The impact of stable and unstable attributes on ability assessment in social comparison

Social comparison theory assumes that people rely an the multiple sufficien t causes of attributional scheme for ability assessment. Wen standing on pe rformance-related attributes differs between two individuals, ability judgm ents should be low in confidence to the extent that performance differences are consistent with the attribute differences and high in confidence when the two are inconsistent. The authors argue that this holds true for standi ng on unstable attributes such as practice but not for stable attributes su ch as education. Stable attributes serve as cues to ability rather than as alternative interpretations of performance differences. In a series of thre e experiments, participants' ability judgments were more confident when per formance was consistent with their standing on stable attributes (education , occupation) but less confident when consistent with standing on an unstab le attribute (practice).