Support for the domain specificity of implicit beliefs about persons, intelligence, and morality

• Examined the implicit domains of intelligence, morality, and person attributes
• Several subscales pertaining to the broad domains of implicit beliefs were created.
• The three broad domains were highly correlated.
• Domain subscales were validated using confirmatory factor analysis.
• Incremental beliefs were not more socially desirable than entity beliefs.

Implicit theories are beliefs that pertain to the nature of person attributes. Entity theorists believe that a person's attributes are fixed entities, whereas incremental theorists believe that a person's attributes are malleable. Here, the theory was tested using confirmatory factor analysis and examining the relationship between the broad constructs of implicit beliefs about intelligence, persons, and morality and specific measures related to the broad domains. A model drawn from the theory provided strong evidence for implicit theories. Further, evidence in support of domain specific measures was also found. An additional study investigated a hypothesis regarding incremental belief endorsement. Discussion centers on the usefulness of implicit belief measures for basic and applied research.