![]() ![]() This can lead to a decrease in self-concept and educational aspirations. Indeed, they found students with similar applications but different school environments were less likely to be offered admission if they came from a high-achieving school where their class ranking would be lower than a similar student at a more average school. Therefore, those students at less prestigious high schools would have a greater advantage for admission into those elite colleges. ![]() ![]() These students are seen as little frogs in a big pond. The authors argued that basing admissions on the 3 components of the Academic Index (AI) of the primary SAT, SAT Subject Tests, and percentile class rank sets students at high-achieving schools already at a disadvantage because their relative achievements are overshadowed by those of their competitive peers. The frog pond effect was looked at regarding applications of high school students to elite universities, comparing students across their individual success as well as relative to their high school peers. For example, participants were two-thirds as likely to prefer being a part of a less exclusive group where they were ranked only slightly above average compared to being included in a high-performing group where they were not ranked as high. Looking at entry to competitive environments (such as in a work or school context), comparison within group significantly predicted what type of group participants wanted to be in. The ability sub scale of the Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure is used in evaluations of the frog-pond effect by asking 6 items such as "I often compare myself with others with respect to what I have accomplished in life." This scale asks people to think about how they judge themselves with others which is then adjusted to compare oneself against various specific groups, such as within a school or cultural setting. Oftentimes called a paradox, the frog pond effect goes against traditional social comparison theory because high-achieving people may actually have better self-concepts of their abilities when they are surrounded by lower-achieving environments, rather than a comparison group of high-achieving people in competitive environments. Controlling for socioeconomic status and academic potential, an average student in a very high-achieving school had lower academic self-conceptions versus an average student at a more typical school. Ī frame of reference context can be applied to look at the frog pond effect in regards to self perceptions in schools where comparing students from a nationwide sample, there were slightly negative influences of self-esteem and academic ability given the school environment. Called the local dominance effect, this is the tendency for people to focus on the comparisons of few people around them rather than many people not as close, in regards to their self-perceptions. ![]() The closer intragroup context has more weight than the farther away intergroup comparison. When evaluating oneself against in-group members versus out-group members, there is a tendency towards contextual neglect for available information, where people place more weight on their position within their group, rather than the larger general population. McFarland and Buehler theorized that the effect happens because individuals self-monitor within-group rather than compare across groups. His main findings related to how men made career decisions more closely related to their undergraduate GPA, rather than the actual quality of the school they attended, showing that students evaluated their performance as worse based on comparison to high-performing peers from their school, versus comparing their school advantageously to other schools. Davis suggested that when students are surrounded by very high-achieving classmates, they may then develop lower aspirations. Davis first noticed this effect in 1966 in relation to college students' ambition and the impact of their local rank based on the environment they were surrounded by, i.e., they can see themselves as "big frogs in little ponds or little frogs in big ponds". It relates to how individuals evaluate themselves based on comparisons to other people around them, and is generally due to upward comparisons toward people who are better than themselves. This effect is a part of the wider social comparison theory. The frog pond effect is the theory that individuals evaluate themselves as worse than they actually are when in a group of higher-performing individuals. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of all important aspects of the article. This article's lead section may be too short to adequately summarize the key points. ![]()
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