Measuring Individual and Cultural Differences in Implicit Trait Theories

A. Timothy Church, Fernando A. Ortiz,Marcia S. Katigbak, Tatyana V. Avdeyeva, and

Alice M. EmersonWashington State University

Josede Jesu´s Vargas Flores andJoselina Iba´nez Reyes

National Autonomous University of Mexico

A new measure of implicit theories or beliefs regarding the traitedness versus contextuality of behaviorwas developed and tested across cultures. In Studies 1 (N � 266) and 2 (N � 266), these implicit beliefsdimensions were reliably measured and replicated across U.S. college student samples and validityevidence was provided. In Study 3, their structure replicated well across an individualistic culture (theUnited States;N � 249) and a collectivistic culture (Mexico;N � 268). Implicit trait and contextualbeliefs overlapped only modestly with implicit entity theory beliefs and were predicted by self-construalsin ways that generally supported cultural psychology hypotheses. Implicit trait beliefs were fairlystrongly endorsed in both cultures, suggesting that such beliefs may be universally held.

Current research on personality and culture is dominated by twotheoretical perspectives, the trait perspective and the cultural psy-chology perspective. Cross-cultural trait psychologists argue thattraits provide a meaningful basis for understanding and predictingbehavior in all cultures and point to cogent theoretical perspectivesand empirical findings that are consistent with the existence ofuniversal trait dimensions (Church, 2000; McCrae, 2000). At thesame time, some cultural psychologists have questioned the utilityof the trait concept, at least for individuals in more collectivisticcultures, where the contextual nature of behavior is emphasized(Markus & Kitayama, 1998; Shweder, 1991). In short, these twoperspectives raise a fundamental question: How important arepersonality traits versus contextual factors in understanding per-sons and their behavior in various cultures? In the present studies,we did not address the actual “traitedness” or contextuality ofbehavior. Rather, we report on the development and cross-culturalgeneralizability of a new measure of implicit beliefs about thetraitedness versus contextuality of behavior.

Why Measure Implicit Trait Theories

Implicit theories, lay beliefs, or “naı¨ve” psychologies play animportant role in individuals’ explanations and predictions of

behavior (Dweck, 2000; Norenzayan, Choi, & Nisbett, 2002). Inaddition, a number of psychologists have hypothesized that thecultural differences found in studies of self-concepts, dispositionalinference, and self-enhancement biases may be the result of cul-tural differences in implicit theories. People in individualisticcultures—who are thought to construe persons as independentagents (Markus & Kitayama, 1998; Triandis, 1995)—are hypoth-esized to have stronger implicit beliefs regarding the “traitedness”of behavior. This, in turn, leads to stronger emphases on (a) traitattributes as an aspect of self-concept, (b) trait inference in theobservation of others, and (c) self-enhancement in the evaluationof one’s own traits (e.g., Heine, Lehman, Markus, & Kitayama,1999; Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto, & Norasakkunkit, 1997;Rhee, Uleman, Lee, & Roman, 1995).

In contrast, people in collectivistic cultures—who are thought toconstrue persons as interdependent and connected to in-groups—are hypothesized to have weaker beliefs regarding the traitednessof behavior and stronger beliefs regarding the role of contextualfactors. This, in turn, leads to (a) greater focus on roles andrelationships as aspects of self-concept, (b) greater attention tosituational information in causal inferences about behavior, and (c)weaker tendencies to self-enhance (and perhaps even tendencies toself-criticize) in self-descriptions. Attempts to test these hypothe-ses will require instruments that measure individual and culturaldifferences in implicit theories regarding the traitedness versuscontextuality of behavior, which we refer to here as implicit traitversus implicit contextual theories.

Implicit trait theories may encompass at least the followingcomponent beliefs: (a) belief in the longitudinal stability of per-sonality traits; (b) belief in the cross-situational consistency oftrait-relevant behavior; (c) belief in the ability to predict individ-uals’ behavior from their traits; (d) the belief that traits can bereadily inferred from relatively few behavioral instances; and (e)the belief that people can be accurately described and understoodin terms of their traits. These component beliefs are suggested bytheorists’ conceptions of lay dispositionism (e.g., Ross & Nisbett,1991), empirical studies (Chiu, Hong, & Dweck, 1997; Dweck,2000; Norenzayan et al., 2002), and logical considerations, which

A. Timothy Church, Fernando A. Ortiz, Marcia S. Katigbak, Tatyana V.Avdeyeva, and Alice M. Emerson, Department of Educational Leadershipand Counseling Psychology, Washington State University; Jose´ de Jesu´sVargas Flores and Joselina Iba´nez Reyes, Iztacala National School ofProfessional Studies, National Autonomous University of Mexico, MexicoCity, Mexico.

Portions of this article were presented at the XXV International Con-gress of Applied Psychology, Singapore, July 2002. The research wassupported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant R01-59941. Wethank Dennis Bautista for assistance in data collection.

Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to A. Tim-othy Church, Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling Psy-chology, Cleveland Hall, Washington State University, Pullman, Washing-ton 99164-2136. E-mail: church@mail.wsu.edu

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Copyright 2003 by the American Psychological Association, Inc.2003, Vol. 85, No. 2, 332–347 0022-3514/03/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/0022-3514.85.2.332

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suggest that these component beliefs will tend to coexist in thesame individuals. For example, believing that traits can predict orbe inferred from behavior would seem to depend on beliefs in thelongitudinal and cross-situational stability of traits.

In contrast, when cultural psychologists refer to the contextualdeterminants of self or behavior, they refer to such factors as“situations, roles, or the larger social context” (Norenzayan et al.,2002, p. 110) or to “social structures and interpersonal frameworkssuch as families, work groups, social roles, positions, or relation-ships” (Markus & Kitayama, 1998, p. 70). Trait psychologists,who refer to transcontextual consistencies across time, situations,and social roles, have a similar view of what constitutes context(e.g., McCrae & Costa, 1984; Sheldon, Ryan, Rawsthorne, &Ilardi, 1997). Such conceptions of contextuality lead us to delin-eate and assess the following contextual beliefs, which contrastwith each of the five implicit trait belief components: (a) longitu-dinal or temporal instability of traits; (b) cross-situational variabil-ity; (c) lack of predictive validity; (d) difficulty of trait inference;and (e) the perceived greater importance of contextual factors suchas roles, statuses, and relationships, as compared with traits, inperson description.

We examined many implicit theory constructs and measures tosee if they might assess these component beliefs, but only twowere deemed directly relevant. Norenzayan et al. (2002) usedparagraph descriptions of dispositional, situationist, and interac-tionist lay theories, which appear promising. However, these para-graphs combine or blend components of lay dispositionism orsituationism into single descriptions rather than measuring thecomponents separately. Thus, the authors assumed rather thanempirically tested whether the component beliefs co-occur in thesame individuals. Potentially most relevant, and thus warranting amore extensive comparison, is Dweck’s (2000) implicit entitytheory construct.

Implicit Trait Versus Implicit Entity Theories

Dweck and her colleagues have focused on implicit theoriesabout whether attributes are fixed (the view of entity theorists) ormalleable (the view of incremental theorists). Recent studies haveexamined these theories in the domains of morality and personality(for reviews, see Dweck, 2000; Levy & Dweck, 1998). Theseresearchers have reasoned that individuals who believe in fixedtraits will expect a high degree of consistency in trait-relevantbehavior; thus, traits will be seen to have predictive value and willbe readily inferred from sparse information about behavior. Incontrast, incremental theorists, who view traits as more dynamicand malleable, will expect behavior to be more variable acrosstime and situations; thus, traits will be seen as less predictive ofbehavior and less crucial or possible to infer from behavior.

There is some resemblance between Dweck’s (2000) entitytheory construct and our implicit trait theory construct, but we alsonote some differences. First, Dweck’s construct addresses directlyonly the longitudinal stability component of implicit trait beliefs(i.e., fixed vs. malleable traits). Thus, our implicit trait theoryconstruct should lead to a more comprehensive assessment of themultiple aspects of lay dispositionism. Second, entity theoristsapparently take a more rigid stance on the possibility of longitu-dinal change than most trait theorists would. For example, as statedby Dweck (2000, p. 88), “simply put, entity theorists don’ t grant

people the potential to grow.” Indeed, the entity theory items (e.g.,“Everyone is a certain kind of person and there is not much thatcan be done to really change that.” ) suggest a degree of inflexi-bility in those who strongly agree with them. This might account,in part, for some of the negative behavioral correlates that havebeen linked to entity theorists, such as tendencies to be morejudgmental, punitive, and prone to social stereotyping than incre-mental theorists (e.g., Chiu, Dweck, Tong, & Fu, 1997; Hong,Chiu, Dweck, & Sacks, 1997; Levy, Stroessner, & Dweck, 1998).In contrast, in our conception of implicit trait theories, the longi-tudinal component is presented as more probabilistic than deter-ministic (e.g., “People who are friendlier than others now willprobably remain friendlier than others in the future as well” ). Traitpsychologists do not view traits as fixed or nonmalleable, but onlyas relatively stable over time, at least as reflected in the rankordering of individuals.

