How parents see and understand child's intelligence?

Abstract

Following Sternberg’s triarhic theory (1985a), we classified parents’ implicit conceptions of an intelligent child into three categories: (i) practical problem solving ability, (ii) interest in learning and culture and (iii) social competence. Our research was divided into three studies, in which a total of 732 parents and 228 children participated. This article is focused on the third study (N=96), where we were interested in the relationships between parents’ implicit conceptions of intelligence, parents’ personal traits, the child’s personal traits and the child’s “actual” intelligence. We discovered that there were almost no differences between parents’ implicit conceptions of an intelligent child in different classes. Parents’ implicit conceptions of an intelligent child are weakly connected with parents’ Openness. A weak relationship was also noticeable with Emotional Stability, Conscientiousness and Agreeableness. No relationship existed between parents’ implicit conceptions of an intelligent child and the child’s personal traits, except in the fourth class, where we noticed a relationship between the social competence category and the child’s Extraversion. Parents’ implicit conceptions of an intelligent child were weakly connected with the child’s “actual” intelligence, except in the fourth class, where a moderate relationship was noticeable. All relationships are statistically significant.