Abstract
To confront challenges actively is a very important attitude for students in Taiwan who tend to avoid challenges. To advance the understanding of the root causes and to help students confront challenges, we examined the negative relationship and mechanism between the fear of being laughed at (gelotophobia) and challenge-confronting tendencies. We also explored whether the incremental view of ability held by students would help them confront challenges and buffer the negative effect. The results of this study with 308 junior high school students were: (1) The fear of being laughed at actually exerted negative influences on all the three dimensions of the challenge-confronting tendencies, which included value belief, general accepting and seeking tendency, and public accepting tendency. (2) Fear of failure partially mediated the negative effect of gelotophobia on the public accepting tendency dimension, but did not show mediating effects in the other two dimensions. (3) Incremental view of ability increased students' challenge-confronting tendencies in all the three dimensions. (4) Relative to entity view of ability, incremental view of ability did not buffer the negative effect of gelotophobia on challenge-confronting tendencies, but instead intensified the negative effect.