Nichols’ Theory of Ability Conceptions
As discussed briefly in Chapter 1,Nicholls’ theory of ability conceptions(Nicholls’ 1978,1984) builds on attribution
theory by specifically examining what developmental and situational factors influence how individuals think about
effort and ability in school-related contexts. He defined ability as “what a person can do “(Nicholls’ ,1987,p.800) and
adopted Heider’s (1958) assumption that ability limits the extent to which high levels of effort can increase
performance .Nicholls’ theory consists of two main components. The first component is primarily developmental and
explains how children’s reasoning about ability changes over time, while the second component is situational and
explains why mature individuals might adopt different conceptions of ability in different contexts.
In Nicholls’(1978) original development study,participants ages 5 through 13 were shown videos of two eight-year
old children working on maths problems at their desks. One child in he video spent all of the time working in the
workbook (high effort),while the other child spent half of the time working around the room (low effort).participants
were then told either that both children got the same number of answers correct on the math problems