The Overpowering Effect of Social Comparison Information: on the Misalignment Between Mastery-Based Goals and Self-Evaluation Criteria

If people's goals and evaluative standards were aligned,then individuals with mastery-based goals should,theoretically,primarily rely on temporal comparison information (i.e.,on how they performed relative to before). in contrast,individuals with performance-based goals should rely on social comparison information (i.e.,on how they performed relative to others). however,across three studies,we explored a misalignment phenomenon we call the overpowering effect of social comparison information (toesci). we found that,irrespective of individuals' specific achievement goal (performance-based vs. mastery-based),there is a consistent,dominant reliance on social comparisons over temporal comparisons in their performance self-evaluations. these findings suggest that one's goals and evaluation criteria do not always align-that explicitly endorsing mastery-based goals does not necessarily lead one to rely on temporal comparison information over social comparison information. only after receiving an explicit reminder to consider their mastery-based goal did participants align their goal and performance self-evaluation criteria. © 2014 by the society for personality and social psychology,inc.