Finally, the entity theory construct has not been applied muchacross cultures, and when it has, the results have sometimes beeninconsistent with the expectations of cultural psychologists. Ifcultural psychologists are correct that people focus more on traitsin individualistic cultures than in collectivistic cultures, entitytheorists should be more prevalent in individualistic cultures. In-deed, Norenzayan et al. (2002) found this to be the case in acomparison of American and Korean samples. However, neitherChiu, Hong, and Dweck (1997, Study 4) nor Chiu, Dweck, et al.(1997) found this to be true in comparisons of Hong Kong andAmerican samples. In sum, although we do not question the valueof the entity theory construct, nor the impressive empirical find-ings associated with it (Dweck, 2000), we determined that it mightnot capture the implicit theory distinction we were interested in,particularly given our focus on testing cross-cultural hypotheses.

Overview of the Present Studies

Like Levy et al. (1998), Norenzayan et al. (2002), and others, weassume that implicit theories can be directly assessed using self-report. Although implicit beliefs may not be at the forefront ofeveryday consciousness, nor commonly articulated spontaneously,we assume that individuals can meaningfully endorse statementsthat do articulate such beliefs.

We conducted three studies. In Studies 1 and 2, we (a) tried outitems that assess the hypothesized components of implicit trait(and contextual) beliefs in U.S. samples; (b) investigated thestructure of the implicit trait theory domain; and (c) providedinitial validity evidence for the measure. In Study 3, we examinedthe structural equivalence of the measure across an individualisticculture (United States) and a collectivistic culture (Mexico) andtested hypotheses relating implicit theories to independent andinterdependent self-construals. In Hofstede’s (1983) value-basedranking of 50 cultures along the individualism–collectivism con-tinuum, the United States ranked first and Mexico ranked 31st.Many other researchers have described Mexican culture as beingcollectivistic, with its emphases on close family ties, long-termcommitments and reciprocal obligations among friends, affiliativeobedience, and interdependence (e.g., Diaz-Loving & Draguns,1999). In each of our studies, we included an entity theory measureto determine the extent of overlap between the implicit entity andimplicit trait theory constructs.

Our specific hypotheses were the following:

333MEASURING IMPLICIT TRAIT THEORIES

Hypothesis 1: A coherent dimension (or dimensions) of in-dividual differences—contrasting those who believe that be-havior is determined more by traits (implicit trait theorists)versus context (implicit contextual theorists)—exists in allcultures.

Hypothesis 2: The following belief components of implicittrait theorists will cohere on a single dimension (e.g., in factoranalysis): (a) belief in the longitudinal stability of traits; (b)belief in the cross-situational consistency of trait-relevantbehavior; (c) a belief in the ability to predict individuals’behavior from their traits; (d) the belief that traits can beinferred from relatively few behavioral instances; and (e) thebelief that people can be accurately described and understoodin terms of their personality traits.

Hypothesis 3: Implicit trait beliefs will be at most moderatelyassociated with implicit entity theory beliefs.

Hypothesis 4: In all cultures, persons with more independentself-construals have stronger beliefs about the traitedness ofbehavior (i.e., tend to be implicit trait theorists), whereaspersons with more interdependent self-construals haveweaker beliefs about the traitedness of behavior (i.e., tend tobe implicit contextual theorists).

Hypothesis 5: Persons in individualistic cultures have strongerimplicit trait beliefs than do persons in collectivistic cultures.

Study 1: Item Development and Structure

In Study 1 we tried out items that assess the hypothesized fivecomponents of implicit trait theory beliefs, obtained an initial lookat the structure of this domain, and examined the relationshipbetween implicit trait and entity theories.

Method

Sample

A total of 266 college students (74 men, 192 women) at WashingtonState University (n � 242) and Chaminade University in Hawaii (n � 24)provided complete data. Mean age was 22.6 years (SD � 4.98). Studentsfrom all year levels (i.e., freshman, sophomore, junior, senior) and a varietyof major fields of study were sampled. Ethnic background was as follows:White/Caucasian (n � 197), Asian/Pacific Islander (n � 25), Latino (n �8), African American (n � 3), Native American (n � 2), multiracial (n �20), other (n � 4), and not reporting (n � 7). We eliminated 2 participantswho rated their ability to read an English questionnaire as poor, leaving 264participants.

Instruments

Personality Beliefs Inventory (PBI). Items were written to assess traitversus contextual beliefs for each of the five belief components, which werefer to as longitudinal stability, cross-situational consistency, predictivevalidity, trait inference, and general understanding components. Someitems refer to personality traits in general, whereas others refer to specifictraits. Because implicit beliefs might vary for different traits (Gidron,Koehler, & Tversky, 1993; Rothbart & Park, 1986), we selected bothpositive and negative traits from each of the Big Five domains (Goldberg,1990). Similarly, some contextual items refer to situations or longitudinalchange in general, whereas others refer to specific situations, roles, sta-

tuses, and relationships, consistent with the conception of contextualitydescribed earlier. Representative items for each component are shown inthe Appendix. For Study 1, we tried out 18–25 items for each component,with a balanced number of implicit trait and contextual items. Participantsresponded to the items using a 6-point bipolar scale of agreement: stronglydisagree, somewhat disagree, slightly disagree, slightly agree, somewhatagree, and strongly agree.

Entity theory measure. We administered a five-item version ofDweck’s (2000) domain-general entity theory measure. Three items mea-sure entity beliefs (e.g., “The kind of person someone is, is something verybasic about them and it can’ t be changed very much” ); two reverse-keyeditems measure incremental beliefs (e.g., “Everyone, no matter who theyare, can significantly change their basic characteristics” ). We modified theverbal anchors of Dweck’s 6-point agreement scale to the 6-point scaleused with the PBI. Using principal-axis factor analysis, we confirmed thata single bipolar dimension provided an adequate representation of thescale’s structure; all five items loaded between |.67| and |.75| on the firstfactor. Dweck and her colleagues have reported alpha reliability valuesranging from .70 to the .90s and test–retest reliability values in the .80s(e.g., Dweck, Chiu, & Hong, 1995; Levy et al., 1998). Alpha reliability inthe present sample was .85.

Procedure

Student volunteers were recruited in classes, completed the two ques-tionnaires on their own time, and returned them to class for pick-up by theresearchers. Students completed the PBI, then the entity theory measure,and received extra credit for participation.

Results

Structure of Implicit Trait Beliefs

We factor analyzed the PBI item pool using principal-axissolutions with oblique (oblimin) rotations. The pattern of eigen-values suggested that up to five factors might be meaningful (thefirst 10 eigenvalues were 12.27, 6.61, 5.10, 4.07, 3.16, 2.34, 2.28,2.19, 2.00, and 1.94). We first examined the one-factor solution todetermine if a single bipolar dimension contrasting implicit traitand contextual beliefs would emerge. The factor was a general traitbeliefs factor and was only weakly bipolar; most of the contextualbeliefs items had negative loadings only in the �.10 to �.25 range.In the two-factor solution, the two factors were interpretable asgeneral trait and contextual beliefs dimensions. Forty-seven traitbeliefs items, representing all five belief components, had loadingsof .30 or higher on the first factor. Thirty-four contextual beliefsitems, again representing all five belief components, had loadingsof .30 or higher on the second factor. The two factors wereessentially orthogonal (r � �.06). In the three-, four-, and five-factor solutions, the number of additional items with high loadingswas small. The third factor was defined primarily by the traitbeliefs items from the general understanding component, whichsplit off from the general trait beliefs factor. The fourth and fifthfactors were not very interpretable.1

1 In two of the three studies in this article, we compared factor patternmatrices obtained with the total U.S. sample and with the more ethnicallyhomogeneous White/European American subsample. Congruence coeffi-cients (Tucker, 1951) between matched factors all exceeded .97. That is,inclusion of the small number of ethnic minority participants did not affectthe factor structure of the PBI items. Therefore, only the factor solutionsfor the total U.S. samples are discussed in each study.

334 CHURCH ET AL.

Relating Implicit Trait and Entity Theories

We correlated regression-method factor scores for the implicittrait and contextual beliefs dimensions with the entity theorymeasure. Estimated alpha reliabilities for the trait and contextualbeliefs dimensions were .92 and .85, respectively. We foundmodest tendencies for individuals with stronger entity theory be-liefs to exhibit stronger trait beliefs (r � .28, p � .01) and weakercontextual beliefs (r � �.19, p � .01).

