Periodic Reporting for period 2 - SOOCCESS (SOciO-eConomiC failurE and aSpiration biaseS)
Période du rapport: 2022-10-19 au 2023-10-18
Throughout our lives, we often encounter situations where our efforts lead to either success or failure, influencing our future paths. These situations prompt individuals to pursue goals or aspirations, which, in the economic context, serve as reference points dividing feelings of success and failure. Aspirations, among various factors, significantly shape outcomes such as educational attainment, occupation, and income. The study of the capacity to aspire and associated aspirational biases has become a focal point for economists, particularly in understanding aspirations failures among the poor due to external constraints. Our aim is to provide empirical evidence on the effects of success and failure on aspirations, as well as aspirations failure, in different contexts.
Within the project, the primary objective is to investigate how cultivating a success-oriented environment can alleviate aspiration biases. This overarching goal unfolds into two specific objectives: examining how exposure to failure or success environments explains and enforces or reduces aspirational biases across different cultural settings and developing interventions to counteract aspirational biases.
Our main hypothesis posits that exposure to a success environment leads to increased aspirations and reduced aspirational biases. We contribute to the literature by delving into the effects of past outcomes on aspirations, employing a novel incentivized experimental approach to elicit aspirations and assess the impact of success or failure on aspirations and aspirations failure in diverse cultural settings.
The project's contributions to understanding aspiration formation are evident through a series of three experiments. The initial experiment, conducted electronically across three countries with over 3600 participants, revealed that failure significantly diminishes aspirations, while success has relatively weak positive effects.
The second experiment, focusing on undergraduate students in Slovakia during a sports racing event, echoed the negative impact of failure on aspirations, with success exhibiting weaker positive effects. Intriguingly, gender differences surfaced, with male students being more sensitive to failure and female students exhibiting greater responsiveness to success.
Concluding the series, a long-term intervention with approximately 2000 primary school students failed to indicate a meaningful impact of providing positive feedback on children's aspirations in a national math test.
In essence, our project significantly advances the understanding of aspiration formation, unveiling nuanced effects across diverse populations and settings, contributing valuable insights into the intricate relationship between success, failure, and aspirations.
Within the project, the primary objective is to investigate how cultivating a success-oriented environment can alleviate aspiration biases. This overarching goal unfolds into two specific objectives: examining how exposure to failure or success environments explains and enforces or reduces aspirational biases across different cultural settings and developing interventions to counteract aspirational biases.
Our main hypothesis posits that exposure to a success environment leads to increased aspirations and reduced aspirational biases. We contribute to the literature by delving into the effects of past outcomes on aspirations, employing a novel incentivized experimental approach to elicit aspirations and assess the impact of success or failure on aspirations and aspirations failure in diverse cultural settings.
The project's contributions to understanding aspiration formation are evident through a series of three experiments. The initial experiment, conducted electronically across three countries with over 3600 participants, revealed that failure significantly diminishes aspirations, while success has relatively weak positive effects.
The second experiment, focusing on undergraduate students in Slovakia during a sports racing event, echoed the negative impact of failure on aspirations, with success exhibiting weaker positive effects. Intriguingly, gender differences surfaced, with male students being more sensitive to failure and female students exhibiting greater responsiveness to success.
Concluding the series, a long-term intervention with approximately 2000 primary school students failed to indicate a meaningful impact of providing positive feedback on children's aspirations in a national math test.
In essence, our project significantly advances the understanding of aspiration formation, unveiling nuanced effects across diverse populations and settings, contributing valuable insights into the intricate relationship between success, failure, and aspirations.
We first designed an experiment to explore the impact of success or failure in a real-effort task on aspirations, aspirations failure (as a form of aspirational bias), and performance. Online experiments were implemented across three populations: Slovakia (N=2,067), the United Kingdom (N=800), and the USA (N=799). Failing strongly diminishes participants' aspirations, while succeeding has a positive effect. Similar effects are observed on aspirations failure - succeeding decreases it, while failing increases it. Aspirations are identified as a mediator in the relationship between success/failure experiences and real-effort task performance.
Results show that experiencing failure lowers aspirations, while success raises them. Analysing feedback effects on aspirations failure consistently reveals that informing participants about failing increases aspirations failure. A strong, positive correlation is found between aspirations (aspirations failure) and performance, with robust evidence across socio-demographic characteristics, treatment assignment, and participants' abilities. External validity is confirmed across cultural settings in Slovakia, the United Kingdom, and the USA.
The second set of experiments delved into the impact of revealing ranking results in a sports competition on aspirations and expectations for subsequent racing events. Conducted over two academic terms, two independent samples of students (sizes 228 and 176) revealed that winners or top-three rankers had higher aspirations and expectations. Winners displayed elevated aspirations and higher expectations compared to the control group, consistent with online experiment results. Gender differences emerged, with males responding more strongly to losing and females showing greater sensitivity to winning.
