Relations Between Ineffective Academic Self-regulation and College Students’ Implicit Intelligence Beliefs

Presentation given at American Educational Research Association Annual Conference.

Prior research indicates that self-regulation of learning experiences influence college students’ implicit beliefs (i.e., entity and incremental) about the nature of intelligence. College students who attempt to self-regulate their learning process, but do so ineffectively, have been shown to increase in their belief that intelligence is a fixed, unalterable entity. The purpose of the current research was to report on the findings of two studies that examined how ineffective self-regulation relates to implicit intelligence beliefs at different points during the semester. Across both studies, ineffective self-regulation accounted for a significant proportion of variance in students’ entity beliefs, but not incremental beliefs. These findings support prior research and highlight the importance of helping students develop effective academic self-regulation abilities.