Discussion

The results of Study 1 indicated that (a) implicit trait andcontextual beliefs can be reliably assessed (Hypothesis 1); and (b)these general belief dimensions are comprised of the hypothesizedbelief components (Hypothesis 2). The finding of two distinctdimensions may indicate that individuals can simultaneously holdboth trait and contextual beliefs; that is, lay persons, like manypersonality psychologists, may be implicit interaction theorists. Asexpected, there were only modest, yet sensible, relationships be-tween implicit trait and contextual beliefs and entity theory beliefs(Hypothesis 3). Entity theorists, who believe in fixed traits, hadmodest tendencies to endorse trait beliefs and disagree with con-textual beliefs.

Study 2: U.S. Replication and Validation

Our goals in Study 2 were to (a) revise the implicit theorymeasure (PBI); (b) replicate its structure; and (c) obtain someadditional validity evidence. Participants responded to a revisedPBI, an entity theory measure, and a nonverbal (pictorial) behaviorprediction task that assessed individuals’ judgments about thecross-situational consistency of trait-relevant behavior. It was ex-pected that greater endorsement of implicit trait beliefs would beassociated with greater expectations of cross-situationalconsistency.

Method

Sample

Participants were 266 college students (100 men, 166 women) fromWashington State University. Mean age was 20.2 years (SD � 2.31).Students from all year levels (i.e., freshman, sophomore, junior, senior) anda variety of major fields of study were represented. Data from 5 interna-tional students were excluded. Ethnic backgrounds of the remaining par-ticipants (n � 261) were as follows: 233 White/Caucasian, 5 Asian/PacificIslander, 7 biracial, 5 Native American, 3 Chicano/Latino, 1 AfricanAmerican, and 7 other or not reporting.

Instruments

Personality Beliefs Inventory (PBI). An 84-item version of the PBIwas administered; 75 items had been used in Study 1, and 9 items were newor revised.

Entity theory measure. The entity theory measure used in Study 1 wasagain administered. A principal-axis factor analysis again supported asingle bipolar factor with item loadings ranging from |.63| to |.73|. Alphareliability in the Study 2 sample was .81.

Behavior Prediction Questionnaire (BPQ). Several researchers haveused variants of a behavior prediction task, in which participants judge thelikelihood of an individual performing a particular trait-relevant behavior,

given prior information about the individual’s same-trait behavior in adifferent situation (e.g., Chiu, Hong, & Dweck, 1997; Norenzayan et al.,2002). Typically, this information is presented to respondents in the formof verbal scenarios.

The PBI uses a verbal format, so we sought to reduce method varianceby devising an analogous task using a nonverbal (pictorial) format. Weadapted items from the Nonverbal Personality Questionnaire (NPQ;Paunonen, Jackson, & Keinonen, 1990) for this purpose.2 The NPQ mea-sures 16 of Murray’s (1938) needs (traits) by presenting respondents withline drawings depicting situational behaviors of a central figure that reflectthese needs. We paired pictures (line drawings) from this instrument thatmeasured either the same trait (18 pairs) or a different trait (13 pairs). Forexample, one item (picture pair) depicted two nurturance behaviors; thefirst picture showed the central figure assisting a blind person cross thestreet, whereas the second picture showed the central figure returning afallen bird nest and young chicks to a tree. We asked respondents to assumethat the central figure had already performed the behavior in the firstpicture and then to rate the likelihood that the central figure would performthe situational behavior depicted in the second picture. Ratings were madeon a 7-point likelihood scale: extremely unlikely, very unlikely, moderatelyunlikely, neither likely nor unlikely, moderately likely, very likely, ex-tremely likely.

Paunonen and colleagues, using factor and reliability analyses, havedemonstrated the cross-cultural relevance of the behaviors depicted in thepictures as exemplars of the designated traits (e.g., Paunonen et al., 1996).In a pilot study, we had five judges complete a preliminary version of thetask. We replaced 6 (of 62) pictures that were not interpreted in a consensusmanner. We anticipated that respondents with stronger implicit trait beliefswould provide higher likelihood ratings for the same-trait picture pairs (butnot different-trait picture pairs), because they would view behavioralmanifestations of the same trait to be more consistent across situationalcontexts than would respondents with weaker implicit trait beliefs. In-versely, respondents with stronger contextual beliefs should provide lowerlikelihood ratings for the same-trait pictures, because they would seebehavior determined more by situational context than traits.

Procedure

Students were recruited in classes, completed the three questionnaires ontheir own time, and returned them to class for pick-up by the researchers.Students completed the PBI, entity theory measure, and behavior predic-tion task, in that order, and received extra credit for participation.

Results

Replication of Implicit Theory Structure

We again performed principal-axis factor analyses with oblique(oblimin) rotations (the first eight eigenvalues were 10.31, 5.40,4.10, 3.40, 2.47, 2.20, 1.98, and 1.95). One basis for selecting thenumber of factors is a replication criterion. We found the followingcongruence coefficients (Tucker, 1951) between the best-matchedfactors in Studies 1 and 2, which were computed across the 75items that were included in both studies: for the one-factor solu-tion, .92; for the two-factor solution, .90 and .87; for the three-factor solution, .93, .83, and .70; for the four-factor solution, .86,.73, .71, and .56. Thus, factor replication was fairly good for twofactors but decreased substantially in the three- and four-factorsolutions. This result favored the more parsimonious two-factor

2 We thank Sampo Paunonen for permission to adapt NPQ items for thispurpose.

335MEASURING IMPLICIT TRAIT THEORIES

solution. The two factors were again interpretable as general traitand contextual beliefs dimensions, which were again largely or-thogonal (r � �.12).

Relating Implicit Trait and Entity Theories

As in Study 1, when we correlated scores on the entity theorymeasure with factor scores for the trait and contextual beliefsfactors (estimated �s of .90 and .80 for the two factor scores), wefound only modest tendencies for individuals with stronger entitytheory beliefs to exhibit stronger trait beliefs (r � .18, p � .01) andweaker contextual beliefs (r � �.18, p � .01).

Implicit Theories and Behavior Prediction

Single BPQ items (picture-pairs) might not be highly reliable.Therefore, we factor analyzed the 31 items to identify a smallernumber of reliable dimensions (principal-axis analyses with ob-limin rotations were used). The pattern of eigenvalues showed abreak after the first two factors and the two factors were clearlyinterpretable as same-trait and different-trait dimensions (the firsteight eigenvalues were 4.99, 2.90, 1.76, 1.71, 1.35, 1.33, 1.23,and 1.13). All 18 of the same-trait items had their highest loadingon the first factor (range of loadings � .17–.72; M � .43). Elevenof 13 different-trait items had their highest loading on the secondfactor (range of loadings � .12–.66; M � .35). Alpha reliabilitiesfor the same-trait and different-trait factor scores were estimated as.78 and .64, respectively.

As predicted, factor scores for the PBI trait beliefs factor cor-related positively with the BPQ same-trait factor (r � .28, p �.01). That is, individuals with stronger trait beliefs expected greatercross-situational consistency for behavioral manifestations of thesame trait. Of interest, those with stronger trait beliefs also showeda modest tendency to expect less cross-situational consistency forbehavioral manifestations of different traits (r � �.19, p � .01).This is probably a meaningful result; individuals with stronger traitbeliefs—who view traits as stable internal dispositions—appar-ently tend to view the coexistence or manifestation of incompatibletraits in the same person as less probable. Inversely, factor scoresfor the PBI contextual beliefs factor correlated positively with thedifferent-trait factor of the BPQ (r � .28, p � .01). Although notpredicted a priori, this may also be a sensible result; individualswho have stronger contextual beliefs—who view traits as lesscentral in understanding persons and their behavior—are lesslikely to view as unexpected behaviors associated with different orincompatible traits. One prediction was not supported. Individualswith stronger contextual beliefs did not expect less cross-situational consistency for behavioral manifestations of the sametrait; the negative correlation between the contextual beliefs di-mension and the same-trait behavior prediction factor was notstatistically significant (r � �.05, p � .05).

Discussion

The results of Studies 1 and 2 suggest that implicit trait andcontextual beliefs dimensions can be reliably measured and repli-cated across U.S. samples (Hypotheses 1 and 2) and that implicittrait and entity theories are only modestly related (Hypothesis 3).Finally, the results of Study 2 provide some evidence for the

validity of the implicit trait theory measure using a nonverbalbehavior prediction task, although the evidence was more consis-tent for trait beliefs than for contextual beliefs. This validityevidence may be particularly persuasive because viewing andinterpreting pictorial depictions of situational behaviors may re-semble more closely the everyday task of behavioral observationand inference than will responses to verbal scenarios.

