Influence of parent theories of intelligence on child learned helplessness: a cross cultural comparison

Abstract

Learned helplessness has been defined as the inclination of some children to fail to persist following failure (Dweck, 1999). Previous research looking at learned helplessness has failed to consider the role parents play in the development of child learned helplessness. Furthermore, little research has considered learned helplessness across cultures. The current investigation explored the influence of parent theories of intelligence and behaviour on the development of child learned helplessness. It was hypothesised that parent theories of intelligence and parent reactions to failure would be related to child theories of intelligence and child persistence. The influence of culture was also considered. It was hypothesised that due to a cultural emphasis on effort and academic achievement Chinese and Japanese children would display less learned helplessness than American and New Zealand children (Chen & Stevenson, 1995). Participants included 180 seven and eight year old children: 46 from China, 57 from Japan, 38 from New Zealand, and 39 from America. One parent of each child also participated by completing questionnaires accessing theories of intelligence and reactions to failure. Children completed a questionnaire and participated in three academic tasks which were designed to assess persistence following failure. The results indicated that the Chinese, but not Japanese children, evidenced more persistent behaviour than New Zealand and American children. Parent theories of intelligence formed indirect relationships with child persistence behaviour. The relationships between parent theories of intelligence and child behaviour were mediated through parent reactions to failure and parent encouragement of children. Parental support of the incremental theory of intelligence was found to be more important in explaining academic motivation of Asian children. Whereas, parent support of the entity theory better explained academic motivation of Western children. It was concluded that parent theories of intelligence play an important role in the development of child learned helplessness. However, child behaviour was influenced through different parent variables for the Asian and Western cultures indicating that Western models can not be automatically generalised to Asian populations.