The “entity view of effort“ as a predictor to depression among Chinese adolescents
Date Issued
2006
Date
2006
Author(s)
Wu, Chi-Shan
DOI
zh-TW
Abstract
The entity view of effort is referred to the concept that the utmost effort of each individual can make is unchangeable. The individual differences of entity view of effort are most likely to manifest in achievement motivation toward challenging events. Lay and Tsai (2005) indicated that, after controlling for the entity view of intelligence (Dweck & Leggett, 1988) and achievement goal orientation, entity view of effort still posts a unique contribution to post-failure attribution, self-handicapping and procrastination behaviors of middle school students in Taiwan. The goal of the present research is to demonstrate that the entity view of effort is a maladaptive belief that is related not only to maladjusted learning behaviors but also to depressive emotions among Chinese adolescents. In addition, cross-lagged panel design is applied to test if the entity view of effort is an antecedent variable of depression.
A total of 348 students from the National Taiwan University and 140 students from a private university near Taipei participated in Study 1, 2, and 3. Hierarchical regression analyses repetitively revealed a unique contribution of the entity view of effort to self-handicapping and procrastination behaviors as well as depression after controlling for the contribution of the entity view of intelligence in college students.
Study 4 applied a two-stage prospective design. A total of 113 college students completed the entity view of effort questionnaire and the depression subscale of SCL90-R both before and after a midterm examination. The Pearson-Filon statistic in the cross-lagged panel design indicated that the entity view of effort is a marginally significant predictor of depressive emotion upon facing a challenging event. To partial out a confounding variable that those having succeeded and failed in the midterm examination may consequently have different level of depressive mood, a 2 (high vs. low entity view of effort) x 2 (pretest vs. posttest) ANCOVA with school performance as the covariate was performed specifically to all the subjects who had failed on the midterm examination. The interaction effect was found significant. The level of depression increased after the challenging event for students with high effort-entity view but decreased for those with low effort-entity view.
Study 5 replicated the procedure of Study 4 just that subjects were middle school students. The three groups of subjects in Study 5 included the 8th Grade group (n=127), the 11th Grade A group (n=155), and the 11th Grade B group (n=142). Students in the 11th Grade A group are academically more advanced than those in the B group according to a nation-wide high school entrance examination. No significant predicting power of the effort-entity view to depression was found in either the 8th Grade group or the 11th Grade B group. However, similar to the results of Study 4, the same pattern of significant interaction effect of ANCOVA was found in the 11th Grade A group. Combining the results of Study 4 and 5, it seems that depressive mood after failure is predictable from the degree of effort-entity view only for students with high academic performance. In other words, this finding may imply that the entity view of effort is a risk factor to high performers upon confronting challenging events.
Subjects
成就目標
學習動機
智力本質觀
努力本質觀
自我設限
憂鬱
learning motivation
entity view of ability
entity view of effort
self-handicapping
depression
Type
other
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