Doctoral Dissertation Research in Economics: The Informational Role of Social Comparisons: An Experimental Study

本项目将通过实验方法研究“社会比较”背后的机制和后果。个人与他人之间的表现比较通常是自我认知的重要决定因素，而自我认知反过来又会影响随后的行为，如努力或坚持，从而影响结果。社会比较在组织和教育环境中都是司空见惯的，它们对行为的影响表明，在这种环境中，操纵绩效反馈的可用性和类型可以成为提高努力和绩效的重要工具。尽管关于这一主题的心理学文献很多，但关于绩效比较的经济学研究却很少，而且它们对组织设计的影响也没有被探讨。Ertac（2005）提出了一种社会比较理论，该理论将社会比较作为一种信息来源，通过它提供的有关能力的信息，了解他人做得有多好会影响自我感知和努力。考虑对行为的影响，研究了委托人与多个代理打交道时的最优信息披露策略。然而，为了能够评估这样一个模型的政策含义的有效性，需要实验室实验来阐明社会比较背后的机制。目前的项目提出了一套这样的实验，旨在测试社会比较的信息理论，并从总体上深入了解社会比较背后的机制。这些实验有望为理解社会比较的工作方式提供有价值的数据，并为组织中信息反馈政策的制定提供建议，有助于理解经济学、管理学和心理学文献中的核心问题。这项研究对社会的更广泛影响将是为在组织和教育环境中应用的反馈和信息披露政策制定建议。如何构建绩效和比较反馈政策是组织设计中的一个重要问题，因为这些反馈通常会影响员工的自我概念、后续动机和努力。另一个社会比较发挥重要作用的环境是教育。众所周知，学术自我概念是学生在学校的动机和努力、她对成功的渴望、退学决定和职业选择的重要决定因素。反过来，与同龄人的结果进行比较对于形成自我评估至关重要。操纵社会比较可能性的政策，例如隐瞒有关年级全部分布的信息，或形成特定的同伴群体（例如通过能力分组），可能对教育成绩产生重大影响，特别是在处理特殊群体时，例如有学习障碍的学生、资优学生或在某一特定学习领域代表性不足的学生（例如从事科学的妇女）。“自信管理”很重要。因此，了解社会比较背后的机制对于制定组织和教育设置的信息和分组政策建议非常重要，并且拟议的研究有望在此背景下提供有价值的数据和答案，这些数据和答案可以传达给教育计划和组织。除了研究的预期结果之外，研究的进行方式也可能产生普遍的有益影响，因为该研究将涉及在加州大学洛杉矶分校的CASSEL实验室进行的实验，该实验从不同的学生群体中吸引参与者。这些实验有望促进参与实验的学生对经济学和心理学领域的知识兴趣。

This project will study the mechanism behind and the consequences of "social comparisons" through experimental methods. Performance comparisons that individuals make with one another are usually important determinants of self-perception, which in turn affects subsequent behavior such as effort or persistence, and thereby outcomes. Social comparisons are commonplace in both organizational and educational settings, and their effects on behavior suggest that manipulating the availability and type of performance feedback can be an important tool for improving effort and performance in such settings. Despite the broad psychology literature on the topic, there are few economic studies on performance comparisons, and their implications for organizational design have not been explored. Ertac (2005) proposes a theory of social comparisons, which models social comparisons as a source of information, where knowing how well others have done affects self-perception and effort through the information it provides about ability. Given the effects on behavior, the optimal information revelation policy of a principal who deals with multiple agents is studied. However, to be able to assess the validity of the policy implications from such a model, laboratory experiments that can shed light on the mechanism behind social comparisons are needed.The current project proposes a set of such experiments designed to test the informational theory of social comparisons, and in general obtain insight into the mechanism behind social comparisons. The experiments are expected to provide valuable data for understanding the way social comparisons work and for formulating recommendations for information feedback policies in organizations, contributing to the understanding of an issue that is central to the economics, management, and psychology literatures.The broader impact of this study for society would be to formulate recommendations for feedback and information disclosure policies to be applied in organizational and educational settings. How to structure performance and comparison feedback policies is an important question in organizational design, since such feedback usually affects employees' self-concept, subsequent motivation, and effort.Another setting where social comparisons play an important role is education. Academic self-concept is known to be an important determinant of a student's motivation and effort in school, her aspirations of success, dropout decisions, and career choices. In turn, comparisons with the outcomes of peers are crucial in forming self-assessments. Policies that manipulate social comparison possibilities such as withholding information about the full distribution of grades, or forming specific peer groups (e.g. through ability grouping) can potentially have a strong influence on educational performance, especially when dealing with special groups, such as students with learning disabilities, gifted students, or students who are underrepresented in a particular area of study (e.g. women in science), where "confidence-management" is important. Understanding the mechanism behind social comparisons is therefore very important in formulating recommendations for information and grouping policies for both organizational and educational settings, and the proposed study is expected to provide valuable data and answers in this context, which could be communicated to educational programs and organizations. In addition to the expected results from the study, the way the study is conducted is also likely to have a general beneficial impact, in the sense that the study will involve experiments to be conducted at the CASSEL laboratory of UCLA, which draws participants from a diverse student body. The experiments are expected to promote intellectual interest in the areas of economics and psychology in the group of students that participate.