Although the theory of the socio-cultural approach to creativity is gaining steam, empirical studies with advanced statistical tools are lagging behind. To address the gap of empirical studies integrating individual, social environmental, and cultural factors, we examined how motivational factors and environmental responsiveness were jointly…

Previous empirical studies have yielded inconclusive results about peer perceptions of academically high performing students. The purpose of this study was to investigate students' perceptions of the intellectual ability, positive social qualities, and popularity of a hypothetical new high performing classmate. Participants were 1060 Vietnamese,…

Implicit theories can influence learning behavior, the approaches individuals take to learning and performance situations, and the learning goals individuals set, as well as, indirectly, their accomplishments, intelligence, and creativity. For this cross-cultural study, Kenyan and German students were asked to draw a creative person and rate it on…

This cross-national scenario based study examined fourth-grade students' perceptions of high-performing classmates in terms of their expected intellectual abilities, positive social qualities and popularity among their peers across seven countries. The overall results show that high academic achievements predominantly lead to positive expectations…

Despite changes, gender differences in math and science continue to exist in some countries. We examined whether the actiotopes of boys and girls at the high school level in math and science differed and the extent to which (a) their actiotope components, (b) the progressive development of their actiotopes (dynamic perspective), and (c) the…

This contribution is based on the assumption that implicit theories influence the subjective action space and hence the learning behavior of students. The implicit theory that an individual holds of an intelligent person is of particular importance in this context. For this cross-cultural study, we asked 200 students from Kenya and Germany to draw…

The attainment of exceptional accomplishments requires extremely long periods of time. It has yet to be explained, though, how individuals find the motivation for such protracted learning. Carol Dweck proposed that an incremental theory of an individual's abilities is an important factor in this process since it would account for the optimism…