Study 3: Implicit Trait Theories and Self-Construals inIndividualistic and Collectivistic Cultures

In Study 3, we investigated the generalizability of the implicittrait theory construct and measure across a relatively individual-istic culture (United States) and a relatively collectivistic culture(Mexico). We also tested, in both cultures, our hypothesis thatindependent self-construals predict implicit trait beliefs and inter-dependent self-construals predict implicit contextual beliefs (Hy-pothesis 4). Finally, we expected that U.S. participants, as com-pared with Mexican participants, would average higher in traitbeliefs and independent self-construals and lower in contextualbeliefs and interdependent self-construals (Hypothesis 5).

Method

Sample

U. S. sample. U.S. participants were 249 college students (99 men, 150women) from Washington State University. Mean age was 20.9 years(SD � 3.39). All year levels (i.e., freshman, sophomore, junior, senior) anda variety of major fields of study were represented. Self-reported ethnicbackgrounds were as follows: 211 White/Caucasian, 10 Chicano/Latino, 9Asian/Pacific Islander, 3 biracial, 2 Native American, 1 African American,and 13 other or not reporting.

Mexican sample. Mexican participants were 268 Mexican college stu-dents (73 men, 195 women). Students were recruited in classes at theNational Autonomous University of Mexico in Mexico City (n � 238) andthe Autonomous University of Baja California (n � 30). Mean agewas 20.4 years (SD � 2.92). All year levels (i.e., freshman, sophomore,junior, senior) were represented. Most of the students (87%) were majoringin social sciences; the remainder in medicine and public health (9%) orother majors (4%). All participants were Mexican citizens, with the fol-lowing self-reported ethnic backgrounds: 258 Mestizo, 5 Indigenous, 4Mexican American, and 1 Chicano/Chicana. Mestizos, who are of mixedSpanish and indigenous Indian ethnicity, are the majority ethnic group inMexico.

Instruments

Personality Beliefs Inventory (PBI). A 77-item version of the PBI wasused, which included (a) the best items from Study 2, (b) 19 new items toincrease the length of some components, and (c) 8 new items that referredto traits not being useful in understanding persons or their behavior (e.g.,“Knowing a person’s personality characteristics is not very helpful inunderstanding that person” ). The latter were added because the general traitand contextual beliefs dimensions were not yet represented by any reverse-keyed (i.e., negatively loading) items. All instruments were translated fromEnglish to Spanish by bilingual graduate students in psychology using theback-translation method (Brislin, 1980).

Entity theory measure. The same entity theory measure was againused. A principal-axis factor analysis in each culture revealed a singlebipolar dimension that was highly congruent across cultures (Tucker’s � �.99). The alpha reliabilities in the two samples were also comparable (.70in the U.S. sample, .74 in the Mexico sample).

336 CHURCH ET AL.

Self-Construal Scale (SCS). The 30-item SCS (Singelis, 1994) wasused to measure independent and interdependent self-construals. Itemswere rated using our 6-point agreement scale rather than the 7-pointagreement scale used by Singelis (1994). Alpha reliabilities of about .70have been reported for both the Independent and Interdependent scales andthe validity of the instrument has been demonstrated in a number of studies(e.g., Singelis, 1994; Singelis & Sharkey, 1995). In separate-cultureprincipal-axis solutions with oblique (oblimin) rotations, we identifiedindependent and interdependent self-construal dimensions in two-factorsolutions. Three items that loaded on the wrong factor in both cultures andone item that had weak loadings were eliminated. With the remaining 26items, the independent and interdependent factors were highly congruentacross cultures; both congruence coefficients were .93 (Tucker, 1951).Alpha reliabilities for the 14-item Independent scale and the 12-itemInterdependent scale were .77 and .67, respectively, in the U.S. sample, and.69 and .74, respectively, in the Mexican sample.

Procedure

In the U.S. sample, student volunteers were recruited in classes, com-pleted the three questionnaires on their own time, and returned them toclass for pick-up by the researchers. Students received extra credit forparticipation. In the Mexican sample, student volunteers completed thethree questionnaires during regular classes. Students in both samples com-pleted the PBI first, followed by the entity theory measure and the SCS.

Results

Cross-Cultural Structural Equivalence of Implicit TraitTheory Dimensions

PBI item-level structure. We first examined principal-axis fac-tor solutions with oblimin rotations at the item level. Congruencecoefficients (Tucker, 1951) computed between best-matched fac-tors across the two cultures indicated fair to good factor similarityfor solutions of up to three factors, but not four factors: .86 for theone-factor solution; .86 and .90 for the two-factor solution; .91,.86, and .84 for the three-factor solution, and .91, .83, .80, and .37for the four-factor solution. In both cultures, the first two factorswere general trait and contextual beliefs dimensions. The thirdfactor was defined by the new reverse-keyed trait beliefs itemsplus some contextual beliefs items about roles being more impor-tant than traits in understanding behavior. In the two-factor solu-tions, the new reverse-keyed trait items were not ideal becausethey had dual loadings and behaved differently across cultures;they were better (inverse) markers of the trait beliefs factor in theU.S. sample, but better (positive) markers of the contextual beliefsfactor in the Mexican sample. We obtained greater factor replica-tion across cultures by eliminating these eight trait reversal items,plus six other items that functioned differently across cultures.When we factor analyzed the remaining 63 items, the two-factorsolutions were quite comparable (congruence coefficients of .91and .90). In both cultures, the two factors were essentially orthog-onal (r � .00 in the United States and r � �.07 in Mexico). Therotated pattern matrices are shown in the Appendix.

Further refinement of the PBI items for cross-cultural use wouldbe beneficial, particularly if one wishes to measure each beliefcomponent separately (corrected item-total correlations and alphareliabilities for each component are shown in the Appendix). Formost of the components, one or two items have modest loadings inone or the other culture and could be revised or retranslated.

Nonetheless, the principal-axis analysis reveals that the generaltrait and contextual beliefs dimensions do encompass the hypoth-esized belief components in both cultures (Hypothesis 2).

Higher order structure of implicit belief components. We usedconfirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and the AMOS 4.0 program(Arbuckle & Wothke, 1999) to test more formally the higher orderstructure of the belief components across cultures. The general traitand contextual beliefs dimensions were exogenous variables anditem “parcels” or subscales measuring the belief components werethe observed indicators. The use of item parcels has several ad-vantages over the use of individual items, including greater reli-ability and the reduction of specific variance (e.g., Kishton &Widaman, 1994). The 10 parcels or subscales were comprised of3–12 items and their alpha reliabilities ranged from .58 to .72 inthe U.S. sample and from .50 to .73 in the Mexican sample (seeAppendix).

As recommended by Byrne (2001) and others, we first testedthis and the other measurement models in the study separately inthe U.S. and Mexican samples. Minor model respecifications madein one or both cultures, if any, were then incorporated into tests ofthe cross-cultural (multigroup) models. For more succinct presen-tation, we report the details of model fit only for the cross-culturalmodels, comparing the difference in fit between constrained andunconstrained models. In the constrained models, factor loadings,covariances between latent variables, and residual covariances (butnot the variances of exogenous variables) were constrained toequality across cultures, whereas in the unconstrained models theywere not.

Figure 1 shows the standardized estimates for the constrainedcross-cultural model (Model 1) testing our hypothesis about theimplicit trait and contextual beliefs components (Hypothesis 2).3

All paths shown were statistically significant (critical ratio [C.R.]� 2.0). Table 1 shows fit indices for Model 1 and other cross-cultural models tested in Study 3. The fit of Model 1 was verygood and was not significantly worse than the fit of the uncon-strained model, ��2(15, N � 517) � 18.35. As seen in Figure 1,all of the primary loadings relating the implicit trait and contextualbeliefs dimensions to the component indicators were moderate tolarge in size. One secondary loading relating the contextual traitinference component to the trait beliefs dimension was statisticallysignificant but small in size and thus represents only a very modestdeparture from simple structure. (This secondary loading wasneeded for better model fit in the U.S. sample, but not the Mexicansample.) This secondary loading makes some sense. Respondentswho endorse the contextual trait inference items believe that it isdifficult to infer traits from few behavioral instances; nonetheless,trait inference may eventually result. The model also includes fiveerror covariances that were needed in one or both cultures toaccount for greater shared uniqueness among selected belief com-ponents that were more positively or negatively correlated witheach other than with other components. Overall, these results

3 The standardized parameter estimates shown in Figure 1 are for theMexican sample. Because the variances of the exogenous variables werenot constrained to be equal across cultures, the size of the standardizedparameter estimates (but not the unstandardized estimates) differed slightlyfor the U.S. sample.

337MEASURING IMPLICIT TRAIT THEORIES

provide good cross-cultural support for our hypothesis about thecomponent beliefs associated with implicit trait and contextualtheories (Hypothesis 2).

