Social comparisons in the classroom: An investigation of the better than average effect among secondary school children

Abstract

The better than average (BTA) effect refers to the tendency for the majority of people to rate themselves as being higher on positive attributes and lower on negative attributes than other people. The present study examined the occurrence of the BTA effect on five important characteristics among 15,806 first-year secondary school Dutch students. In addition, it explored the influence of students' gender, cultural background, and ability level on their evaluations of characteristics relative to their classmates. Results yielded small BTA effects, with the exception of the item “being eager to get high grades,” on which the effect was much larger. In addition, larger BTA effects were found among boys than girls, but this difference could not be attributed to actual differences in performance. Likewise, larger BTA effects were found among ethnic minority students from Turkish and Moroccan backgrounds than ethnic majority students, but this difference also could not be attributed to actual differences in performance. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Introduction

It has long been observed that students, both those with and without learning difficulties, often hold unrealistic images of themselves, overestimating their mental and scholastic abilities (Schutte, 1929, Stone and May, 2002, Wylie and Hutchins, 1967). An overly positive picture of their abilities may lead students to believe that they do not have to put forth much effort to succeed in school and may discourage them from completing their homework or preparing well for exams. In the social psychological literature, this type of overestimation or bias is often captured in terms of the better than average (BTA) effect. The BTA effect refers to the tendency for the majority of people to rate themselves as being higher on positive attributes and lower on negative attributes than the average or generalized other (e.g., other college students; Silvera and Seger, 2004, Suls et al., 2002). That is, correctly or not, individuals believe that they possess more positive attributes and less negative ones than others. Most people, for instance, think they are more sensitive (Dunning, Meyerowitz, & Holzberg, 1989) and altruistic (Epley & Dunning, 2000) than others. It must be noted that, from the individual's point of view, the perception of being better may be completely correct. It is possible that, for instance, one is a better driver than others. However, except for attributes for which the distribution in the population is very skewed, it is not possible for the majority of people to be above average (Dunning, Heath, & Suls, 2004). Therefore, on a group level, this perception has been called an illusion (Suls et al., 2002). In contrast, individual evaluations of abilities or attributes relative to others are called comparative evaluations. Whether or not these evaluations are biased in nature can only be determined by relating them to factual data that serve as a “reality benchmark”.

Both motivational and amotivational theories have been proposed to account for the BTA effect. For instance, from the perspective of motivational theories, it has been argued that people believe in their own superiority because positive illusions help them persist in the face of life's many frustrations, and, as a result, may promote mental health (Taylor & Brown, 1988). In contrast, from the perspective of amotivational theories, people who are unskilled in a particular domain simply lack the meta-cognitive competence to make correct evaluations of themselves relative to others (Kruger & Dunning, 1999, see Chambers and Windschitl, 2004, Moore and Small, 2007 for reviews).

Although BTA effects are almost exclusively recognized and studied in the social psychological literature, BTA effects are relevant phenomena for school psychologists, too. An important reason is that individuals' comparative evaluations of their abilities have been found to be related to their performance level. For instance, Blanton, Buunk, Gibbons, and Kuyper (1999) found students' comparative evaluations in seven courses to be predictive of their academic achievements in these courses 3 months later. As students viewed themselves as better than other students in their class, their achievements improved. Students who hold high comparative evaluations may create a self-fulfilling prophecy; because they view themselves as more capable than others, they are likely to approach tasks with a sense of self-efficacy and high performance expectations, increasing their chances of academic success (Blanton et al., 1999). In this context, it is important to note that Blanton et al. (1999) did not report differences between boys and girls, nor did they examine the potential influence of students' ethnic background. As we will discuss later on in more detail, in our opinion, these two variables—gender and culture—are important in understanding the BTA effects.

Another reason to study comparative evaluations is that they are essential to the understanding of the big-fish–little-pond effect (BFLPE; Marsh, 1987; see Marsh et al., 2008 for a recent review), a phenomenon that, in educational research, has received considerable attention. The BFLPE refers to the phenomenon that equally able students have lower academic self-concepts in schools or classes where the average achievement level is high than in schools or classes where the average achievement level is low. Recently, Huguet et al. (2009) found that the BFLPE was eliminated after controlling for students' perceived standing relative to most of their classmates, showing that comparative evaluations form the roots of the BFLPE. Learning more about students' comparative evaluations therefore seems important in the light of the BFLPE.

