremental theorists (who hold that such qualities are malleable and cultivable). Studies have shown that entity theorists (relative to incremental theorists) are more prone (a) to attribute an actor's behavior to underlying traits, (b) to attribute their own behavior to underlying traits, (c) to apply stereotypes to group members, and (d) to expect actors to display high behavioral consistency. These differences in attribution have been shown to underlie noteworthy differences in achievement motivation and person judgment. Importantly, these effects have been found whether the entity and incremental theories were assessed as chronic, personality structures (using the Implicit Theories Questionnaire) or were temporarily manipulated in the laboratory.

Lay theories have been situationally manipulated in several ways. In several studies, researchers randomly assigned participants to read one of two stimulus articles, ostensibly taken from a current psychology journal. One article touted the entity position by describing new longitudinal research indicating that personality attributes remain fixed from childhood through adulthood. The other touted the incremental position by describing research showing that personality attributes are malleable over time. Other researchers have manipulated the entity and incremental theories by having participants study a set of proverbs reflecting the entity view (e.g., “You can't teach an old dog new tricks”) or the incremental view (e.g., “It's never too late to learn”). With both methods, those who were given the entity theory prime tended to make person judgments consistent with the entity theory and those given the incremental theory prime made judgments consistent with the incremental theory.

The finding that lay theories can be situationally manipulated has important implications. First, it appears that, at least in the short term, a person's chronic theory may be superseded. This implies relatively simple intervention strategies to reduce some of the maladaptive effects of the entity theory. Second, it suggests that people often hold simultaneous, contradictory assumptions about their world. The particular theory an individual will use to guide cognition is often determined by incidental features present in the environment. Thus, by studying the influence of environmental cues on the activation of lay theories, researchers may gain a fuller understanding of basic processes in human reasoning. – JP