THE FRAMING OF RELATIVE PERFORMANCE FEEDBACK - SEEING THE GLASS AS HALF EMPTY OR HALF FULL

It was proposed that individuals' responses to information regarding their relative position in a performance distribution would depend an how they frame the information. To the degree that they focus selectively on the positive features of the feedback (i.e., the number of others who performed worse than them) rather than the negative features (i.e.. the number of others who performed better than them) they should report higher ability levels and more positive affective reactions. In Study 1, Ss received feedback indicating that they occupied a particular percentile standing in either a large or small distribution. Individuals with negative orientations (depressives and pessimists) reported lower ability levels as a function of increases in comparison group size, whereas individuals with positive orientations (nondepressives and optimists) reported higher ability levels. Presumably, these effects occurred because negatively oriented persons focused on the negative features of the feedback and positively oriented persons focused on the positive features of the feedback. The results of Study 2 support this explanation. Implications for the social comparison literature are discussed.