Growing Fixed With Age: Lay Theories of Malleability Are Target Age-Specific

Personality & Social Psychology Bulletin
Rebecca Neel, Bethany Lassetter

Abstract

Beliefs about whether people can change ("lay theories" of malleability) are known to have wide-ranging effects on social motivation, cognition, and judgment. Yet rather than holding an overarching belief that people can or cannot change, perceivers may hold independent beliefs about whether different people are malleable-that is, lay theories may be target-specific. Seven studies demonstrate that lay theories are target-specific with respect to age: Perceivers hold distinct, uncorrelated lay theories of people at different ages, and younger targets are considered to be more malleable than older targets. Both forms of target-specificity are consequential, as target age-specific lay theories predict policy support for learning-based senior services and the rehabilitation of old and young drug users. The implications of target age-specific lay theories for a number of psychological processes, the social psychology of aging, and theoretical frameworks of malleability beliefs are discussed.

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Citations

Jan 12, 2017·Perspectives on Psychological Science : a Journal of the Association for Psychological Science·Sarah J Barber
Dec 30, 2017·Journal of Interpersonal Violence·Arti U GandhiHans S Schroder

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MTurk
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