In the third set of experiments involving approximately 2000 students from 28 primary schools, spanning October 2022 to May 2023, monthly math testing and interventions were conducted. The generic positive feedback in the intervention group had no discernible impacts on children's aspirations. The recurrent intervention, when accounting for test scores, also yielded negligible effects.
Project outcomes were presented at conferences and workshops, including the 2022 North-American ESA Conference, the 2023 ESA World Meeting, the 21st Conference of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies, and the Slovak Economic Association Meeting 2023. Dissemination included communication with students, practitioners, and policymakers during the Workshop on Experimental Methods in Bratislava, September 2023. Collaborative efforts were initiated with the Slovak National Institute of Education and Youth to address aspirations and children's stress levels during testing.
Results show that experiencing failure lowers aspirations, while success raises them. Analysing feedback effects on aspirations failure consistently reveals that informing participants about failing increases aspirations failure. A strong, positive correlation is found between aspirations (aspirations failure) and performance, with robust evidence across socio-demographic characteristics, treatment assignment, and participants' abilities. External validity is confirmed across cultural settings in Slovakia, the United Kingdom, and the USA.
The second set of experiments delved into the impact of revealing ranking results in a sports competition on aspirations and expectations for subsequent racing events. Conducted over two academic terms, two independent samples of students (sizes 228 and 176) revealed that winners or top-three rankers had higher aspirations and expectations. Winners displayed elevated aspirations and higher expectations compared to the control group, consistent with online experiment results. Gender differences emerged, with males responding more strongly to losing and females showing greater sensitivity to winning.
In the third set of experiments involving approximately 2000 students from 28 primary schools, spanning October 2022 to May 2023, monthly math testing and interventions were conducted. The generic positive feedback in the intervention group had no discernible impacts on children's aspirations. The recurrent intervention, when accounting for test scores, also yielded negligible effects.
Project outcomes were presented at conferences and workshops, including the 2022 North-American ESA Conference, the 2023 ESA World Meeting, the 21st Conference of the International Society for Quality of Life Studies, and the Slovak Economic Association Meeting 2023. Dissemination included communication with students, practitioners, and policymakers during the Workshop on Experimental Methods in Bratislava, September 2023. Collaborative efforts were initiated with the Slovak National Institute of Education and Youth to address aspirations and children's stress levels during testing.
Introduced was a novel incentivized approach for eliciting aspirations and an innovative experimental design assessing the impact of success and failure. Empirical evidence on these effects, derived from incentivized real-effort experiments with representative adult samples (Slovakia, UK, USA), was presented. The second set of experiments, addressing aspirations in sports racing events with undergraduate students, yielded similar conclusions, contributing to the literature on past outcomes' effects on aspirations.
In the experimental setting, aspirations were redefined as short-term wishes related to specific tasks rather than distant future desires. This innovative approach, employed in various experimental contexts within the economics of education or decision-making literature, enriched current findings. Two diverse settings (real-effort task in an online experiment and sporting events) demonstrated consistent patterns in the results.
Addressing the second objective, a long-term experiment compared short-term and long-term effects of generic positive feedback (praise) on primary school students' aspirations. Results indicated the ineffectiveness of this feedback in significantly impacting children's aspirations. This insight is crucial for practitioners, highlighting that general positive feedback is not an effective tool for elevating children's aspirations. Additionally, it prompts researchers to delve into the mechanisms underlying the intervention's ineffectiveness.
In conclusion, the project's results deepen our understanding of aspirations' formation across various settings and subpopulations. The innovative approach to defining aspirations and the consistent patterns observed in different experimental settings contribute valuable insights to the existing literature on the impact of past outcomes and interventions on aspirations.
In the experimental setting, aspirations were redefined as short-term wishes related to specific tasks rather than distant future desires. This innovative approach, employed in various experimental contexts within the economics of education or decision-making literature, enriched current findings. Two diverse settings (real-effort task in an online experiment and sporting events) demonstrated consistent patterns in the results.
Addressing the second objective, a long-term experiment compared short-term and long-term effects of generic positive feedback (praise) on primary school students' aspirations. Results indicated the ineffectiveness of this feedback in significantly impacting children's aspirations. This insight is crucial for practitioners, highlighting that general positive feedback is not an effective tool for elevating children's aspirations. Additionally, it prompts researchers to delve into the mechanisms underlying the intervention's ineffectiveness.
In conclusion, the project's results deepen our understanding of aspirations' formation across various settings and subpopulations. The innovative approach to defining aspirations and the consistent patterns observed in different experimental settings contribute valuable insights to the existing literature on the impact of past outcomes and interventions on aspirations.