Prior Performance as a Source of Ability Expectancies in Social Comparison with a Self-Rewarding Model

Abstract

The concern of this research is the social influence of observation of other's performance and the modelled self-reward standards on a child's own self-reward standards. It has been noted in previous research that children will set their performance standards by imitating other's self-reward standards of performance. Children that are similar in ability are seen as appropriate achievement models while children that are either superior or inferior in ability cause the observing child to scale his/her standards down or up respectively. The proposed experiment examined the effect of changing performance on children's self-reward standards by using both prior performance and current performance for comparison. The model either performed at a consistent level or an inconsistent level to his/her previous performance. A significant interaction was found between sex and Phase II. Although this was not a predicted result, it has been suggested that this could be the effect of self-confidence levels (Maccoby & Jacklin, 1975). It was also concluded that to better understand these results more research needs to be conducted in the field of social comparison and self-reward.