Manipulate self-efficacy by combining social-comparative feedback with information about the malleability of the ability¶

Strategy · All strategies
Evidence · 6 claims (6 for) · 2 studies (2 causal), q3 · 2 of 2 report an effect size · 6 claims rest on one study

Description¶

A two-fold self-efficacy induction procedure: participants receive bogus normative feedback about their performance percentile relative to peers, plus a fictional scientific narrative stating that the ability required for the task is either entirely malleable with practice or fixed. The article reports that "both positive socio-comparative feedback and perceived malleability of a task has been shown to enhance while negative socio-comparative feedback or perceived non-malleability of a task has been shown to decrease self-efficacy beliefs", and the two are combined to maximise belief change in either direction.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Feedback must be delivered privately after a performance block, framed as a percentile comparison against a described peer sample, and paired with a consistent conception-of-ability message.

Constraints¶

• The feedback is deceptive; the article excluded all seven participants who reported concern about the accuracy of the feedback after debriefing interviews.

Target Learners¶

• adult learners in experimental or training settings

Target Learning Goals¶

• raising or lowering learners' self-efficacy beliefs about their task ability

Claims¶

• Fake social-comparative feedback combined with fictional malleability information successfully induces large changes in self-efficacy beliefs [+W]
• Participants induced to hold high self-efficacy show greater improvement in visual discrimination sensitivity than participants induced to hold low self-efficacy [+W]
• Changes in self-efficacy correlate with changes in visual discrimination sensitivity after regressing out objective ability and baseline self-efficacy [+W]
• The false feedback manipulation successfully altered performance beliefs: the high-PFB group rated their performance higher relative to age peers than the low-PFB group [+W]
• High-performance feedback increases performance expectations more than low-performance feedback, with additive effects of age and control beliefs [+W]
• High-performance feedback increases self-efficacy more than low-performance feedback, with comparable effects across younger and older adults [+W]

Related Strategies¶

• Communicating Positive Expectations

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Zacharopoulos G, Binetti N, Walsh V, Kanai R (2014) The Effect of Self-Efficacy on Visual Discrimination Sensitivity. PLoS ONE 9(10): e109392. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0109392