Lay theories of personality as cornerstones of meaning.

Abstract

Eleanor and Irene had been friends since childhood and had many things in common. One thing the women disagreed on, however, was whether people's personalities could change. Eleanor had an entity theory of personality: She believed that people never really change, for better or for worse. Irene had an incremental theory of personality: She believed that people's characteristics can change over time. One thing that the women shared in their adult lives was having troublesome boyfriends. Eleanor's partner, Eric, had a self-diagnosed commitment phobia. Irene's partner, Isaac, did not "believe in marriage." Both women wanted to be in a fully committed relationship and, as a result, decided to dump their respective boyfriends and move on. Six months later, however, Eric and Isaac came back into their lives, begging for a second chance. Eleanor and Irene took them back, wondering whether they were doing the right thing. Within the next month, Eric and Isaac both surprised the women with beautiful rings and proposals of marriage. Irene was

Testing the Link Between Empathy and Lay Theories of Happiness

“…As noted above, we predicted that people who scored low on the Flexibility subscale (i.e., who believe that happiness is relatively stable) would be more likely to believe in a just world. The belief that people generally get what they deserve may, in fact, require the assumption that people generally "are the way are" and are not likely to change (Burton & Plaks, 2013).…”

“…Attributions do not occur in a vacuum. Instead, they are often derived from more general lay theories about human nature (e.g., Burton & Plaks, 2013;Plaks, Levy, & Dweck, 2009). Although previous research has examined individual differences in empathic tendencies (e.g., Baron-Cohen & Wheelwright, 2004;Davis, 1980), there has been little examination of how empathic tendencies are predicted by the more general theories that structure people's interpretations of behavior.…”

“…In this research, the belief that a given trait is stable is termed an entity theory , whereas the belief that a given trait is flexible is termed an incremental theory . This literature has consistently found that entity theorists tend to understand human behavior in terms of stable underlying traits, whereas incremental theorists are more likely to invoke dynamic, context-sensitive, psychological processes (Burton & Plaks, 2013; Xu & Plaks, 2015).…”