What do you attribute your victory over your friend? Did you win because you were more competent than your contestant? Or, did your opponent lose because he/she was inferior? You may have won because of mere luck.
DIAGRAM OF THE EXPERIMENTAL SETTING
Alike et al. (1997) conducted a social-comparison experiment utilizing aconfederate either win or lose in an intellectual competing game with a naïve participant. They found their American participants attributed their victory to their own ability, whereas they tended to regard their defeat caused by the winner’s exceptional ability. Alike et al. concluded that people tend to use these attribution tendencies to protect their self-esteem. “I lost, but it was because the contestant was a genius. No one could outperform him.” They dubbed it “Genius Effect.”
WINNERS AND LOSERS RATED FOR THEIR INTELLIGENCE BY WINNERS, LOSERS AND OBSERVERS (TWO OBSERVERS’ RATINGS WERE COMBINED IN THE FIGURE. THE VERTICAL BARS SHOW STANDARD DEVIATIONS. THE TWO DOWNWARD ARROWS SHOW THE MODESTY EFFECT; WINNERS AND LOSERS RATED THEMSELVES LOWER THAN THE OTHERS DID.)
In the Alicke et al. study, participants were able to exaggerate the ability of their contestant who was in reality a confederate because they were unfamiliar each other. What happens if a person wins or loses in a social comparison with a familiar person, such as a friend? However, it could not be possible to conduct such an experiment with pairs of genuine participants without having one of them as an experimenter’s confederate. Mori and Mori (2013) conducted a social comparison experiment with pairs of Japanese participants, who tried to solve anagram tasks in a competing way. The crucial point of their study was that they presented the anagram tasks in two different difficulty levels by utilizing a presentation trick so that one of each participant pair would observe easier tasks than the opponent. The ones given the easier tasks outperformed their counterparts. Mori and Mori also manipulated the social relations of participant pairs; familiar or unfamiliar pairs. Note that the unfamiliar condition was equivalent to the Alicke et al. experiment.
Mori and Mori found both winners and losers tended to evaluate their abilities lower than observers evaluated them. These tendencies were similar in both the familiar and unfamiliar conditions. From these results, they concluded “Japanese are modest even when they are winners.”Being modest might be the most suitable strategy in a densely populated society such as Japan.
Cultivated peanut ( Arachis hypogaea L.) is an important oil and food crop. It is also a cheap source of protein, a good source of essential vitamins and minerals, and a component of many food products. The fatty acid composition of peanuts has become increasingly important with the realization that oleic acid content significantly affects the development of rancidity. And oil content of peanuts significantly affects flavor and shelf-life. Early generation screening of breeding lines for high oleic acid content greatly increases the efficiency of developing new peanut varieties. The objective of this study was to compare the accuracy of methods used to classify individual peanut seed as high oleic or not high oleic. Three hundred and seventy-four (374) seeds, spanning twenty-three (23) genotypes varying in oil composition (i.e. high oleic (H) or normal/not high oleic (NH) inclusive of all four peanut market-types (runner, Spanish, Valencia and Virginia), were individually tested ...
Fuel and its delivery cost comprise the biggest expense in coal power plant operations. Delivery of electricity from generation to consumers requires investment in power lines and transmission grids. Placing a coal power plant or multiple power plants near dense population centers can lower transmission costs. If a coalmine is nearby, transportation costs can also be reduced. However, emissions from coal plants play a key role in worsening health crises in many countries. And coal upon combustion produces CO 2 , SO 2 , NO x , CO, Metallic and Particle Matter (PM10 & PM2.5). The presence of these chemical compounds in the atmosphere in close vicinity to humans, livestock, and agriculture carries detrimental health consequences. The goal of the research was to develop a methodology to minimize the public’s exposure to harmful emissions from coal power plants while maintaining minimal operational costs related to electric distribution losses and coal logistics. The objective was...
At present, many home-use beauty devices are available in the market. In particular, many products developed for facial treatment use light, e.g., a flash lamp or a light-emitting diode (LED). In this study, the safety of 4 weeks’ continuous use of NEWA TM , a high-frequency facial treatment appliance, every alternate day at home was verified, and its efficacy was evaluated in Japanese individuals with healthy skin aged 30 years or older who complained of sagging of the facial skin. Transepidermal water loss (TEWL), melanin levels, erythema levels, sebum secretion levels, skin color changes and wrinkle improvement in the facial skin were measured before the appliance began to be used (study baseline), at 2 and 4 weeks after it had begun to be used, and at 2 weeks after completion of the 4-week treatment period (6 weeks from the study baseline). In addition, data obtained by subjective evaluation by the subjects themselves on a visual analog scale (VAS) were also analyzed. Fur...
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