INTELLIGENCE AND PERFORMANCE-RELATED SELF -EFFICACY BELIEFS IN EAST AND WEST-BERLIN CHILDREN

Differences between East and West Berlin children's self-efficacy or a gency beliefs and their correlation with school grades were observed b efore the unification of the two Germanies (June 1990; Oettingen, Litt le, Lindenberger & Baltes, in press). East Berlin children were compar atively more pessimistic and conformed more readily with their teacher s' performance judgments (school grades). The East Berlin school conte xt was characterized by factors favoring a revision of children's naiv e optimism about their competence as well as a strong link between the ir self-beliefs and teachers' performance evaluations. Since less inte lligent children tend to show lower performance and thus have to revis e their naive optimism to a greater extent than their intelligent peer s, we expected the differences between East- and West Berlin children to appear in the less intelligent rather than in the intelligent child ren. Hypotheses were confirmed. Results are discussed regarding the mo tivational consequences for East and West Berlin children.