Cross-Cultural Equivalence of Entity Theory and Self-Construal Measurement Models

In the simple structure model for the entity theory measure, theentity theory construct was an exogenous variable and three itemparcels, comprised of 2, 2, and 1 items, were endogenous indica-tors (alphas for the two-item parcels ranged from .28 to .51 acrossthe two cultures). No respecification of the model was neededwhen tested separately in each culture (in which case it is asaturated model). As seen in Table 1 (Model 2), the fit of theconstrained cross-cultural model was excellent. The model wasaccepted by the overall chi-square test, �2(2, N � 517) � 2.01,p � .37, and the fit of the constrained model was not significantlyworse than the fit of the unconstrained model, ��2(2, N �517) � 2.01. Factor loadings for the three item parcels rangedfrom .49 to .78.

In the simple structure model for the self-construal measure, theindependent and interdependent self-construal constructs were ex-ogenous variables, each with three item parcels as endogenousindicators (the 14 independent items were randomly distributedinto three parcels, as were the 12 interdependent items; alphas forthe parcels ranged from .31 to .56 across the two cultures). Weadded three error covariances between item parcels that correlatedmore positively or negatively with each other in the Mexicansample than did most item parcels (no model respecifications wereneeded in the U.S. sample). As seen in Table 1 (Model 3), the fitof the constrained cross-cultural model was excellent. The modelwas accepted by the overall chi-square test, �2(18, N �517) � 25.89, p � .13, and the fit of the constrained model was notsignificantly worse than the fit of the unconstrained model, ��2(8,N � 517) � 13.60. Factor loadings for the item parcels on therespective dimensions ranged from .53 to .78 across the twocultures. In sum, the measurement models for all three instrumentscan be considered equivalent across the two cultures. We nexttested confirmatory and structural models of interest using theconstrained measurement models for each of these instruments.

Figure 1. Standardized estimates for the constrained cross-cultural model testing the higher order structure ofimplicit trait and contextual beliefs components. e_tl, e_tc, and so on indicate residual errors (uniquenesses)associated with each belief component.

338 CHURCH ET AL.

Relating Implicit Trait and Entity Theories

Table 1 shows the fit indices for the best cross-cultural CFAmodel relating entity theory beliefs to implicit trait and contextualbeliefs (Model 4). In this model, the covariance between entitytheory and contextual beliefs was constrained to equality acrosscultures, whereas the covariance between entity theory and traitbeliefs was unconstrained (i.e., freely estimated). The fit of thismodel was acceptable and was not significantly worse than theunconstrained model in which both covariances were freely esti-mated, ��2(1, N � 517) � 0.10. An alternative model, in whichthe covariance between entity theories and trait beliefs was alsoconstrained to equality across cultures was significantly worsethan the unconstrained model, ��2(2, N � 517) � 11.32. Theestimated (constrained) correlations between entity theory and

contextual beliefs were �.25 in the U.S. sample and �.21 in theMexico sample (the standardized estimates differ slightly becausethe variances of the exogenous variables were not constrained tobe equal across cultures). The freely estimated correlations be-tween entity theory and trait beliefs were .10 in the U.S. sampleand .42 in the Mexico sample. As in Studies 1 and 2, the entitytheory construct was only modestly to moderately related to theimplicit trait and contextual beliefs constructs (Hypothesis 3).

Relating Self-Construals to Implicit Trait and ContextualBeliefs

Figure 2 shows the best structural equations model relatingself-construals to implicit trait and contextual beliefs (for sche-matic simplicity the measurement models for each instrument are

Table 1Fit Indices for Cross-Cultural Measurement and Structural Models Tested in Study 3

Models �2/df GFI CFI RMR RMSEA

Measurement models1. Constrained implicit beliefs (PBI) model (see Figure 1) 1.96 .95 .96 .03 .042. Constrained entity theory model 1.00 1.00 1.00 .03 .003. Constrained self-construal model 1.38 .98 .99 .03 .03

Best PBI versus entity theory model4. Covariance between entity theory and contextual beliefs

constrained; covariance between entity theory and traitbeliefs unconstrained

2.10 .92 .93 .05 .05

Best PBI versus self-construal model5. Constrained partial discriminant model (see Figure 2) 1.88 .91 .93 .04 .04

Mean and covariance structure models6. Trait and contextual beliefs (PBI) 5.07 — .98 — .097. Self-construals (SCS) 3.83 — .99 — .078. Entity theory 1.99 — .99 — .04

Note. Dashes indicate that GFI and RMR indices were not computed for mean and covariance structure modelsin AMOS 4.0. GFI � goodness-of-fit index; CFI � comparative fit index; RMR � root-mean-square residual;RMSEA � root-mean-square error of approximation; PBI � Personal Beliefs Inventory; SCS � Self-ConstrualScale.

Figure 2. Standardized parameter estimates for structural model relating self-controls to implicit trait andcontextual beliefs. U.S. parameters and Mexican parameters, respectively, are separated by slashes (/). Mea-surement models are not depicted but were included in tests of the structural model. Res 1 and Res 2 representresidual error terms in the prediction of implicit trait beliefs and implicit contextual beliefs, respectively.

339MEASURING IMPLICIT TRAIT THEORIES

not depicted). We had hypothesized a discriminant or differential-prediction model in which (a) independent self-construals predicttrait beliefs but not contextual beliefs; and (b) interdependentself-construals predict contextual beliefs but not trait beliefs (Hy-pothesis 4). Initial tests of this discriminant model revealed that (a)adding a causal path from independent self-construals to contex-tual beliefs did not significantly improve the model, but (b) addinga path from interdependent self-construal to trait beliefs did. Fi-nally, the model in which the three causal paths were constrainedto be equal across cultures fit the data well (see Model 5 in Table1) and was not significantly worse than the unconstrained model inwhich these three paths were freely estimated in the two cultures,��2(4, N � 517)� 11.27.

Figure 2 shows the standardized parameter estimates for eachpath in the model, with the U.S. and Mexican estimates separatedby slashes (/). Because the variances of the exogenous variableswere not constrained to be equal across cultures, the standardizedestimates (but not the nonstandardized estimates) can differslightly across cultures. Referring to Figure 2, we can concludethat our hypothesis linking self-construals to implicit beliefs waspartially supported (Hypothesis 4). As expected, in both culturesindependent self-construals showed a moderate ability to predictimplicit trait beliefs. To a lesser extent, interdependent self-construals predicted contextual beliefs, as expected. However,although differential prediction was good for independent self-construals, interdependent self-construals predicted trait and con-textual beliefs to about the same extent.

Cultural Mean Differences in Self-Construals and ImplicitTheories

To determine whether cultural mean differences in self-construals and implicit theories conformed to expectations (seeHypothesis 5), we performed a multivariate analysis of variance(MANOVA) on raw scale scores and, for each instrument, multi-group mean and covariance structures (MACS) analyses. Compar-isons of raw scores are risky if cross-cultural measurement invari-ance is not first demonstrated. However, raw score means areeasily interpreted in terms of the original rating scale units. MACSanalyses have several advantages including disattenuation of mea-surement error and built-in tests of cross-cultural metric equiva-

lence (Byrne, 2001). However, MACS analyses can be used toestimate only the difference between the two cultural means, notthe means themselves. Also, to identify MACS models, and toestablish metric equivalence across cultures, it is necessary toconstrain all factor loadings and observed variable intercepts in themeasurement models to be equal across cultures (Arbuckle &Wothke, 1999, p. 290; Byrne, 2001, p. 237). The legitimacy ofthese constraints can be evaluated using the model fit indices,which are shown in Table 1 (see Models 6 to 8; goodness-of-fitand root-mean-square residual indices are not computed forMACS models in AMOS 4.0). The indices show that the imposedconstraints on the MACS models and the assumption of metricequivalence were reasonable for all three instruments.

Because the results of the cultural mean comparisons were thesame in the raw score analyses (MANOVA) and latent meansanalyses (MACS), we present them together in Table 2. For eachconstruct, raw scores were derived by computing respondents’means across all items scored for the dimension (reverse-keyingwhen necessary). In a MANOVA with culture and gender asindependent variables and implicit theories and self-construals asdependent variables, the main effects for culture (Wilks’s � � .78),F(5, 505) � 27.89, p � .01, and gender (Wilks’s � � .97), F(5,505) � 3.31, p � .01, were statistically significant, whereas theCulture � Gender interaction effect was not significant (Wilks’s� � .99), F(5, 505) � 1.44, p � .05. In follow-up ANOVAs, theonly significant gender effect was for implicit trait theories, withwomen (M � 4.56, SD � 0.54) averaging about one-third standarddeviations higher than men (M � 4.39, SD � 0.55).4

As expected, the U.S. sample, as compared with the Mexicansample, averaged significantly higher in trait beliefs (positivevalues for the latent mean differences in Table 2 indicate that theMexican sample averaged higher; negative values indicate that theU.S. sample averaged higher). However, the U.S. sample alsoaveraged lower in independent self-construals and higher in inter-dependent self-construals, neither of which was expected. No

4 After excluding ethnic minority participants in the U.S. sample, themeans of the dependent variables for the ethnically homogeneous Euro-pean American subsample differed only trivially from the means of thetotal U.S. sample and did not affect the MANOVA results.

