Motivation Science, Vol 11(4), Dec 2025, 439-452; doi:10.1037/mot0000400
Field-specific ability beliefs (FABs) are the beliefs that certain fields require brilliance to succeed. In the education setting, students usually experience and learn about such beliefs from people within specific fields, such as instructors and peers. A recent correlational study found that when students perceive instructors to have high FABs, they anticipate worse psychological experiences and lower motivation in those instructors’ fields. However, no experimental studies have examined whether students’ perceptions of instructors’ and peers’ FABs influence their motivational, psychological, and behavioral outcomes. The present study investigated this research inquiry through a 2 × 2 experimental design. We found that students in the high perceived instructor FAB condition anticipated lower self-efficacy, higher emotional cost, lower sense of belonging, higher imposter feelings, fewer mastery-approach goals, and higher academic procrastination compared to the low perceived instructor FAB condition. Students in the high perceived peer FAB condition anticipated lower self-efficacy, higher emotional cost, lower sense of belonging, higher imposter feelings, lower effort regulation, and more academic procrastination compared to the low perceived peer FAB condition. Additionally, interaction effects were found between perceived instructor and peer FABs on students’ motivation, such that instructor FABs did not affect self-efficacy in the context of high peer FABs, and instructor FABs were more impactful in terms of emotional cost. These findings provide experimental evidence that perceived instructors’ and peers’ FABs can impact students’ outcomes and encourage the design of belief interventions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved)