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Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access originally published online on September 12, 2006
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience 2006 1(2):75-86; doi:10.1093/scan/nsl013
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© The Author (2006). Published by Oxford University Press. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Why do beliefs about intelligence influence learning success? A social cognitive neuroscience model

Jennifer A. Mangels1, Brady Butterfield2, Justin Lamb1, Catherine Good3 and Carol S. Dweck4

1Psychology Department, Columbia University, 2Taub Institute, Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center, Columbia University, 3Psychology Department, Barnard College, and 4Psychology Department, Stanford University, CA, USA

Students’ beliefs and goals can powerfully influence their learning success. Those who believe intelligence is a fixed entity (entity theorists) tend to emphasize ‘performance goals,’ leaving them vulnerable to negative feedback and likely to disengage from challenging learning opportunities. In contrast, students who believe intelligence is malleable (incremental theorists) tend to emphasize ‘learning goals’ and rebound better from occasional failures. Guided by cognitive neuroscience models of top–down, goal-directed behavior, we use event-related potentials (ERPs) to understand how these beliefs influence attention to information associated with successful error correction. Focusing on waveforms associated with conflict detection and error correction in a test of general knowledge, we found evidence indicating that entity theorists oriented differently toward negative performance feedback, as indicated by an enhanced anterior frontal P3 that was also positively correlated with concerns about proving ability relative to others. Yet, following negative feedback, entity theorists demonstrated less sustained memory-related activity (left temporal negativity) to corrective information, suggesting reduced effortful conceptual encoding of this material–a strategic approach that may have contributed to their reduced error correction on a subsequent surprise retest. These results suggest that beliefs can influence learning success through top–down biasing of attention and conceptual processing toward goal-congruent information.

Keywords: Dm; episodic memory; P3a; TOI; achievement motivation

Correspondence should be addressed to Jennifer A. Mangels, Department of Psychology, 1190 Schermerhorn Hall, rm 406, New York, NY 10027. E-mail: mangels{at}psych.columbia.edu


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