Conceptual and methodological ambiguities surrounding the concept of perceived behavioral control are clarified. It is shown that perceived control over performance of a behavior, though comprised of separable components that reflect beliefs about self-efficacy and about controllability, can nevertheless be considered a unitary latent variable in a hierarchical factor model. It is further argued that there is no necessary correspondence between self-efficacy and internal control factors, or between controllability and external control factors. Self-efficacy and controllability can reflect internal as well as external factors and the extent to which they reflect one or the other is an empirical question. Finally, a case is made that measures of perceived behavioral control need to incorporate self-efficacy as well as controllability items that are carefully selected to ensure high internal consistency.

Summary and Conclusions
Perceived control over performance of a behavior can account for consider- able variance in intentions and actions. However, ambiguities surrounding the concept of perceived behavioral control have tended to create uncertainties and to impede progress. The present article attempted to clarify conceptual ambiguities and resolve issues related to the operationalization of perceived behavioral control. Recent research has demonstrated that the overarching concept of perceived behavioral control, as commonly assessed, is comprised of two components: self-efficacy (dealing largely with the ease or difficulty of performing a behavior) and controllability (the extent to which performance is up to the actor). Contrary to a widely accepted view, it was argued that self-efficacy expectations do not necessarily correspond to beliefs about internal control factors, and that controllability expectations have no necessary basis in the perceived operation of external factors. Instead, it was suggested that self-efficacy and controllability may both reflect beliefs about the presence of internal as well as external factors. Rather than making a priori assumptions about the internal or external locus of self-efficacy and controllability, this issue is best treated as an empirical question.

Also of theoretical significance, the present article tried to dispel the notion that self-efficacy and controllability are incompatible with, or independent of, each other. Although factor analyses of perceived behavioral control items provide clear and consistent evidence for the distinction, there is sufficient commonality between self-efficacy and controllability to suggest a two-level hierarchical model. In this model, perceived behavioral control is the overarching, superordinate construct that is comprised of two lower-level components: self-efficacy and controllability. This view of the control component in the theory of planned behavior implies that measures of perceived behavioral control should contain items that assess self-efficacy as well as controllability. Depending on the purpose of the investigation, a decision can be made to aggregate over all items, treating perceived behavioral control as a unitary factor, or to distinguish between self-efficacy and controllability by entering separate indices into the prediction equation.

Perceived Behavioral Control, Self-Efficacy, Locus of Control, and the Theory of Planned Behavior

Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. Researchers - often implicitly - assume that either there is little variation across human populations, or that these "standard subjects" are as representative of the species as any other population. Are these assumptions justified? Here, our review of the comparative database from across the behavioral sciences suggests both that there is substantial variability in experimental results across populations and that WEIRD subjects are particularly unusual compared with the rest of the species - frequent outliers. The domains reviewed include visual perception, fairness, cooperation, spatial reasoning, categorization and inferential induction, moral reasoning, reasoning styles, self-concepts and related motivations, and the heritability of IQ. The findings suggest that members of WEIRD societies, including young children, are among the least representative populations one could find for generalizing about humans. Many of these findings involve domains that are associated with fundamental aspects of psychology, motivation, and behavior - hence, there are no obvious a priori grounds for claiming that a particular behavioral phenomenon is universal based on sampling from a single subpopulation. Overall, these empirical patterns suggests that we need to be less cavalier in addressing questions of human nature on the basis of data drawn from this particularly thin, and rather unusual, slice of humanity. We close by proposing ways to structurally re-organize the behavioral sciences to best tackle these challenges.

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The WEIRDest People in the World

Are Americans more individualistic and less collectivistic than members of other groups? The authors summarize plausible psychological implications of individualism-collectivism (IND-COL), meta-analyze cross-national and within-United States IND-COL differences, and review evidence for effects of IND-COL on self-concept, well-being, cognition, and relationality. European Americans were found to be both more individualistic-valuing personal independence more-and less collectivistic-feeling duty to in-groups less-than others. However, European Americans were not more individualistic than African Americans, or Latinos, and not less collectivistic than Japanese or Koreans. Among Asians, only Chinese showed large effects, being both less individualistic and more collectivistic. Moderate IND-COL effects were found on self-concept and relationality, and large effects were found on attribution and cognitive style.

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Rethinking individualism and collectivism: evaluation of theoretical assumptions and meta-analyses.

