Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

We investigated the effect of implicit theories (belief about malleability of ability) on help-seeking behavior in peer learning situation. We predicted that entity theorists (those who believe that ability is fixed) are less likely to seek help because they anticipate that peer members would lower their evaluation of competence. We conducted a scenario experiment and required participants to indicate to what extent they would ask questions to the peer member when they encounter an incomprehensive term which was already explained, and others seemed to understand. The results did not support our hypotheses. The results revealed that the interaction between one’s own and perceived others implicit theories predicted intention to ask questions. Specifically, while perceived others’ implicit theory did not affect incremental theorists’ (those who believe that ability is malleable) intention to ask a question, entity theorists were more likely to ask a question when they perceive others as entity theorists.