Psychological Comparison Processes and Self-Concept in Relation to Five Distinct Frame-of-Reference Effects: Pan-Human Cross-Cultural Generalizability over 68 Countries

The concept of self is central to personhood, but personality research has largely ignored the relevance of recent advances in self-concept theory: multidimensionality of self-concept (focusing instead on self-esteem, an implicit unidimensional approach), domain specificity (generalizability of trait manifestations over different domains), and multilevel perspectives in which social-cognitive processes and contextual effects drive self-perceptions at different levels (individual, group/institution, and country) aligned to Bronfenbrenner's ecological model. Here, we provide theoretical and empirical support for psychological comparison processes that influence self-perceptions and their relation to distal outcomes. Our meta-theoretical integration of social and dimensional comparison theories synthesizes five seemingly paradoxical frame-of-reference and contextual effects in self-concept formation that occur at different levels. The effects were tested with a sample of 485,490 fifteen-year-old students (68 countries/regions, 18,292 schools). Consistent with the dimensional comparison theory, the effects on math self-concept were positive for math achievement but negative for verbal achievement. Consistent with the social comparison theory, the effects on math self-concept were negative for school-average math achievement (big-fish-little-pond effect), country-average achievement (paradoxical cross-cultural effect), and being young relative to year in school but positive for school-average verbal achievement (big-fish-little-pond effect—compensatory effect). We demonstrate cross-cultural generalizability/universality of support for predictions and discuss implications for personality research. © 2020 European Association of Personality Psychology     

Bayesian evaluation of informative hypotheses for multiple populations

The software package Bain can be used for the evaluation of informative hypotheses with respect to the parameters of a wide range of statistical models. For pairs of hypotheses the support in the data is quantified using the approximate adjusted fractional Bayes factor (BF). Currently, the data have to come from one population or have to consist of samples of equal size obtained from multiple populations. If samples of unequal size are obtained from multiple populations, the BF can be shown to be inconsistent. This paper examines how the approach implemented in Bain can be generalized such that multiple-population data can properly be processed. The resulting multiple-population approximate adjusted fractional Bayes factor is implemented in the R package Bain.     

Priming effects from phonologically related distractors in picture-word interference

In the cross-modal picture-word interference task, distractors phonologically related to a to-benamed picture facilitate the naming response as compared to unrelated distractors. Our experiment shows that this phonological priming effect can be obtained with as early an SOA as-300 ms. The experiment also demonstrates that this priming effect cannot be attributed to strategic behaviour of the participants as opposed to automatic preactivation processes in the lexical-conceptual system. The implications for studies using the picture-word interference task as a tool for investigating lexicalization processes in speech production are discussed.     

Can infants’ orientation to social stimuli predict later joint attention skills?

From the moment infants are born, they seem to prefer orienting to social stimuli, over objects and non‐social stimuli. This preference lasts throughout adulthood and is believed to play a crucial role in social‐communicative development. By following up a group of infants at the age of 6, 8, and 12 months, this study explored the role of social orienting in the early development of joint attention skills. The expected association between social orienting and joint attention was partially confirmed. Social orienting in real‐life photographs of everyday situations was not related to later joint attention skills, however fixation to the eyes in a neutral face was related to response to joint attention skills, and fixation to the eyes in a dynamic video clip of a talking person was predictive of initiating joint attention skills. Several alternative interpretations of the results are discussed.