Students’ Thinking About Effort and Ability: The Role of Developmental, Contextual, and Individual Difference Factors

Students’ thinking about the relation between effort and ability can influence their motivation, affect, and academic achievement. Students sometimes think of effort as inversely related to ability (such that people with low ability must work harder than people with high ability) and other times think of effort as positively related to ability (such that hard work can lead people to develop high levels of ability). The purposes of the present...