The Influence Of Social Reference And Assessment Object On The Degree Of Accuracy Of Performance Assessment

People often need to evaluate the relative performance of themselves or others,and prior to performance assessment,they can obtain reference information from individuals or groups(i.e.,social comparison information)for social comparison.Previous research has not focused on how these social comparison information affects the accuracy of performance assessment.In this paper,a pre-experiment and two experiments were conducted to explore the effects of social reference and assessment objects on the accuracy of performance assessment.In the pre-experiment,material ratings were first completed.The dual-stroop task was found to have the advantage of well-distributed and reproducible task performance that is not influenced by knowledge experience.Preliminary findings from the pre-experiments indicated that people do not evaluate relative performance accurately,and in addition,there were better-than-average effect and DunningKrueger effect in performance assessment.Experiment 1 explored how social comparison information affects the accuracy of people’s self-assessment of performance by manipulating both personal reference and social reference.The experiment was a 2(social reference: objective feedback/subjective judgment)× 2(personal reference: objective feedback/metacognitive judgment)× 2(measurement time: pre-test/post-test)threefactor repeated measures experimental design,with the dependent variable indicator being relative performance assessment bias(|estimated percent rating-actual percent rating|).The experimental results indicated that the more accurate the social comparison information(personal reference or social reference),the more accurate the relative performance assessment.A mediated adjustment model further revealed that social referencing moderates the effect of absolute performance assessment bias(|estimated grade-actual grade|)on relative performance assessment bias.The degree of accuracy in assessing absolute performance positively predicted the degree of accuracy in assessing relative performance only when the social reference was an accurate feedback.In addition,accurate social referencing attenuated the better-thanaverage effect,which may account for the moderating effect of social referencing.Experiment 2 further explored the differences between self-and otherperformance assessments and the role of social referencing in this by manipulating social referencing and the assessment object.The experiment was a 2(social reference:objective feedback/subjective judgment)× 2(assessment object: self/others)twofactor mixed experimental design,and the results showed that people assessed others’ performance(either absolute or relative)more accurately.A mediated moderation model revealed that social referencing first influenced the accuracy of assessing absolute performance,and then moderated the effect of absolute performance assessment on relative performance assessment.In addition,accurate social referencing also attenuated the better-than-average effect of assessing the relative performance of others.In summary,the present study identified a complex effect of social comparison information on performance assessment.And assessing others’ performance was similar to assessing self-performance in that both showed better-than-average and Dunning-Krueger effects.Accurate social referencing not only improves people’s accuracy in assessing absolute performance,but also attenuates the better-thanaverage effect when assessing relative performance(self-performance assessment and others’ performance assessment),thus directly or indirectly improving people’s accuracy in assessing relative performance.