The present study set out to examine BTA effects among secondary school students, which have only scarcely been examined during this educational period. Studying BTA effects among secondary school students may generate new and exciting insights in students' learning process, classroom processes, and educational attainments.

In examining biases in comparative evaluations, the present study explored the effect of gender, ethnic background, and ability level on BTA effects.

To date, evidence for gender differences in self-evaluative biases, and more specifically in BTA effects, is lacking, especially among school children (Alicke & Govorun, 2005). Only two studies among children and adolescents have reported a gender difference in comparative evaluations. In studying the uniqueness bias—a phenomenon related to the BTA effect that refers to individuals' tendency to underestimate the proportion of people who will perform socially desirable actions or who possess socially desirable traits—Goethals, Messick, and Allison (1991) reported that whereas boys differentiated themselves more positively from their peers in the athletic, intellectual, and creative domain than girls, girls did so more than boys with regard to moral behaviors. Kuyper and Dijkstra (2009) reported that boys, more than girls, evaluated themselves above average at Geography, Physical Education, History, and Mathematics, and that girls, more than boys, evaluated themselves as above average at French. These authors also found gender differences for comparative evaluations on a number of activities like watching television, reading, collecting, and tinkering.

Studies reporting gender differences in self-evaluative biases among adults are scarce as well. Only a recent study of Harré, Foster, and O'Neill (2005) found that men, much more than women, think they are better-than-average drivers. In addition, a study of Furnham and Dowsett (1993) showed a larger uniqueness bias on physical attributes and socially desirable personality characteristics among college men than among college women.

Despite these few reports, there are strong indications that the genders, regardless of age, differ in their comparative evaluations. In general, there is evidence that males, more than females, tend to overestimate themselves (Goethals et al., 1991). Whereas males tend to overestimate their performance, females tend to underestimate it, especially on tasks that are perceived as masculine (Beyer, 1990, Pallier, 2003). An evolutionary psychological explanation for males' relative overconfidence in many fields is that for males overconfidence contributes more to their survival and reproduction than for females. More specifically, overconfidence may encourage males to engage in relatively risk-taking activities, such as high-speed driving that may act as real or symbolic dominance contests among males in the competition for partners (Daly and Wilson, 1988, Weiss et al., 2003). A social–cultural explanation is that, in our society, females are socialized to be modest, whereas males are taught to be confident, especially with regard to academic achievements (e.g., Gould & Slone, 1982). Factors within the school environment, particularly during the middle school and high school years, such as the belief that males are better in mathematics than females, may further amplify those social–cultural messages and lead to higher BTA effects among males than among females (Bornholt & Möller, 2003). Thus, for these reasons, we expected to find higher BTA effects among boys than among girls (Hypothesis 1).

Research on the relations between cultural background and BTA effects is also scarce. In a review of the literature on BTA effects in Western and Eastern cultures, including five research articles, Sedikides, Gaertner, and Vevea (2005) found, across age groups, that whereas Westerners perceived themselves to be better than average on attributes relevant to the cultural ideal of individualism, such as independence and attractiveness, Easterners did so on attributes relevant to the cultural ideal of collectivism, such as cooperation and consideration. In addition, some studies have shown that, in Denmark and Norway, BTA effects are much smaller than in the US, regardless of the level of desirability of the trait or behavior (Silvera and Seger, 2004, Thomsen et al., 2007). This cultural difference in BTA effects has been attributed to Scandinavian countries' relatively strong emphasis on equality. For instance, in Nordic countries, the Jante law, which is composed of 10 rules, encourages individuals not to put themselves above the community (Silvera and Seger, 2004, Thomsen et al., 2007). For example, one rule is: “Don't think you are anything special” (Sandemose, 2005). The Jante law places all emphasis on humbleness, punishing those who stand out as achievers. Although the Jante law was first identified in 1933 as part of the Norwegian and Danish culture—by author Aksel Sandemose in his novel A Fugitive Crosses His Tracks—people in the Netherlands, where the present study was conducted, have highly similar values.

