Many of us-60% of humanity, according to one study-would like to change some of our personality traits, such as decreasing pessimism or neuroticism. Dweck (2008) proposed that traits might be altered by changing beliefs. However, novel beliefs must be identified, she contends, because currently studied beliefs are empirically inadequate (e.g., low correlations to broad personality traits) and because a belief's influence on behavior is usually confined to a particular situation or topic. When psychologists refer to the psychological impact of beliefs about situations, they typically mean local situations: situations individuals can enter and leave (e.g., "This neighborhood is dangerous"). The novel theoretical suggestion of this article is that a person's basic beliefs about a situation they never leave such as the world (e.g., "This world is dangerous") are uniquely suited to impact cross-situational behavior patterns often associated with broad personality traits. Historically, general beliefs about the world (termed "primal world beliefs") were understudied, and many remained unknown, rendering systematic investigation infeasible. However, using several methods that helped identify Big Five traits decades ago, a recent effort seeking to map primal world beliefs found a structure of 26 dimensions (most clustering into the beliefs that the world is Safe, Enticing, and Alive) suggesting promising avenues for primals-personality research. This article presents a nuanced, working, speculative hypothesis future research can explore: Average behavioral tendencies that persist wherever the individual goes (personality traits) theoretically should result from beliefs about the broader situation the individual never leaves (the world). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

中文翻译：

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影响性格的信念可能涉及人类永远不会离开的情况。


根据一项研究，我们中的许多人（占人类的 60%）都希望改变我们的一些性格特征，例如减少悲观或神经质。Dweck （2008） 提出，改变信念可能会改变特征。然而，她认为，必须确定新的信念，因为目前研究的信念在实证上是不充分的（例如，与广泛的人格特征的相关性较低），并且因为信念对行为的影响通常局限于特定情况或主题。当心理学家提到对情境的信念的心理影响时，他们通常指的是局部情境：个人可以进入和离开的情境（例如，“这个街区很危险”）。本文新颖的理论建议是，一个人对他们从未离开的情境（例如，“这个世界很危险”）的基本信念特别适合影响通常与广泛的人格特征相关的跨情境行为模式。从历史上看，关于世界的一般信念（称为“原始世界信念”）研究不足，许多仍然不为人知，这使得系统调查不可行。然而，使用几十年前帮助识别大五特征的几种方法，最近一项试图绘制原始世界信念的努力发现了一个 26 个维度的结构（大多数集中在世界是安全的、诱人的和活着的信念中），这表明原始人格研究的前景光明。本文提出了一个微妙的、有效的、推测性的假设，未来的研究可以探索：理论上，无论个人走到哪里，持续存在的平均行为倾向（人格特征）应该是由于对个人从未离开的更广泛情况（世界）的信念造成的。 （PsycInfo 数据库记录 （c） 2024 APA，保留所有权利）。