How do parents’ ideas about intelligence shape how they compare their children to other children?
(Photo provided by Uyen Phan)
“We found that parents generally held a more negative view of their child when they compared their child to a child who performed better in a given school domain (e.g. math). That is, parents evaluated their child as less capable in that school domain (e.g. my child is not good in math). However, parents also rated that subject as less important (e.g. “My kid is not good at math, but who cares? Math is not that important, anyway”). We hypothesized that parents do this to maintain a positive image of their child.” ~Uyen Phan
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*In the following article, TS refers to The Synapse, and UP refers to Uyen Phan;
TS: Could you briefly introduce yourself, your supervisor, the topic of your thesis, and the field it contributes to?
UP: My name is Uyen Phan. I have just graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with Honours, and a minor in French. My Honours supervisor was Dr. Elaine Perunovic.
The title of my thesis is “The Psychological Consequences of Parents’ Social Comparison of Their Children: The Role of Parents’ Implicit Theory of Intelligence”. It looked at how parents’ ideas about intelligence affect how they compare their children to other children.
This research mainly contributes to the field of social psychology, but in some way it also contributes to developmental psychology or education. Parents’ beliefs about intelligence may affect how they treat children who perform ahead of or behind their peers in school.
TS: What was the inspiration for your study, your research question, and the main results?
UP: My study was inspired by two key things. Firstly, as my study addressed a relatively new topic, we hoped to replicate results of previous studies that looked at how parents react after socially comparing their children (i.e. comparing their children to other children). Secondly, we hoped to add new findings by examining how parents’ implicit theories of intelligence (i.e. whether they believe that intelligence can improve) affected how they socially compared their children.
Specifically, we studied the following research questions:
How do parents react after they socially compare their children?; and
How are these reactions similar or different between parents who are incremental theorists (i.e. who believe that intelligence is improvable) and parents who are entity theorists (i.e. who believe that intelligence is not improvable)?
Unfortunately, none of our results were significant, which makes it hard for us to properly interpret what the data really means. But we did observe some trends.
Firstly, we found that parents generally held a more negative view of their child when they compared them to a child who performed better in a school domain (e.g. math). That is, parents evaluated their child as less capable in that subject (e.g. my child is not good in math). However, parents also rated that subject as less important (e.g. “My kid is not good at math, but who cares? Math is not that important, anyway”). We considered that parents do this to maintain a positive image of their child.
Secondly, we found some differences in how parents who are incremental theorists versus entity theorists respond to their children, though these trends are complicated to explain in detail.
Again, these observations should be taken with a grain of salt given that the results were not significant.
TS: Could you provide a brief summary of the methods used in this study?
UP: The study was an online survey which we set up using Qualtrics, a web-based software. The link to the survey was mainly distributed by posting on Facebook groups, such that most (if not all) of our participants were recruited from social media. Our participants were parents who were at least 18 years old and had a child between the ages of 5 and 10.
Parents first completed the Implicit Theories of Intelligence Scale to determine whether they were incremental theorists or entity theorists. Then, parents did the social comparison task, in which we asked them to compare their child to another child. Finally, they completed some tests assessing their reactions after making these comparisons.
TS: Are there any future studies that will be conducted based on your method or results?
UP: We are hoping to continue with this research with more participants. Our primary concern with this study was the small number of participants, which we believe might have been the reason for our non-significant results.
In terms of future studies, I personally think it would be very interesting to do a cross-cultural study on whether Western and East Asian parents react differently after they’ve compared their children. Much research has found that Westerners tend to hold an entity theory of intelligence (i.e. believing that intelligence is fixed and unchangeable), whereas East Asians tend to hold an incremental theory (i.e. believing that intelligence can be improved through hard work).
TS: What would you consider the most intriguing part of your research?
UP: Since the results all came back nonsignificant, I was, of course, very disappointed. And so, I spent a few days asking myself what went wrong and discussed all possible scenarios for how the study could have been improved with Dr. Perunovic. That has been an interesting process and a valuable learning opportunity for me.
For example, we talked about how the way we grouped participants may have contributed to the nonsignificant results. We had categorized participants in three groups in terms of their beliefs about intelligence (i.e. either incremental theorists, entity theorists, or a middle group between the two), instead of looking at intelligence as a gradient that includes broader groups (e.g. having a group for participants that are between an incremental theorist group and a middle group). Our grouping may not have been able to capture all the nuances of participants’ beliefs about intelligence as measured by our scales. With new groupings, we could try analyzing the data using a different technique.
TS: Is there anything else you wish to share about the research experience?
UP: Before doing honours, I never knew how much work goes into setting up and carrying out a study, and how unpredictable research can be. In fact, Dr. Perunovic and I originally planned to do a cross-cultural study with Western and East Asian participants, as I’d mentioned above. However, we just could not reach enough East Asian participants (by February, we had just under 10!) and ended up having to change a huge chunk of my thesis. That was a stressful time for me. However, I am very glad that I got to have this eye-opening experience. Thanks to it, I find myself warming up to research more and more. Ψ
Created for The Synapse by Incé Husain.
