SELF-PRESENTATION BIAS AND CONTINUING MOTIVATION AMONG CHINESE STUDENTS - A CROSS-CULTURAL PHENOMENON

Self-presentation bias and continuing motivation for difficult and eas y tasks among Grade 7 and 11 students in the People's Republic of Chin a were investigated, Participants were 517 students from two schools i n Wuhan, China, They read short scenarios in which male or female char acters performed tasks that they considered to be hard or easy. The st udents then answered a question for each scenario about whether the sc enario character would do a second task of the same type and a questio n about whether they themselves would do the second task. They reporte d higher return-to-task rates for easy tasks than for hard ones, thus revealing stronger continuing motivation for easy tasks, Self-presenta tion bias was indicated by a significant interaction in which students reported a higher return rate to difficult tasks for themselves than for the scenario character, and a lower return rate to easy tasks for themselves than for the scenario character, The results reveal pattern s of self-presentation bias and continuing motivation among Chinese st udents that are similar to those obtained in recent research with Grad e 7 and Grade 11 American students.