SELF-PRESENTATION BIAS AND CONTINUING MOTIVATION AMONG ADOLESCENTS

This study investigated the reported return-to-task rates of girls and boys for a target individual and for themselves on hard and easy task s. The return-to-task measure consisted of scenarios in which a male o r female character performed a task that the character considered to b e either hard or easy. Data were collected from 632 students in Grades 7, 9, and 11 at a junior and a senior high school in a large southwes tern suburban school district. The return rates to hard and easy tasks for the subject and for the scenario character were compared for indi cations of self-presentation bias. The data revealed that both girls a nd boys preferred easy tasks over hard tasks and that girls had signif icantly higher (p < .01) return-to-task rates than boys did. Evidence of self-presentation bias is present in an interaction in which subjec ts reported a significantly higher (p < .0001) rate of return to diffi cult tasks for themselves than for the scenario character, and a signi ficantly lower return rate to easy tasks for themselves than for the s cenario character. The data suggest that return-to-task preferences re lated to task difficulty and sex remain stable across grade levels.