Lay theories of personality and helping among Chinese undergraduates

In all agencies, lay beliefs of a person are closely related to frequency, tendency and quality of prosocial behaviors. Potential helpers who hold an incremental theory of personality (belief that a person’s attributes are malleable), will be more willing to help socially stigmatized groups than those who hold an entity theory of personality (belief that a person’s attributes are fixed (Karafantis & Levy, 2004; West, 2003). Based on this recent evidence, we examined the relationship between lay theories of personality and helping in a Chinese population.