The Cultural Historical Complexity of Human Personality Adaptation

• Main Authors: Melissa E. Wynn, Cynthia E. Winston, Kimberley E. Freeman
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SAGE Publishing 2012-10-01
• Series: SAGE Open
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244012461360

Research on implicit intelligence has conceptualized students’ beliefs about the nature of intelligence as either fixed or malleable. This research has largely not included African American adolescents, a group for whom beliefs about intelligence have a cultural historical complexity related to both scientific racism and master narratives of race and intelligence. The purpose of this study was to investigate the nature of implicit theories of intelligence for 63 African American adolescents who are seventh and eighth graders in a public charter school. The two-way ANOVA revealed that these adolescents held a malleable view of intelligence, which did not vary by gender or grade. Exploratory correlation analysis showed some consistent relationships with achievement motivation variables found in other studies. These findings may be explained by African American cultural values and the personality characteristic adaptations that they make living within a racialized society.