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WEIRD languages have misled us, too [Comment on Henrich et al.]

The Social Psychology of Organizations.

In this target article, we present evidence for a new model of individual differences in judgments and reactions. The model holds that people's implicit theories about human attributes structure the way they understand and react to human actions and outcomes. We review research showing that when people believe that attributes (such as intelligence or moral character) are fixed, trait-like entities (an entity theory), they tend to understand outcomes and actions in terms of these fixed traits ("I failed the test because I am dumb" or "He stole the bread because he is dishonest"). In contrast, when people believe that attributes are more dynamic, malleable, and developable (an incremental theory), they tend to focus less on broad traits and, instead, tend to understand outcomes and actions in terms of more specific behavioral or psychological mediators ("I failed the test because of my effort or strategy" or "He stole the bread because he was desperate"). The two frameworks also appear to foster different r...

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Implicit Theories and Their Role in Judgments and Reactions: A Word From Two Perspectives

This research sought to integrate C. S. Dweck and E. L. Leggett's (1988) model with attribution theory. Three studies tested the hypothesis that theories of intelligence—the belief that intelligence is malleable (incremental theory) versus fixed (entity theory)—would predict (and create) effort versus ability attributions, which would then mediate mastery-oriented coping. Study 1 revealed that, when given negative feedback, incremental theorists were more likely than entity theorists to attribute to effort. Studies 2 and 3 showed that incremental theorists were more likely than entity theorists to take remedial action if performance was unsatisfactory. Study 3, in which an entity or incremental theory was induced, showed that incremental theorists' remedial action was mediated by their effort attributions. These results suggest that implicit theories create the meaning framework in which attributions occur and are important for understanding motivation.

Implicit theories, attributions, and coping : A meaning system approach

Lay dispositionism refers to lay people's tendency to use traits as the basic unit of analysis in social perception (L. Ross & R. E. Nisbett, 1991). Five studies explored the relation between the practices indicative of lay dispositionism and people's implicit theories about the nature of personal attributes. As predicted, compared with those who believed that personal attributes are malleable (incremental theorists), those who believed in fixed traits (entity theorists) used traits or trait-relevant information to make stronger future behavioral predictions (Studies 1 and 2) and made stronger trait inferences from behavior (Study 3). Moreover, the relation between implicit theories and lay dispositionism was found in both the United States (a more individualistic culture) and Hong Kong (a more collectivistic culture), suggesting this relation to be generalizable across cultures (Study 4). Finally, an experiment in which implicit theories were manipulated provided preliminary evidence for the possible causal role of implicit theories in lay dispositionism (Study 5).

Lay dispositionism and implicit theories of personality

Many practices aimed at cultivating multicultural competence in educational and organizational settings (e.g., exchange programs, diversity education in college, diversity management at work) assume that multicultural experience fosters creativity. In line with this assumption, the research reported in this article is the first to empirically demonstrate that exposure to multiple cultures in and of itself can enhance creativity. Overall, the authors found that extensiveness of multicultural experiences was positively related to both creative performance (insight learning, remote association, and idea generation) and creativity-supporting cognitive processes (retrieval of unconventional knowledge, recruitment of ideas from unfamiliar cultures for creative idea expansion). Furthermore, their studies showed that the serendipitous creative benefits resulting from multicultural experiences may depend on the extent to which individuals open themselves to foreign cultures, and that creativity is facilitated in contexts that deemphasize the need for firm answers or existential concerns. The authors discuss the implications of their findings for promoting creativity in increasingly global learning and work environments.

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Multicultural experience enhances creativity: the when and how.

Psychological processes influence culture. Culture influences psychological processes. Individual thoughts and actions influence cultural norms and practices as they evolve over time, and these cultural norms and practices influence the thoughts and actions of individuals. Large bodies of literature support these conclusions within the context of research on evolutionary processes, epistemic needs, interpersonal communication, attention, perception, attributional thinking, self-regulation, human agency, self-worth, and contextual activation of cultural paradigms. Cross-cultural research has greatly enriched psychology, and key issues for continued growth and maturation of the field of cultural psychology are articulated.

Chi-Yue Chiu

Papers

Implicit Theories and Their Role in Judgments and Reactions: A Word From Two Perspectives

Implicit theories, attributions, and coping : A meaning system approach

Lay dispositionism and implicit theories of personality

Multicultural experience enhances creativity: the when and how.

Psychology and Culture