Overestimation and underestimation of students’ own competence result from social comparison in the classroom. There is some evidence that secondary school students compare their results with those of one or two same-sex others who perform slightly better than themselves. The first objective of this study was to replicate these findings among younger students (9–11 years old) in mathematics and language arts (French). The second objective was to consider the identification with the target as a moderator factor, because findings have been divergent regarding the positive or negative influence of social comparison on students’ academic self-evaluation. We expected firstly that absolute upward comparison to be beneficial for students’ self-evaluation bias of competence provided they identified with their upward target. Secondly, we expected their perception of their target’s competence (relative comparison) to contribute to students’ self-evaluation bias of competence and to be negatively related to it. The results indicated a tendency to compare upward and revealed that absolute upward comparison was positively related to the students’ self-evaluation bias of competence in mathematics and French. This relationship was stronger when the students identified with their upward target. In contrast, relative comparison was negatively related to their self-evaluation bias of competence in mathematics and French. To sum up, these results reveal the need to consider identification with the comparison target when studying the relationship between social comparison and academic self-evaluation and to consider relative and absolute comparison simultaneously in order to bring out the full contribution of social comparison in the classroom.

中文翻译：

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课堂社会比较是否会使学生对自己的能力评估产生偏见？

学生自身能力的高估和低估是由课堂上的社会比较造成的。有证据表明，中学生将自己的成绩与一两个同性伴侣的成绩进行了比较，后者的表现略好于自己。这项研究的首要目标是在数学和语言艺术（法语）的年轻学生（9-11岁）中复制这些发现。第二个目标是考虑将目标认同作为调节因素，因为关于社会比较对学生的学业自我评价的正面或负面影响的发现存在分歧。首先，我们期望绝对向上的比较有利于学生确定自己的向上目标的能力的自我评价偏见。其次，我们期望他们对目标能力的理解（相对比较）会导致学生的自我评价能力偏向，并与之产生负相关。结果表明有向上比较的趋势，并表明绝对向上比较与学生在数学和法语方面的自我评价能力偏向成正比。当学生确定他们的向上目标时，这种关系会更牢固。相反，相对比较与他们在数学和法语方面的能力自我评估偏向负相关。总结一下，