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The Effects of Social-Comparison Versus Mastery Praise on Children’s Intrinsic Motivation

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Abstract

Two studies examined the effects of social-comparison versus mastery praise on 4th- and 5th-grade children’s intrinsic motivation. Children received a high score and either social-comparison praise, mastery praise, or no praise for working on a set of novel puzzles. They then worked on a different task and were given either ambiguous feedback (Study 1) or positive feedback (Study 2) before completing measures of intrinsic motivation. Mastery praise enhanced intrinsic motivation and social-comparison praise curtailed it when uncertainty about children’s subsequent performance was introduced (Study 1) and, for girls, even in situations of continued success (Study 2). Social-comparison praise also tended to discourage children from seeking subsequent self-evaluative normative information. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

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Notes

  1. For this and subsequent analyses, one data point is occasionally missing because of experimenter error or children’s off-task behavior.

  2. That the feedback manipulations did not affect these task-specific variables may be due, in part, to our use of single-item measures of unknown reliability and validity.

  3. With the 14 children removed from the dataset (n SC = 3, n M = 6, n C = 5), the main effect of condition on self-reported intrinsic motivation was significant, F(2, 69) = 3.90, p < .05, η p 2 = .10. Children in the social-comparison condition (M = 3.42, SD = .51) reported less intrinsic motivation than those in the mastery praise (M = 3.85, SD = .58) or control (M = 3.60, SD = .60) conditions. Similarly, the main effect of condition on the behavioral measure of intrinsic motivation was significant, χ2 (2, N = 72) = 7.70, p < .05. More children in the mastery praise condition (62%) selected the whole sheet of lines than those in the control (26%) or social-comparison praise (30%) conditions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Reed College, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd., Portland, OR, 97202, USA

    Jennifer Henderlong Corpus & Kelly E. Love-Geiger

  2. Department of Psychology, University of California, Davis, CA, USA

    Christin M. Ogle

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  1. Jennifer Henderlong Corpus
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  2. Christin M. Ogle
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  3. Kelly E. Love-Geiger
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Correspondence to Jennifer Henderlong Corpus.

Additional information

Funding for this research was provided by the office of the Dean of Faculty at Reed College. We would like to thank Tracy Tomlinson, Penelope Stanton, and Annie Block for their assistance with data collection and Kathy Oleson for feedback on a previous draft of this article. We are grateful to the Portland Public Schools’ Research and Evaluation Department for their support and, of course, to the children who participated in this research.

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Corpus, J.H., Ogle, C.M. & Love-Geiger, K.E. The Effects of Social-Comparison Versus Mastery Praise on Children’s Intrinsic Motivation. Motiv Emot 30, 333–343 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11031-006-9039-4

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