The Role Of Difficulty Perceptions,Attribution,and Success/Fail Experience In Self-perceptions Of Competence

Competence/agency is one of the fundamental dimensions of traits and person descriptors. Self-perceptions of competence is the self-evaluative judgments of the ability of completing specific tasks. The present paper is concerned with the dynamics of peoples' agentic characteristics. In an longitudinal research of Abele(2003) it was demonstrated that trait agency increses in dependence on vocational success, and that this effect is the same for men and women. An experimental research of Abele, Rupprecht, and Wojciszke(2008) examined the influence of specific success versus failure experiences on the participants'state agency. The results proved that state agency was reduced after failure experiences and enhanced after success experiences. However, some other factors may influence peoples' perceptions of competence in addition to success/failure experiences such as perceptions of task difficulty and attribution, and so on. Few of the previous researches had examined the full influences of perceptions of task difficulty, attribution and success/failure experiences on peoples'perceptions of competence.Based on the previous related researches and literature review, the present research analysis the questions of the research field and proposed our research question. Our research chose undergraduates as participants, through two researches examined the role of perceptions of difficulty, attributions, and success/failure experiences on perceptions of competence.The findings are as follows:1 At the same medium difficulty task, the evaluation of their own competence of the participants who have lower perceptions of difficulty will not change significantly, regardless of success or failure. The evaluation of their own competence of the participants who have higher perceptions of difficulty will not change significantly after success, but will be significantly reduced after failure.2 At the same medium difficulty task, internals participants who have lower perceptions of difficulty will not change the evaluation of their own competence significantly, regardless of success or failure. Internals participants who have higher perceptions of difficulty will not change the evaluation of their own competence significantly after success, but will be significantly reduced after failure. At the same medium difficulty task, the evaluation of their own competence of the externals participants who have lower perceptions of difficulty will not change after success, but will reduce significantly after failure. Externals participants who have higher perceptions of difficulty will not change the evaluation of their own competence significantly regardless of success or failure.