Abstract
Absolute standing feedback has shown greater psychological impact than relative standing feedback. The purpose of this experiment was to examine whether the superior impact of absolute feedback depends on the reward criterion. Participants completed a math test and were randomly assigned to one of the eight conditions in a 2 (reward criterion: absolute vs. relative) × 2 (absolute feedback: high vs. low) × 2 (relative feedback: high vs. low) between-subjects design. The results showed that, regardless of the reward criterion, absolute feedback consistently impacted satisfaction with performance, positive affect, negative affect, and sense of belongingness in math. In contrast, relative feedback only affected satisfaction with performance and sense of belongingness, with smaller effect sizes. Moreover, the effect of relative feedback on satisfaction depended on the reward criterion: Only in the relative (but not absolute) criterion condition, relative feedback impacted satisfaction. These findings were observed after controlling for actual performance and social comparison orientation. In all, the study extends past research and demonstrates that absolute (vs. relative) standing feedback is more impactful regardless of the reward criterion.
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Notes
The term “ACT” stood for “American College Testing”—a standardized test used for college admissions in the United States, but since 1996 the test has been simply called the ACT. Please see https://www.dictionary.com/e/act-test-sat-test/.
To reduce the chance that participants would simply apply the scores they received (6 or 2 out of 8) to predict future performance, they were given a different scale (0–10) for making predictions. Based on the data, participants adjusted from the feedback they received to infer future performance. Those who learned that they got 6 (vs. 2) questions correct out of 8 predicted an average score of 6.63 (vs. 4.17) out of 10 on a future test. Those who learned that they outperformed 70% (vs. 30%) of the other testers predicted an average percentile rank of 65.24% (vs. 43.09%) on a future test.
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Zhao, Q. The superior psychological impact of absolute (vs. relative) standing feedback does not depend on the reward criterion. Soc Psychol Educ 26, 473–484 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-023-09758-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-023-09758-2