Poster #208 - Implicit theories of shyness and interpersonal perception and relationship in Chinese children

• In Event: 2-055 - Poster Session 06
  In Poster Session: PS 06 Section - Social, Emotional, Personality

Integrative Statement

Abundant research has shown that lay people differ in their implicit theories about themselves and others, which shapes the way how they interpret and react to social situations (e.g., Chiu, Hong, & Dweck, 1997; Giles & Heyman, 2003, 2004; Yeager, in press). Some are characterized by an implicit entity theory that construes traits or behaviors as fixed and immutable qualities, and incline to make global, rigid, and enduring judgments of others on the basis of limited information. Others hold an implicit incremental view that focuses on changing nature of abilities or personalities over time and across situations, and tend to make relatively flexible interpersonal judgment that takes positive information into account even when evaluating unfavorable attributes.

There is considerable research on implicit entity and incremental theories in North America across various domains and among both children and adults (Beer, 2002; Erdley & Dweck, 1993; Erdley et al., 1997). However, much less is known about how implicit theories might be related to interpersonal perception and relationship in non-Western contexts, such as China. To fill this gap, the main goal of the current study was to investigate implicit theories of shyness in Chinese children in relation to their perception of and relationship with shy children. Specifically, we focused on implicit theories of two subtypes of shyness previously identified in the Chinese context: anxious shyness and regulated shyness (Xu et al., 2007; 2008; 2009; 2014), and investigated how children’s entity and incremental beliefs about anxious and regulated shyness, i.e., the extent to which Chinese children view these two subtypes of shyness as fixed or malleable, were related to their stereotypes about shy children and relationship with shy peers.

The participants were 251 Chinese fourth and fifth graders, who were first group administered with a self-report measure of implicit theories of anxious and regulated shyness adapted from Beer (2002) and Zhang and Xu (2018). To minimize any effects that answering the questions on implicit theories might have on children’s responses to other measures, children were individually interviewed one week later, and were asked questions with regard to (1.) their stereotypes about shy children, (2.) perceptions of shy peers; and (3.) relationship with shy peers, adapted from Zhang and Xu (2018).

The results showed that children held stronger entity beliefs about regulated shyness than anxious shyness. Mediation analyses, conducted via structural equation modeling indicated that stronger entity beliefs about anxious shyness were related to more negative stereotypes about shy children, which in turn were associated with poorer relationship with shy peers. However, these mediation pathways were not found for implicit theories of regulated shyness. Instead, stronger entity beliefs about regulated shyness were related to more positive stereotypes about shy children. These findings provide support for the functional roles of implicit theories in understanding interpersonal perception and relationship in non-Western contexts, and highlight the importance of conceptions of shyness in shaping children’s implicit theories.

Authors

• Taylor Stacy, University of Hawaii at Manoa
  Non-Presenting Author

• Zengxiu Zhang, East China Normal University
  Non-Presenting Author

• Yiyuan Xu, University of Hawaii at Manoa
  Presenting Author