Table 2Cultural Mean Comparisons for Implicit Theory and Self-Construal Dimensions

Variable

U.S. sample(n � 248)

Mexico sample(n � 268)

p �2

MACS

M SD M SDLatent meandifferencea C.R.

Implicit trait beliefs 4.58 0.52 4.44 0.56 � .01 .02 �.16 �3.04Implicit contextual beliefs 3.67 0.48 3.64 0.51 .682 .00 .00 0.01Independent self-construals 4.37 0.64 4.76 0.55 � .001 .08 .42 7.36Interdependent self-construals 3.90 0.68 3.41 0.68 � .001 .10 �.43 �7.87Entity theory beliefs 3.65 0.64 3.81 0.62 � .01 .02 .33 3.96

Note. Means and standard deviations under U.S. sample and Mexico sample are based on raw scores. p values and �2 values are from follow-up univariateF tests on culture main effect (see text).a In the mean and covariance structures (MACS) analyses, the U.S. sample was designated as the reference group. Therefore, positive values for the latentmean differences indicate that the Mexican sample averaged higher, whereas negative values indicate that the U.S. sample averaged higher. Critical ratio(C.R.) values � 2 in absolute value are statistically significant ( p � .05).

340 CHURCH ET AL.

prediction was made regarding entity theory beliefs; the Mexicansample averaged higher. Contrary to expectations, there were nocultural differences in contextual beliefs.

Discussion

In Study 3 we demonstrated good cross-cultural equivalence ofthe implicit trait and contextual beliefs dimensions and their com-ponents (Hypotheses 1 and 2) and again showed that these dimen-sions are only modestly to moderately related to implicit entitytheories (Hypothesis 3). There was some evidence that trait andentity beliefs are more strongly associated in Mexican studentsthan in U.S. students. However, the relationship between trait andentity beliefs in U.S. samples was stronger in Studies 1 and 2 thanin Study 3. Therefore, perhaps not too much should be made of theapparent cultural difference in this relationship in Study 3. Ashypothesized, independent self-construals predicted the strength ofimplicit trait beliefs but not implicit contextual beliefs (Hypothesis4). However, interdependent self-construals were modest predic-tors of both implicit trait and contextual beliefs. Acceptable metricequivalence was demonstrated for the implicit theory and self-construal measures, making it reasonable to make cross-culturalmean comparisons. The cultural mean differences that we foundare considered further in the General Discussion.

General Discussion

Structure and Replicability of Implicit Trait Theories

In three studies, we showed that (a) implicit trait and contextualbeliefs dimensions can be reliably identified and assessed—alphareliability estimates ranged from .89 to .92 for the trait beliefsdimension and from .80 to .85 for the contextual beliefs dimen-sion; and (b) the structure of such beliefs replicates well acrossU.S. and Mexican samples (Hypothesis 1). In doing so, we alsodemonstrated that implicit trait and contextual theories are com-prised of an integrated set of component beliefs, which address thelongitudinal stability and predictive validity of traits, cross-situational consistency, the ability to infer traits from few behav-ioral instances, and the importance of traits versus contextualfactors in describing or understanding individuals. It will now beimportant to extend this research to a greater variety of cultures.Presently, the “weakest link” among the belief components is thegeneral understanding component of contextual beliefs. Fewergood items have been identified thus far for this component, anditems from this component have been less consistent in loadinghighly on the general contextual beliefs dimension across studies.One likely problem with these items, recognized belatedly, is thatthey make reference to the personality, roles, and relationships ofthe respondent (“my relationships” ), unlike the items for the othercomponents, which refer to people in general. Nonetheless, thiscomponent did load moderately on the general contextual beliefsdimension in both cultures (see Figure 1).

A remaining issue involves the apparent independence of thetrait and contextual beliefs dimensions and the possible role ofacquiescence response bias. Related to this is the difficulty ofidentifying items that define the inverse pole of the implicit traitand contextual beliefs dimensions (i.e., reverse-keyed items). Inour initial item-writing efforts, we had anticipated that trait and

contextual belief items might be inversely related, leading to asingle bipolar dimension. Instead, we consistently found that thetrait and contextual beliefs dimensions were only slightly inverselyrelated and that two dimensions were needed to account ade-quately for the covariation among the items. In Study 3, we triedout new reverse-keyed items, but in both cultures these items haddual loadings and were thus not ideal.

The issue of bipolarity versus independence, and a lack ofreverse-keyed items, has arisen in the development of several otherprominent measures of cultural or implicit theory dimensionsincluding a measure of individualism and collectivism (Triandis,1995; Triandis & Gelfand, 1998) and the SCS (Singelis, 1994). Infactor analyses, these researchers have identified separate individ-ualism and collectivism, or independent and interdependent self-construal, dimensions and argued that the independence of thesedimensions makes theoretical sense. Individuals in all cultures,they argue, have both individualistic and collectivistic tendencies,although cultures likely differ in the typical salience of eachorientation. Singelis (1994) argued that the orthogonality of inde-pendent and interdependent self-construal dimensions is not anartifact of acquiescence response bias, despite the absence of anyreverse-keyed items in his SCS. In developing their entity theorymeasures, Dweck and colleagues also experienced difficultiesidentifying incremental theory items that defined the inverse poleof their bipolar entity versus incremental theory dimension, andnoted that when incremental items were used, they tended to beendorsed by entity theorists as well (Chiu, Hong, & Dweck,1997).5

We believe the relative independence of the implicit trait andcontextual beliefs dimensions may be a theoretically meaningfulfinding and that individuals in both the United States and Mexicotend to be implicit interaction theorists. That is, they believe in thestability, predictive value, and importance of traits, but also in themoderating role of contextual factors. This interpretation receivessupport from a recent study by Norenzayan et al. (2002), whofound that endorsements of paragraphs describing dispositionistand situationist views were uncorrelated (i.e., independent) forboth Americans and Koreans and that interactionist descriptionswere endorsed more than either dispositionist or situationist per-spectives by both cultural groups. At the same time, however, wesuspect that the relative independence of the implicit trait andcontextual beliefs dimensions might also be augmented to someextent by acquiescence response bias. This issue warrants furtherinvestigation.

Implicit Trait Versus Entity Theories

The modest correlations found between the implicit trait andentity theory constructs may reflect, in part, the broader, multi-

5 Recently, Dweck and colleagues successfully identified incrementalitems that define the inverse pole of the entity theory dimension by writingstrongly stated incremental items (e.g., “No matter what kind of a personsomeone is, they can always change very much” ; Levy et al., 1998). Suchitems serve a useful psychometric function by better balancing item keyingwithin scales and reducing the potential effects of acquiescence responsebias. However, it is conceivable that such items will capture less accuratelythe typical beliefs of incremental theorists, which might be consistent withmore moderate change in individuals.

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component nature of the former construct, which goes beyond thestability versus malleability aspect encompassed by the latter con-struct. The trait and contextual beliefs items also appear to be moreprobabilistic, and less extreme, than the entity theory items; entitytheorists appear to take a more rigid stance on the possibility ofchange than most trait theorists would. One caveat: When wedesigned these studies, we were familiar with Dweck’s domain-general entity theory measure, which had been used in a study oflay dispositionism that was most relevant to our studies (Chiu,Hong, & Dweck, 1997). Recently, however, Dweck (2000) pre-sented a measure that can be used to assess entity theories specif-ically in the personality domain. This domain-specific measuremay show stronger relationships with our implicit beliefs dimen-sions, a possibility that we will investigate.

Relating Self-Construals and Implicit Trait Theories

In both U.S. and Mexican samples, independent self-construalspredicted stronger endorsement of trait beliefs, but not contextualbeliefs. These results are consistent with the expectations of cul-tural psychologists (Church, 2000; Markus & Kitayama, 1998) andindividualism–collectivism theory (Triandis, 1995). Individualswho view themselves as autonomous and unique agents are morelikely to believe in the stability and predictive value of personalitytraits, the importance of traits in causal inferences, and the impor-tance of traits in describing or understanding themselves andothers.

Also as expected, interdependent self-construals showed a mod-est to moderate ability to predict implicit contextual beliefs. Thatis, individuals who view themselves as more interdependent orconnected to others tend to believe that contextual factors such assituations, relationships, and roles are important factors in under-standing persons and their behavior. These findings also conformto the expectations of cultural psychologists and are consistentwith the findings of Singelis (1994), who found that interdepen-dent self-construals, but not independent self-construals, predictedsituational attributions of behavior.

