Testing the Dimensional Comparison Theory: When Do Students Prefer Dimensional Comparisons to Social and Temporal Comparisons?

Autor/inn/en	Wolff, Fabian; Helm, Friederike; Möller, Jens
Titel	Testing the Dimensional Comparison Theory: When Do Students Prefer Dimensional Comparisons to Social and Temporal Comparisons?
Quelle	In: Social Psychology of Education: An International Journal, 21 (2018) 4, S. 875-895Infoseite zur Zeitschrift PDF als Volltext Link als defekt meldenVerfügbarkeit
Zusatzinformation	ORCID (Wolff, Fabian)
Sprache	englisch
Dokumenttyp	gedruckt; online; Zeitschriftenaufsatz
ISSN	1381-2890
DOI	10.1007/s11218-018-9441-2
Schlagwörter	Forschungsbericht; Comparative Analysis; High School Students; Foreign Countries; Testing; Incidence; Student Motivation; Academic Achievement; Germany + Suchen Sie Ihr Suchwort? High school; High schools; Student; Students; Oberschule; Schüler; Schülerin; Studentin; Ausland; Testdurchführung; Testen; Vorkommen; Schulische Motivation; Schulleistung; Deutschland
Abstract	Students compare their achievement in a subject with their classmates' achievements (social comparison), their own prior achievements (temporal comparison), and their achievements in other subjects (dimensional comparison), which can each be better (upward comparison), equal (lateral comparison), or worse (downward comparison). Prior research has investigated the impact of different comparison motivations on the prevalence of social and temporal comparisons, but no study has examined the same for dimensional comparisons yet. The present study closes this gap: A total of 605 German high school students were presented with four situations, in which a fictitious student receives the same objective feedback for an exam in a certain subject, but is motivated either to evaluate, to enhance, to improve, or to differentiate himself. For each comparison motivation, the participants judged how likely the fictitious student was to draw dimensional, social, and temporal upward, lateral, and downward comparisons. As a central result, dimensional comparisons in all directions had the highest prevalences under the self-differentiation motivation. In contrast, the prevalences of dimensional comparisons were relatively low under the other three motivations. This finding complements the recently developed dimensional comparison theory. For the first time, we could empirically show that dimensional comparisons primarily serve self-differentiation motivations. (As Provided).
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Begutachtung	Peer reviewed
Erfasst von	ERIC (Education Resources Information Center), Washington, DC
Update	2020/1/01