Smooth Sailing Versus Rocky Roads: Performance Variability, Social Comparison, and Self-Evaluation

People often consider their rank across multiple performances, which can be summarized in terms of its mean and variability. Prior work on performance variability examined evaluations of other people and was limited either by use of correlational designs or imaginal scenarios. Here we conducted two studies with high experimental realism to assess the immediate effects of performance means and variability on self-evaluations (total N = 408 college students). Participants completed social perception tests and were given manipulated feedback indicating that they generally performed above average or below average and had a consistent or inconsistent rank across tests. Performance means had a very large impact on self-evaluations, affective reactions, and predicted future performance. However, performance variability had small to negligible effects. These data suggest that people neglect the distribution or spread of performance ranks during self-evaluation (distribution neglect) and instead focus primarily on their mean rank.