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Abstract
We examined the link between social comparison with friends and self-perceptions of academic competence during adolescence and how personality may play a role in this link. Participants were 193 eighth-grade students who attended a rural, mid-Atlantic middle school. We used difference scores to measure the extent to which students’ nominated and reciprocated friends had higher academic performance in math and reading than the students themselves. Regression analyses revealed that, as students’ friends had higher math test scores than the students themselves, students’ academic self-competence decreased. For reading, however, a similar result only held for students with higher levels of dispositional hope. The role that hope plays in how students interpret unfavorable social comparisons, and in how they view their academic competence, may not be straightforward. The implications of social comparison may also vary across academic domains.
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Author Biography
Joanna M. Bissell-Havran is a faculty member in the school of psychology at Walden University and is also an instructor for Penn State’s World Campus in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies. She received her PhD in human development and family studies from Penn State. She studies family and peer factors related to academic outcomes during adolescence.
