Implicit Theories of Interest Regulation

Beliefs that human qualities are malleable or fixed play important roles in motivation, personality, and development (Dweck, 1999; Dweck, Chiu, & Hong, 1995). The present research extends this distinction to individuals' beliefs about the malleability of interest. The Self-Regulation of Motivation (SRM) model proposes that experiencing interest at least some of the time is essential for maintaining motivation over time. Therefore, when individuals face an uninteresting but valuable activity, choosing to regulate their experience of interest by changing how they work on the activity increases persistence and the likelihood of later reengagement (Sansone & Harackiewicz, 1996; Sansone & Smith, 2000; Sansone & Thoman, 2005). Implicit theories of interest regulation are proposed as mental frameworks that people use when deciding whether or not to regulate interest. Findings from experimental lab studies that measured (Study 1) or manipulated (Study 2) general implicit theories of interest regulation suggest that whether or not undergraduates believe that interest can be regulated influences their use of interest-enhancing strategies on a boring task. Study 3 utilized repeated within-person measures of implicit theories across several academic domains to reveal that undergraduates' beliefs about the malleability of interest is highly variable across academic domains, and that students report greater use of interest-enhancing strategies when they encountered boring class assignments in domains in which they reported more malleable (v. fixed) implicit theories of interest. Theoretical implications are discussed for both the SRM model and recently growing work on the role of metamotivational variables in self-regulation.