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.
High-altitude balloon is a balloon, filled usually with helium or hydrogen that ascends into an area called “near space” or stratosphere. The most common type of high-altitude balloons are weather balloons. Other purposes include use as a platform for experiments in the upper atmosphere. Modern balloons generally contain electronic equipment such as radio transmitters, cameras, or satellite navigation systems, such as GPS receivers. The mission of the High-Altitude Balloon Experiment (HABE) is to acquire supporting data, validate enabling technologies, and resolve critical acquisition, tracking, and pointing (ATP) and fire control issues in support of future space-based precision pointing experiments. The use of high-altitude balloons offers a relatively low-cost, low-vibration test platform, a recoverable and reusable payload, worldwide launch capability, and a 'near- space' emulation of the future space systems operational scenarios. More recently, several university...
Tomato is a plant with high heat requirements and sensitive to cold weather and frost. The optimum temperature for the growth of tomato plants is between 21˚C and 27˚C during the day and between 17˚C and 21˚C at night. The soil temperature is also very important for plant growth. The optimum soil temperature for tomato cultivation should be within the range 15˚C - 18˚C. Besides, the proper development of the root system depends on the optimal temperature of the soil. A temperature below 14˚C reduces and inhibits the growth of the root system and encourages the development of fungal and bacterial diseases. In this study, the authors aimed to evaluate the effect of heated soil on the population of bacteria, fungi and nematodes inhabiting the soil of tomato cultivar “Tamaris” growing in peat and coconut substrates. The experiment was carried out in 12 treatments and in 3 replications (one slab was one replication). The soils were tested in two different types of containers: cylinders...
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