Relationships of Parents’ Theories of Intelligence With Children’s Persistence/Learned Helplessness

Abstract

The present study employed the learned helplessness paradigm to explore the possibility that culturally based parent beliefs influence the way in which young children approach academic tasks. Children, aged between 7 and 8 years, from New Zealand, the United States of America, China, and Japan participated in three different school-related tasks. Each of the tasks contained three levels, varying from easy to hard. Success was prevented for the medium and hard levels, allowing for exploration of child reactions to failure. The results revealed that parental support of the incremental theory of intelligence was indirectly and positively related to high child persistence in the Asian culture. Furthermore, parents’ reports of their own reactions to frustrating events and efforts to encourage their children operated as mediators in both cultures, although in somewhat different ways between the Asian and Western cultures.