The malleability of thinking styles over one year

Abstract

Whether or not styles are malleable is one of the major controversial issues in the field of intellectual styles. Taking thinking styles (one of the intellectual style constructs) as the theoretical basis, the present study aimed at clarifying the issue by examining the change of thinking styles over one year from multiple perspectives. Seven hundred and forty-three university students completed the same questionnaire assessing demographic factors and thinking styles twice with a one-year interval. Results revealed different levels of change and stability in thinking styles in terms of mean-level change, rank-order consistency, individual stability, and ipsative consistency. Research findings indicated that thinking styles are stable state, but still changeable. Implications of the research findings are discussed.

Highlights

• Thinking styles had significant mean-level changes.

• Thinking styles had strong rank-order consistency.

• Albeit with small portions, real changes at the individual level did occur.

• Thinking styles showed remarkable profile consistency.

• Thinking styles are stable states, not fixed characteristics.

Keywords:

• Thinking styles
• intellectual styles
• malleability
• change
• longitudinal

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Shanghai Pujiang Programme [Grant No. 15PJC025] and the Humanities and Social Sciences Research Project of the Chinese Ministry of Education [18YJCZH027].