Parental beliefs about the fixedness of ability

•General and child-specific fixedness beliefs predict self-reported parent behavior.•The Parental Beliefs about Ability Fixedness questionnaire is a valid measure.•At times, the PBAF better predicts behavior than a general fixedness measure.•The PBAF predicts how often parents engage their child in math/reading activities.•At times, parental efficacy mediates the relation between beliefs and behavior.

The present studies examined whether parents' beliefs about the fixedness of ability predict their self-reported interactions with their children. Parents' fixedness beliefs were measured at two levels of specificity: their general beliefs about intelligence and their beliefs about their children's math and verbal abilities. Study 1, conducted with an online sample of 300 parents, showed that the more parents believed that abilities were fixed, the more likely they were to endorse controlling and performance-oriented behaviors and the less likely they were to endorse autonomy-supportive and mastery-oriented behaviors. Study 2, conducted with 86 parents from a university database, partially replicated the results of Study 1 and also showed that parents' beliefs predicted the self-reported frequency with which they engaged in math- and reading-related activities with their children at home. Specifically, the more parents believed that abilities were fixed, the less frequently they reported engaging in math- and reading-related activities.