Abstract: Are personality, intelligence and other personal attributes inherited and unchangeable?Or, are they greatly influenced by the environment and are changeable?Students' subjective belief will directly affect their learning and self perfecting behaviour Its influence depends on how universal this belief is For example, some students believe that intelligence is inherited from parents and is difficult to be changed Will these students also believe that personality, morality, etc are also inherited and are difficult to be changed? The present study attempts to understand whether there is a general belief that governs students′view of the changeability of intelligence, personality and other personal attributes The subjects in the research consisted of 555 Junior Secondary 1 students in Chang Chun Comparisons of a number of competitive models using structural equation modeling on the survey data were conducted Results tended to support a common and general students′ implicit theory across personality, intelligence and other personal attributes

Key words: motivation, implicit theory, higher order factor, personal attribute, structural equation modeling