Quiggety?

Jesse's point about self-evaluation is well taken. This gets at Ling et al's idea of multiple, overlapping social theories. We'll evaluate against someone else as described in Suls ASSUMING we don't have a pre-existing performance standard. From Jesse's post, it sounds like a clear standard will trump comparison evaluating... (Is this correct?) This doesn't mean we won't still compare for other purposes.

I'm thinking about applications, about leaderboards, about tapping into automatic comparison behaviors. I'm thinking about Nika's annoying animated Family Guy icon hovering above me in the top rated users listing. (Curse you, Quagmire.) So I guess if I'm feeling threatened by Nika, I may start comparing myself favorably against those who are worse off (Brian and Erika).

However, Collins' might suggest something different: I want to perceive myself as having positive qualities, so I take my inclusion in the top rated posters as proof that I'm a good student. My inclusion in the top rated posters becomes proof to me that I'm one of the good ones, even though my placement there may be equally due to luck.

Given that being bested by Nika makes me want to post more, I think there could be some decent applications to the wiki world, if similar leaderboards were set up. But I see this in the same class as CEM tricks to motivate contributions. I have a feeling that if I were more awake, there might be larger applications to online communities. (esp. intrigued by the idea of mutability and whether design choices can lead to certain learned social behaviors at a deeper level than contributing simple things like votes or ratings. if community members are mutable, can the community be designed in such a way to facilitate more high-impact learning?) Now to sleep.