The Illusion of Incompetence among Academically Competent Children

To assess the relation between children's perceptions of cognitive competence and their achievement orientations, a group of 117 academically competent fifth graders and their teachers were administered a battery of questionnaires tapping a variety of motivational constructs. The children were then divided into low, average, and high groups on the basis of subscale scores on a standardized measure of perceived cognitive competence. Approximately 20%--equal proportions of girls and boys--had self-perceptions that seriously underestimated their actual high abilities. When compared to the children whose self-perceptions were commensurate with their abilities, the children with low perceived competence were shown to adopt lower standards and expectancies for success, to perceive that their teachers expected less of them (confirmed by the teachers' expectancy ratings), to rank unstable effort as a more important cause of their high grades than ability, and to be portrayed by their teachers as lacking in persistence. Very few sex differences emerged. Several theoretical issues are raised regarding the early acquisition, perpetuation, causal significance, and behavioral manifestations of inaccurate and disparaging self-perceptions among young children.