Developmental variation in the effects of social, dimensional, and temporal comparisons on academic self-concept: Longitudinal and experimental evidence

Many studies have examined the effects of social, dimensional, and temporal comparisons on academic self-concept, yet it remains unclear how these effects operate within individuals and change across development. The present research addressed these gaps through a longitudinal study and an experiment. Study 1 ( N = 4667) used multilevel modeling to examine within-person effects in mathematics and verbal domains. In Study 2 ( N = 801), participants received performance feedback framed within the three comparison frameworks on figure reasoning tasks. Both studies found significant effects of all three comparison types on academic self-concept across elementary, middle, and high school. Study 1 further revealed that the effects of social comparison was stronger in elementary school than in middle and high school, whereas dimensional comparison effects increased with age in mathematics. Study 2 replicated the age-related increase in dimensional comparison effects in figure reasoning and additionally found a decline for temporal comparison effects.