PMID: 9440216Jan 24, 1998Paper

Social comparison and task prediction: ability similarity and the use of a proxy

The British Journal of Social Psychology
W P Smith, P R Sachs

Abstract

It is argued that an important aspect of the self-appraisal of ability involves a person's prediction of his or her own performance level on untried tasks through acquisition of knowledge about how other people have fared at the task. These others are treated as substitutes for a person's own participation in the task--as proxies. It is further argued that social comparison plays a significant role in both the selection of proxies and the impact of proxy information on task prediction. The first experiment, following earlier research on comparison preference in the context of performance prediction, showed that participants interested in performance prediction chose a proxy who had performed at about the same level as they had on a reference task, while those interested in improving their performances chose to see the performances of someone who had done far better than they on the reference task. The second study indicated that participants made more confident predictions for themselves from a similar proxy's task outcome than from that of a proxy whose ability was unknown to them. Participants predicted they would do worse than a more able proxy and better than a less able proxy, but were less confident in their predictions t...Continue Reading

Citations

May 11, 2002·Journal of Personality and Social Psychology·René MartinLadd Wheeler
Jan 1, 1997·Personality and Social Psychology Review : an Official Journal of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc·L WheelerJ Suls

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