Biases that Influence our Motivation and Ability
Posted February 12, 2015
By Stephanie Freis
I am a student. And like most students, I engage in a range of biases that impact my motivation and ability, interfering with my academic performance. However, I am also a social psychologist and believe that sharing knowledge about our biases can help fellow students improve and more efficiently reach their desired goals. Do any of these things sound familiar to you?
SOCIAL COMPARISONS
The root of many biases arises from the motivation to feel good about ourselves. While self-enhancing can have positive outcomes, such as a boost in confidence, it can also lead to problems including how we socially compare. Social comparisons can be functional. Let’s use an example: a student receives an 80% on her psychology exam. However, she doesn’t really know if 80% is good or bad until she finds out the class average. If 80% is the top grade in the class then she did quite well. So, social comparison helps this student understand her own performance.
Here’s the problem: who students compare to differs based on goals, and that’s where bias can come into play. What if that 80% turns out to be a middle-of-the-road score? In this case the student might look at all of her peers who earned higher grades and feel badly about herself. If her goal becomes feeling better about herself then she might be inclined to compare downward with an “at least I didn’t get a D” mentality. With this mindset you can miss the opportunity to learn from your experience and improve over the long-term.
THE FIX?
The fix-- which is easier said than done-- is to resist the urge to console yourself in the moment and instead compare to those who are similar or better-off. These better-off comparisons have the potential to be motivational and educational if you believe you can improve. Of course, those negative feelings of poor performance may still linger but they don’t need to overpower you.
You can protect yourself ahead of time through self-affirmation, by remembering the other things in life you value. In this way, you won’t feel as bad when you stumble and will be more likely to compare yourself to those who could inspire you to do better rather than those who simply make you feel better in the moment.
BETTER-THAN-AVERAGE EFFECT
At the end of the year Josie had to evaluate her peers with whom she completed a group project. Josie’s evaluation shows her performance was superior compared to the rest of the group. The problem? Each group member feels that their efforts were better than the efforts of their peers. This tendency to believe you are above average in intelligence and effort of a typical student is known as the better-than-average effect. Students often take more credit for the work they have done and the skill they possess than is actually true. While this self-serving bias can be beneficial and give you the motivation to attempt more challenging problems, it can also lead to disagreement and tension between the student and peers or the student and teacher.
THE FIX?
Stepping back and developing greater perspective can improve students’ judgments. Next time you’re studying for an exam or grading your group members, take a step back and think about your thinking. Use these questions, developed by Dr. Stephen Chew (http://www.samford.edu/how-to-study/), to help you:
1) Elaboration: How does this concept relate to other concepts?
2) Distinctiveness: How is this concept different from other concepts?
3) Personal: How can I relate this information to my personal experience?
4) Appropriate to Retrieval and Application: How am I expected to use or apply this concept?
Aside from these study strategies you can also ask yourself if you’ve overlooked your peers’ efforts. To improve group evaluations, try to see things from your group member’s perspective and think about what your group members are thinking. Engaging in metacognition will become more natural with time and can vastly help mitigate the biases we have which interfere with performance or judgments.
OK. These are just 2 of the most common biases that can give you problems. But awareness and the simple strategies above can help you manage them. Look for a follow up post in the coming weeks when I’ll discuss a couple more biases that students should be on guard against.
[Stephanie D. Freis is a Social Psychology PhD student at The Ohio State University. Her interests revolve around the self, social influence, and motivation. More specifically, she is interested in the psychological experience of entitlement at the intrapsychic and interpersonal levels, as well as individual differences among grandiose and vulnerable narcissists. After graduation she hopes to obtain a university faculty position so she may continue her passion in research and teaching.]