We did not expect, however, that interdependent self-construalswould also predict implicit trait beliefs to some extent. Nonethe-less, in retrospect, we believe this finding makes sense. Many ofthe items in the interdependent SCS do, in fact, imply a belief intraits or trait-relevant behavior; however, the traits associated withthe scale are more other-oriented or self-sacrificing than the au-tonomous or agentic traits associated with independent self-construals. The interdependent items refer to trait-relevant behav-iors associated with modesty, altruism, generosity, respectfulness,cooperativeness, politeness, loyalty, and conformity (e.g., I respectpeople who are modest about themselves). This finding is alsoconsistent with Oyserman, Coon, and Kemmelmeier’s (2002) con-tention that a plausible consequence of collectivism is valuedpersonal traits that reflect the goals of “sacrifice for the commongood and maintaining harmonious relationships with close others”(p. 5). In short, both independent and interdependent self-construals are associated with trait beliefs; the difference involvesthe traits that are most likely to be exhibited or valued. Thissuggests that implicit trait beliefs may be cultural universals, aconjecture that is also supported by our inspection of culturalmeans (see below).

Cross-Cultural Differences in Implicit Theories andSelf-Construals

Implicit Trait and Contextual Beliefs

As expected, the U.S. sample reported stronger trait beliefs, onaverage, than did the Mexican sample. This is consistent with thecultural psychology contention that traits are accorded a moreimportant role in individualistic cultures than in collectivisticcultures (Markus & Kitayama, 1998; Triandis, 1995). The effectsize was not large, however. Furthermore, an examination of thecultural means (see Table 2) reveals that both U.S. and Mexicanrespondents, on average, tended to agree with trait beliefs items,and agreed more with trait beliefs items than with contextualbeliefs items. This suggests that respondents in both cultures tendto be lay dispositionists more than contextual theorists, at least asassessed with our self-report measure. This finding is incongruentwith hypotheses based on cultural psychology, but is consistentwith two recent literature reviews.

Church (2000) reviewed psychological and ethnographic evi-dence across cultures and concluded that “even in sociocentriccultures, persons and their behavior are described and understoodto some degree in terms of personality traits, at least under appro-priate conditions” (p. 674). Similarly, in a review of causal attri-bution literature across cultures, Choi, Nisbett, and Norenzayan(1999) concluded that dispositional inference is present in allcultures, although the authors left open the possibility that it mightbe weaker in collectivistic cultures. Choi et al. (1999) also sug-gested that individuals in some cultures (e.g., East Asian) are moresensitive to contextual information, assuming it is sufficientlysalient (see also Norenzayan et al., 2002). In the present study,Americans and Mexicans did not differ, on average, in the strengthof their contextual beliefs. It is possible, of course, that implicit orfolk beliefs about the relative importance of traits versus contex-tual factors will not strongly converge with the actual “ traitedness”versus contextuality of self-concepts and causal inferences, but wemight expect some degree of convergence (Church, 2000). Wenow need studies that investigate this in a variety of cultures.

Entity Theories

There have been inconsistencies between theory and researchwhen entity theories have been examined across cultures. In the-ory, entity theorists should tend to be implicit trait theorists (Chiu,Hong, & Dweck, 1997; Norenzayan et al., 2002), as was the casein our studies. Also, from a cultural psychology perspective, im-plicit trait beliefs should be stronger in individualistic cultures thanin collectivistic cultures, which we also found to be the case.Together, these theories and findings suggest that entity theoriesshould also be stronger in individualistic cultures than in collec-tivistic cultures. Although this was the case in a study that com-pared Americans and Koreans (Norenzayan et al., 2002), it was notthe case in two studies that compared Americans and Hong KongChinese (Chiu, Dweck, et al., 1997; Chiu, Hong, & Dweck, 1997,Study 4). Our findings are most consistent with those of Chiu,Dweck, et al. (1997), who also found that entity theory beliefs arestronger in collectivistic than individualistic cultures.

The prediction of stronger trait beliefs in individualistic culturesis well-grounded in cultural psychology and individualism–

342 CHURCH ET AL.

collectivism theory, whereas the theoretical basis for expectingstronger entity theory beliefs in collectivistic cultures has not yetbeen as fully elaborated. Chiu, Dweck, et al. (1997) did linkstronger entity theories (in the morality domain) with duty-basedmoral codes and noted that collectivistic (or at least Asian) culturestend to endorse duty-based moral codes. Again, researchers willneed to compare implicit trait and entity theories across a broaderrange of individualistic and collectivistic cultures to better under-stand the pattern of cultural differences observed.

Self-Construals

The most unexpected finding was that the Americans, who arethought to be individualistic, averaged higher on the interdepen-dent self-construal measure, whereas the Mexicans, who are pre-sumed to be collectivistic, averaged higher on the independentSCS. We considered a number of explanations for these findings.Cross-cultural measurement inequivalence is a potential problemin cross-cultural mean comparisons, but the MACS analyses indi-cated that metric equivalence was good. The MACS results alsoreduce concerns about differential response styles across cultures,which in any case would be more of an issue had the Mexicanstudents averaged higher or lower on both self-construal scales,which they did not.

Plausible explanations might involve issues of sample represen-tativeness and related reference group effects. Our Mexican col-lege students might have more independent and less interdepen-dent self-construals than Mexicans who are more representative ofthe general population. Our U.S. college students, whose meansfor independent and interdependent self-construals conformedmore to expectations, might be more representative of their coun-try’s general population. Sato and Cameron (1999) offered apossibly related explanation in their attempt to explain why theirCanadian undergraduate sample unexpectedly averaged higher ininterdependent self-construals than a sample of Japanese students.They speculated that “participants may be comparing themselveswith different norms set by their cultural environments whenresponding to the items” (p. 433). Analogously, perhaps the Mex-ican students in our sample implicitly judged themselves to berelatively independent and less interdependent in comparison withtheir cultural norm. Heine, Lehman, Peng, and Greenholtz (2002)have shown that such reference group effects can lead to resultsthat actually reverse the expected pattern of mean cultural differ-ences, as may have occurred here for the self-construal measure.We might expect self-construal measures to be more susceptible toreference group effects, however, than would implicit trait andentity theory measures. Self-construal measures involve judgmentsabout one’s own behavior, which may elicit social comparisons inrelation to cultural norms. In contrast, the implicit theory measuresassess observations or beliefs about the personalities or behaviorsof people in general (i.e., beliefs about cultural phenomena or thecultural norm itself).

Finally, it is not clear from existing studies how confidentlypredictions about cultural differences in self-construals orindividualism–collectivism can be made. The vast majority ofstudies have involved comparisons of U.S. nationals versus EastAsian nationals, or European Americans versus Asian Americans,and some results have not conformed to expectations (Oyserman etal., 2002). We identified only one study that compared Mexican

and U.S. college students, which did find that Mexican studentsaveraged higher than U.S. students in collectivism (Shkodriani &Gibbons, 1995). However, Oyserman et al. (2002), in a meta-analysis of studies since 1980, found very diverse findings incomparisons of Latin American and U.S. samples and noted theneed to better understand the Latino cultural perspective in relationto individualism–collectivism. In short, there is still much to belearned regarding the status of most cultures, including Mexico, ondifferent aspects of individualism and collectivism. Given thecurrent status of the literature, our cultural mean differences find-ings for self-construals cannot necessarily be consideredanomalous.

A Final Note

Finally, although the present study has gone some way towardrevealing the structure, correlates, and cross-cultural functioningof the implicit trait theory construct, the ability of the scales topredict individual and cultural differences in the traitedness ofself-concepts, causal attributions, self-enhancement tendencies,and related variables largely awaits further research, some ofwhich we have begun. Such research will enable a more compre-hensive assessment of the validity of cultural psychology hypoth-eses regarding implicit theories and their impact. Ultimately, thegoal is an integration of the trait and cultural psychology perspec-tives that dominate current cross-cultural research on personality(Church, 2000).

