Implicit Theories Of Ability As A Moderator: The Effect Of Social Comparison And Temporal Comparison On People's Self-Evaluation

Self-evaluation is based on the information from a variety of ways. Comparison is considered to be the most common source of information. Comparison has both social and temporal components. The social component informs where one stands relative to others. Concurrently, the temporal component refers to whether behavioral outcomes are improving or declining over time. The former aspect is called social comparison, whereas the latter is a form of temporal comparison. Therefore, social comparison and temporal comparison play important roles in self-evaluation. Although past literatures emphasized the importance of social comparisons, and neglected the effects of temporal comparisons, Zell and Alicke (2009) found that social and temporal comparisons influence people's self-evaluations, independently.Some researchers have pointed out that people's implicit theories about human ability structure the way they understand and react to human actions and outcomes. Entity view of ability and incremental view of ability are two common perspectives of people's implicit theories of ability. Due to one's ability could be better or worse over time, in the present research, incremental view of ability is called variational view of ability. Variational theorists believe that attributes are more dynamic and malleable (variational view of ability), they tend to understand outcomes and actions in terms of more specific behavioral or psychological mediators. Before evaluating attributes, they need to know one's actions in different contexts. In contrast, entity theorists believe that abilities are fixed (entity view of ability). They focus less on broad traits, instead, they tend to understand outcomes and actions in terms of these fixed traits. Therefore, comparing with variational theorists, entity theorists may consider less temporal comparison information when self-evaluation. In the current research, we use implicit theories of ability to further explore, when social comparison and temporal comparison information are both provided, the effects of social and temporal comparison on people's self-evaluation.The previous researches suggested that preference for social or temporal comparison appeared to vary in different contexts. Suls and Mullen (1984; Suls,1986) suggested that social comparison was much more prevalent than temporal comparison throughout most of the lifespan. Although the proportion of temporal comparisons increased with age, people still reported more social comparison at every age. But other researchers found that people preferred to temporal comparisons. Wayment and Taylor (1995) noted that undergraduate students used temporal standards more frequently than either objective or social comparison information when assessing their academic standing and social life. We think that people with different implicit theories of ability require different quantity of information when self-evaluation. For entity theorists, ability is fixed, and impossible change in accordance with the behavioral feedback. However, for variational theorists, ability is developable. They need more comparison information to understand their behavior in different time and different situation to evaluate their ability and attribute. Therefore, in the present article, we try to use implicit theories of ability to explain the inconsistent result.When it is difficult to recall the quality of the past self, clearly, or difficult to accept the past, people usually use development theory to judge their past. The promotion of conclusions from recall method is limited. Therefore, the present article introduced longitude research. The first study used longitude research in the lab. The result of experiment 1 a was that:for variational theorists, social and temporal comparison influenced on their self-evaluation, together. In the upward social comparison condition, participants evaluated themselves more favorably when their performance was getting better. Similarly, in the upward temporal comparison condition, participants were evaluated more positively when they consistently performed above average. Experiment 1 b showed: for entity theorists, only social comparison has effect on their self-evaluation.The present article involved the time variable. In order to verify the ecological validity of the first research, the second study changed to using longitude research in the natural environment. Experiment 2a also found that:for variational theorists, social and temporal comparison influenced on their self-evaluation, together. In each social comparison condition, participants' self-evaluation was significant higher when their performance was getting better. In each temporal comparison condition, participants' self-evaluation was significant higher when they consistently performed above average. Experiment 2b indicated that:for entity theorists, only social comparison has a significant impact on their self-evaluations.The third research added the preference task, using explicit measure and implicit measure, to investigate entity theorists and variational theorists' preference, when they received the two comparison information at the same time. In the experiment 3a, for variational theorists, explicit measure provided evidence that participants preferred to temporal comparison information, and the result of implicit measure showed that the accuracy of temporal comparison information was significant higher, but the reaction time did not have any significant difference. In the experiment 3b, for entity theorists, explicit measure suggested that participants tended to temporal comparison information, also. However, implicit measure found that the accuracy and reaction time of comparison information have no significant difference. The three studies indicated that:(1)Social comparison and temporal comparison both had effect on variational theorists' self-evaluation. Only social comparison had an influence on entity theorists' self-evaluation. (2)For entity theorists and variational theorists, people evaluated themselves more favorably, both in the downward social and temporal comparison condition. (3)Variational theorists preferd to temporal comparison information.