A couple weeks ago we discussed the topic of motivation in my Behavior and Organizations class. I find these studies interesting and the concept of self-serving evaluations particularly stood out to me. The idea of self-serving evaluations is that people tend to see themselves in a positive light and have a bias in their self perception i.e. in driving skills, personal health.

There was a study done where participants completed tests of humor, grammar, and logic and then rated their perceived performance, with most people grossly overestimating their performance (Kruger & Dunning, 1999). In particular, the people that did the worst had the most significant gap in their perceived ability, suggesting that incompetent people general believe they are MUCH more capable than they really are (a few names come to mind).

This surprised me because I've always thought that the way people think can significantly influence their performance or behavior. In support of this is the Pygmalion Theory where a random sampling of students were told that they were gifted and as a result, performed better than a control group. I asked my professor about this and she said that this holds true but only within a realistic range of expectations. So if we think we can accomplish a task far beyond our capability, we won't necessarily perform better than if we didn't have that self-confidence. But if our expectations are high but achievable, that mindset will help us perform better.

Interesting. In an effort to take advantage of this positive thinking I used to believe I could do anything. Looks like I may need to adjust my self-perceptions.