Concepções Pessoais de Inteligência e Auto-Estima: Que Diferenças entre Estudantes Portugueses e Italianos?

Abstract

This article presents some results of an intercultural study on personal conceptions of intelligence and global self-esteem, comparing students from two levels of education (secondary and university) from Portugal and Italy. The total sample includes 1540 students, 811 Italians and 729 Portuguese, from both sexes and from different socio-economic statuses (SES), of the 10th and 12th secondary grades and of the first grade of several university courses in both countries. The instruments used included The Personal Conceptions of Intelligence Scale (Faria, 2003), with 26 items, and The Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale (Rosenberg, 1965), with 10 items, both translated and adapted to Portuguese and Italian versions. The main results evidenced the existence of signi ficant interaction effects between the level of education and the cultural context for both constructs, showing also that Italian secondary students had less static conceptions of intelligence, while the Portuguese university students presented the highest levels of global self-esteem of all. Other significant interactions for global self-esteem evidenced that both higher SES Portuguese students, and higher and middle SES males presented higher levels of global self-esteem.