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Appendix

Factor Pattern Matrices and Item-Total Correlations for Personal Beliefs Inventory Items in U.S. and Mexican Samples(Study 3)

Itemno. Items organized by belief components

U.S. Mexico U.S. Mexico

T C T C rit rit

Traited longitudinal

6. People who are friendlier than others now will probably remain friendlier than others in thefuture as well. .31 .03 .37 .08 .32 .40

21. Someone who tends to be more stubborn than others as a teenager will probably tend to bemore stubborn than others as an adult. .16 .14 .32 .13 .18 .30

38. People who are quite industrious when they are students will probably be quite industrious intheir jobs as well. .61 .07 .57 �.10 .35 .38

58. A person who is more hardworking than others now will probably be more hardworking thanothers in the future as well. .49 .07 .56 .12 .41 .50

68. A person who is friendlier than others now will probably be friendlier than others when he orshe is older, too. .50 .03 .57 �.01 .50 .53

.58a .66a

Traited situational

18. A person who is relaxed and self-confident talking with his or her boss at work is probablyalso relaxed and self-confident meeting new co-workers on the job. .22 .13 .48 �.07 .24 .38

28. If a person is generally hardworking and responsible at school, the person is probablyhardworking and responsible at work as well. .59 .05 .54 �.06 .57 .48

39. A person who tends to make lists of things to do at work probably also tends to make lists ofthings to do at home. .57 .04 .49 .07 .44 .42

49. An adolescent who is generally rebellious at home is probably also rebellious at school. .25 .02 .45 �.14 .29 .4362. A person who cares a lot about his or her performance at school probably cares a lot about his

or her performance at work as well. .66 .02 .66 �.09 .48 .5076. A person who tends to be cheerful at work is probably a cheerful person outside work as well. .49 .04 .61 �.10 .43 .55

.68a .72a

Traited predictive

9. If we know how self-critical a person tends to be, we can predict fairly well how often thatperson will comment negatively about the quality of his or her work. .29 .02 .30 .10 .21 .26

24. If we know that a particular person tends to be quarrelsome, we can be confident that theperson will get into arguments with others fairly often. .50 .10 .35 .11 .35 .26

31. For most persons, success at their job will depend a lot on their personality characteristics. .49 .00 .41 .03 .39 .2760. A person’s personality characteristics largely determine how he or she acts with new

acquaintances. .51 �.05 .51 �.22 .36 .2670. Person’s personality characteristics strongly influence their behavior in a variety of situations. .66 .07 .55 .00 .40 .31

.58a .50a

Trait inference

2. If I saw that a groupmate did thorough work on a group project, I would probably concludethat the groupmate was thorough or conscientious in general. .43 .00 .32 .04 .41 .39

17. If I saw a person being helpful with a new coworker, I would probably conclude that theperson is a helpful person in general. .53 .09 .55 .02 .42 .56

40. If I saw a person return some lost money to its owner, I would probably conclude that theperson is an honest person in general. .52 .03 .66 �.01 .41 .47

51. If I saw a student being courteous with his teachers, I would probably conclude that the studentis a courteous person in general. .29 �.07 .51 �.05 .32 .52

74. If I saw a student speak up confidently in a particular class, I would probably conclude that thestudent was a self-confident person in general. .47 �.09 .57 �.05 .41 .49

.64a .73a

Traited general

1. Some people are more talkative than others because of their personality characteristics. .31 �.03 .38 �.09 .29 .3716. All people have certain personality characteristics that can be used to describe or understand

them. .53 .08 .39 �.18 .41 .3629. Some people are more moody than others because of their personality characteristics. .38 �.06 .52 �.05 .35 .5342. Some college students are just more energetic in general than other college students. .62 �.03 .41 .20 .54 .2447. For someone to understand me well, they would need to know some of my personality

characteristics. .50 .11 .41 .02 .45 .3767. I can describe some personality characteristics of my close friends that are important in

understanding them. .60 �.05 .55 �.20 .51 .49

(Appendix continues)

345MEASURING IMPLICIT TRAIT THEORIES

Appendix (continued)

Itemno. Items organized by belief components

U.S. Mexico U.S. Mexico

T C T C rit rit

Traited general (continued)

72. Some people are more curious in general than others because of their personalitycharacteristics. .58 .08 .61 �.14 .54 .61

73. To understand a person well, it is more important to know some of the person’s personalitycharacteristics than to know the person’s educational and occupational background. .27 .03 .29 .03 .26 .27

.72a .70a

Contextual longitudinal

10. Whether or not a person has a selfish personality will tend to change over time. �.05 .36 �.09 .16 .49 .3915. Whether or not a person is arrogant will tend to change over time. .00 .36 �.08 .20 .49 .4222. A person’s personality in the future will probably be quite different from his or her personality

now. �.16 .38 .10 .46 .46 .3433. The personality characteristics of most people will change quite a bit over time. �.06 .41 .08 .35 .43 .3143. Whether or not a person is modest will tend to change over time. .08 .45 .07 .27 .53 .3564. A person who is very quiet as an adolescent may turn out to be very talkative as an adult. .16 .26 �.01 .32 .18 .18

.70a .55a

Contextual situational

11. It is not very useful to know a person’s personality characteristics, because most people changehow they act to fit the situation. �.11 .35 �.01 .38 — —

26. A person who is compassionate with friends may lack compassion with strangers. .22 .30 �.08 .25 .45 .2632. A person who is selfish with brothers and sisters might be quite generous with classmates. .02 .28 �.04 .29 .50 .4837. A person who is usually warm with friends might tend to be cold with his or her brothers and

sisters. .08 .37 .07 .21 .49 .4148. A person who is generally polite with people they know might be rude sometimes with

strangers. .13 .36 .08 .35 .48 .4057. It is meaningless to say that one person has a more stubborn personality than another, because

how stubborn one is depends on the situation. �.22 .46 �.16 .40 .18 .1669. A person who is always honest in his or her schoolwork might be dishonest sometimes in what

he or she says to classmates. .01 .34 .00 .41 .46 .3977. A person who is hot-headed at home might be calm and patient with friends. .13 .35 .01 .35 .42 .34

.71a .63a

Contextual predictive

7. How compassionate an adult will act with a child can not be predicted very well from theadult’s personality characteristics. �.18 .38 .10 .19 .35 .16

8. How a mother treats her children depends more on her role as a mother than on her personalitycharacteristics. �.14 .35 .03 .30 .41 .37

14. Even if we know how aggressive a person tends to be, it is difficult to predict how aggressivethe person will be in a particular situation. .10 .43 �.08 .41 .38 .35

27. Even if we know how competitive a person tends to be, it does not tell us how competitive heor she will be in a particular situation. .02 .39 .10 .37 .26 .28

34. How a father treats his son depends more on his duties as a father than on his personalitycharacteristics. �.21 .38 �.09 .42 .38 .42

35. What people do in a given situation depends more on aspects of the situation than on theirpersonality characteristics. .14 .45 �.07 .43 .36 .41

45. People usually do what the situation calls for, with their personality characteristics having onlya limited effect on what they do. �.34 .41 .15 .25 .39 .12

46. How lively a person will act at a party can not be predicted very well from the person’spersonality characteristics. �.17 .26 �.11 .38 .31 .32

55. Even if we know how helpful a person tends to be, it is difficult to predict how helpful he orshe will be in a particular situation. �.02 .38 �.08 .49 .26 .40

65. Even if we know how stubborn a person tends to be, we can not predict how stubborn theperson will be in a particular situation. .02 .47 �.08 .56 .35 .44

66. How one acts with another person depends more on the other person’s social status than onone’s personality characteristics. �.20 .21 �.16 .44 .21 .35

71. How one acts with another person depends on how close one feels to that person, more than onone’s personality characteristics. .28 .30 .07 .34 .19 .31

.69a .69a

Contextual inferential

13. One would have to observe a person in several social situations before one could judgewhether they were timid or not. .32 .32 �.02 .26 .37 .34

346 CHURCH ET AL.

Received August 12, 2002Revision received January 13, 2003

Accepted January 16, 2003 �

Appendix (continued)

Itemno. Items organized by belief components

U.S. Mexico U.S. Mexico

T C T C rit rit

Contextual inferential (continued)

25. It is difficult to judge whether a person has a cheerful personality until you have interactedwith him or her several times. .15 .34 .08 .31 .48 .45

36. It is hard to judge how competitive a person is until you have worked with him or her in manysituations. .32 .45 .10 .40 .51 .46

54. It is difficult to judge how conceited a person is until you have interacted with him or herseveral times. .08 .24 .10 .32 .38 .38

61. It is difficult to conclude anything about a person’s personality from seeing what he or shedoes in just a few situations. .03 .42 �.04 .30 .42 .27

.68a .62a

Contextual general

23. My relationships with my friends are more important than my personality characteristics inunderstanding who I am. �.13 .16 �.11 .26 .40 .36

56. My duties and obligations as a son or daughter are more important than my personalitycharacteristics in understanding who I am. �.28 .18 �.12 .34 .40 .46

59. My family background is more important than my personality characteristics in understandingwho I am. �.06 .32 �.11 .31 .44 .40

.61a .59a

Note. Factor loadings � �.30� are shown in bold. Dashes indicate that items were not scored for component subscale because of modest item-totalcorrelations. T � implicit trait beliefs factor; C � implicit contextual beliefs factor; rit � corrected item-total correlations with component subscales.a Alpha reliability for component subscales.

347MEASURING IMPLICIT TRAIT THEORIES