The Netherlands is a multicultural society; of its 16.4 million inhabitants, almost one fifth is of foreign origin (i.e., first, second, or third generation immigrants). Most immigrants in The Netherlands come from the former Dutch colonies Netherlands Antilles, Surinam, and Indonesia or are of Turkish or Moroccan origin (Statistics Netherlands, 2007). One of the aims of the present study was to explore the relations between these different cultural backgrounds of secondary school students and their comparative evaluations. To date, previous studies examined only cultural differences in BTA effects between countries, not within, a void the present study aimed to fill. In addition, to date, BTA effects have not been examined among people from Arab cultures. In contrast to Dutch people, people from Arabic cultures attach less value to modesty and more to honor and making positive impressions on others (e.g., Hofstede and McCrae, 2004, Vandello and Cohen, 2003). As a consequence, it seems likely that, in these cultures, making more positive comparative evaluations is more common and accepted. For this reason, we expected to find larger BTA effects among students from an ethnic Arab background than among Dutch students (Hypothesis 2).

The present study also explored the relations between comparative evaluations and students' ability level. Previous research on this issue has examined the issue of who tends to bias their abilities more: students with high abilities or those with low abilities? In which of these groups are BTA effects larger? These studies, however, have yielded contradictory findings. For instance, across four studies, Kruger and Dunning (1999) found that participants of the lowest ability levels accounted for the bulk of the above-average effects observed. In contrast, Krueger and Mueller (2002) found high rather than low performers to be more error prone in their comparative evaluations. More than low performers, high performers neglected their own estimates of the performance of others when predicting how they themselves performed relative to the group (see also Burson, Larrick, & Klayman, 2006). The present study aimed to contribute to the literature by studying this issue among secondary school students. The structure of Dutch secondary education is such that there are large ability differences between the various class types, making it possible to study this interesting issue. Because of previous studies' contradictory findings, we felt that the two options revealed by those previous studies (i.e., high-ability students show larger BTA effects than low ability students or vice versa) were both likely outcomes. We, therefore, did not formulate an explicit hypothesis on this issue but examined the relation between ability and BTA effects in an exploratory manner.

Our study is unique for several reasons. First, whereas the majority of research on BTA effects has been conducted in laboratory settings, the present study was conducted in the classroom setting. Naturalistic settings, such as school classes, are an attractive alternative to laboratory research. Classrooms provide an extensive source of social comparisons. Because of the reward system based on academic performance, perceived teacher concern with achievement and parental pressure to perform well, the typical classroom has a strongly evaluative atmosphere that evokes a strong interest in social comparison (e.g., Levine, 1983, Pepitone, 1972). One can even say that it is hard not to compare oneself with others in a classroom; students are constantly confronted with peers who provide social comparison information about, for instance, grades, physical appearance, or performance in sports (Buunk et al., 2005, Levine, 1983). In addition, classroom settings may offer additional possibilities for hypothesizing and analyzing (Blanton et al., 1999, Huguet et al., 2001, Huguet et al., 2009). For instance, the classroom setting makes it possible to relate students' comparative evaluations to their past, concurrent, and future academic achievements, making it possible to investigate the accuracy of comparative evaluations (Blanton et al., 1999) and to shed more light on why some students fail whereas others succeed.

Second, whereas most studies on BTA effects have been conducted among college students, only very few have examined BTA effects among secondary school students. Because the college setting differs a great deal from the typical primary and secondary school settings with regard to the social comparison processes that take place, BTA effects found among college students may not be reliably generalized to secondary school students. An important difference between college and secondary school is the structure of the classroom. In Dutch secondary education, a classroom consists of a stable group of usually no more than 30 students. These students spend a large part of the school year together and follow many or all of the courses together. Although some students may have to repeat a class or leave school, these groups are relatively stable; students are often classmates for years and often graduate together. In contrast, in college, students usually follow courses in much larger and more temporary groups. Courses are taught in semesters, trimesters or may even last for only 6 weeks, after which students may come to share courses with a completely new group of students. In this way, they frequently obtain a new reference group. Their more variable and often larger reference groups may affect the social comparisons students make, and, consequently, may produce different comparative evaluations. A second important difference between the college and classroom context is the feedback structure. In school classes, grades are sometimes read aloud by the teacher, whereas grades at college are typically private. These mechanisms make the relative ability positions in school classes much more transparent than in the college context.

