Two Different Views on the World Around Us: The World of Uniformity versus Diversity

JaeHwan Kwon and Dhananjay Nayakankuppam

PLOS ONE, 2016, vol. 11, issue 12, 1-12

Abstract: We propose that when individuals believe in fixed traits of personality (entity theorists), they are likely to expect a world of “uniformity.” As such, they easily infer a population statistic from a small sample of data with confidence. In contrast, individuals who believe in malleable traits of personality (incremental theorists) are likely to presume a world of “diversity,” such that they “hesitate” to infer a population statistic from a similarly sized sample. In four laboratory experiments, we found that compared to incremental theorists, entity theorists estimated a population mean from a sample with a greater level of confidence (Studies 1a and 1b), expected more homogeneity among the entities within a population (Study 2), and perceived an extreme value to be more indicative of an outlier (Study 3). These results suggest that individuals are likely to use their implicit self-theory orientations (entity theory versus incremental theory) to see a population in general as a constitution either of homogeneous or heterogeneous entities.

Date: 2016
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0168589

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0168589

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