Description
Self-reports of evaluative characteristics, such as competence or intelligence, are subjective in nature and are susceptible to biases. One such self-serving phenomenon troublesome for social scientific research is the "better-than average effect" or Wobegon effect, which involves an inflated self-evaluation above the average midpoint. Illusionary thoughts lead individuals to perceive themselves better than the comparative average person, indicating a need to regulate these biases in self-assessment research. The present study will use priming prompts to elicit memories of previously failed, neutral or successful communicative or social interactions to examine the influence on self-perceptions of communication competence. This thesis aims to replicate a recent study on communication competence that found an unpredicted gender effect. In hopes to explain this unexpected result, narcissism and discrepant self-esteem will be incorporated. The results revealed no significant interaction effect for prime condition and sex, which was found in the previous study. When controlling for narcissism or discrepant self-esteem, there were not significant main or interaction effects for prime condition or sex. Exploratory analyses revealed significant main effect for narcissism, with males rating higher than females, and significant interaction effects for factors of the communication competence scale. The discussion points to potential underlying structures to the communication competence measure in terms of gender. The main results and exploratory analyses are discussed with suggestions for future research.