To date, only a few studies have examined comparative evaluations among young students. Hoorens (1995) found that secondary school students believed they possessed more favourable personality characteristics, such as “spontaneous” and “attentive”, and less negative ones, such as “lazy” and “cruel”, than the average student that attended their high school. Studies that have examined comparative evaluations of abilities have come up with mixed and weak findings. In examining social comparisons in seven courses, Blanton et al. (1999), for instance, found small BTA effects for Biology and Math, indicating that Dutch school children perceived themselves to be better at Biology and Math than most of their classmates. In an attempt to replicate Blanton et al.'s (1999) findings among French school children, Huguet et al. (2001) found BTA effects for Drawing and Technology, but not for Biology, French, English, History/Geography, and Math, indicating that French school children thought they were better at only drawing and technology than most of their classmates. Finally, in their chapter on uniqueness biases, Goethals et al. (1991) briefly described two of their studies that found second, fourth, sixth, and eleventh graders positively bias their characteristics and abilities relative to others in the domains of morality, intelligence, and athletics. Depending on the social comparison domain, the Goethals et al. results indicated that students thought that 13% to 39% of their peers were less able than themselves to perform specific, desirable behaviors or to perform well in certain subjects. In sum, only a few studies have examined the occurrence of BTA effects on characteristics or abilities among secondary school students, reporting inconsistent findings. For instance, whereas Blanton et al. (1999) found school children to perceive themselves to be better at Biology and Math but worse at Dutch than most of their classmates, Huguet et al. (2001) only found BTA effects for only Drawing and Technology. In the light of these scarce and inconsistent findings, studying the occurrence of BTA effects among secondary school students is interesting and may result in new findings and promising insights.

In order to establish the extent to which comparative evaluations are illusionary in nature (i.e., contain a more positive judgment than permitted by actual abilities), Kuyper and Dijkstra (2009) argued that research should relate comparative evaluations to objective ability-related information, such as grades, that may serve as a reality benchmark. Having a reality benchmark is also important when studying cultural and gender differences in comparative evaluations. That is, when one finds students of different genders or cultural backgrounds to report different comparative evaluations, one cannot automatically conclude that these students differently bias their characteristics or abilities. It is also possible that differences in comparative evaluations reflect actual differences in the dimension under study. For instance, the possible finding that boys, more than girls, think they are better than average in physical education may be explained by the possibility that boys are simply more athletic. In sum, a third reason why the present study is unique is that it incorporated students' grades and scores on a general achievement test, making it possible to compare comparative evaluations with a reality benchmark and to more correctly interpret differences between students of different genders and cultures.

Finally, the classroom setting makes it possible to investigate context effects. A context effect occurs, for instance, when the average intelligence of students in the classroom adds to the prediction of scores on an achievement test, after controlling for individual intelligence. To our knowledge, to date, context effects have not been studied in BTA research. As a result, it was not possible to derive specific hypotheses from the literature. We therefore chose to investigate context effects exploratively. The design of the study enabled us to explore the effects of gender, culture, and ability level at an aggregate level.

The present study was conducted among students in their first year of secondary education, which is comparable with grade 7 of junior high school. Children enter Dutch secondary education usually at age 12 after 8 years of primary school. In February of the final primary school year, all pupils take a progress or aptitude test. At the end of that school year, a recommendation is given to all pupils, regarding the most appropriate level of secondary education. Basically, there are five levels (tracks), which we will denote as A, B, C, D, and E. Many secondary schools offer all five tracks, but there are also schools that offer, for instance, only the lowest two tracks, only the highest two tracks, or only exclusively the highest track. Track A (pre-university education) is the highest level and normally takes 6 years. Track B (senior general secondary education) normally takes 5 years, whereas the other three tracks take 4 years. Track E (individualized pre-vocational education) is the lowest level. Due to non-promotion from one school year to the next, the actual course duration may take longer. Secondary schools use the recommendations and test scores in their decision to admit students and to assign them to a particular class type in the first year. These class types represent the five tracks or are a combination of two or even three tracks. Classes are stable during the whole year, with some minor exceptions (e.g., students being placed in a lower or higher class type, if it is evident that they perform far below or far above the level of their initial class). All students in a class follow the same courses. Table 1 shows how the present study's participants were divided over the class types.

The first year of secondary education is particularly interesting from the perspective of social comparison theory. As pointed out by Blanton et al. (1999), especially during the transition year from elementary to secondary school social comparison information becomes an important means of self-evaluation. Following a school transition, students usually re-evaluate their scholastic competence, given their new social comparison group and the new curriculum. For instance, this would typically be the student's first exposure to French and college-preparatory Math. In addition, the shift from elementary to high school is usually associated with an increase in whole class task organization, between-classroom ability grouping, and an—at least in the Netherlands—external emphasis on academic performance. These practices have been found to increase the salience of social comparison information (e.g., Feldlaufer et al., 1988, Harter et al., 1992). Therefore, this school year is an especially interesting one for the study of comparative evaluations.