Al-Ghatani, Michelle (2012) The Impact of Accountability and Social Exclusion on the Communication of Performance Evaluations and Perceptions of Social Self-Worth. Honours thesis, University of Southern Queensland. (Unpublished)
Abstract
People often provide positively biased feedback as a means to avert communicating negative criticism. However, individual development and future performance enhancement is dependent upon accurate and critical feedback from others. Prior research has linked motivations to provide honest feedback to lowered levels of accountability and concern for social acceptance; however, the interplay between accountability and social acceptance has yet to be examined. As such, the present study aimed to examine the impact of social exclusion and accountability on communicating performance evaluations and perceptions of social self-worth. Via an experimental web-based online survey participants’ (N = 266), social exclusionary status and perceptions of accountability were manipulated, prior to evaluating a book review. The dependent variables were performance evaluations and measures of social self-worth (i.e., Belongingness, self-liking, self-competence). While the social exclusion manipulation produced heightened levels of perceived exclusion in high socially excluded participants, contrary to predictions: (a) perceptions of social self-worth did not vary across participants, and (b) high socially excluded participants did not provide more positive performance evaluations. Moreover, as the accountability manipulation failed to produce heightened levels of the need to justify feedback, predictions that: (a) low accountability participants would provide more positive performance evaluations, (b) high social exclusion/high accountability participants would provide less positive feedback, as well as (c) improve perceptions of social self-worth after delivering feedback, were not supported. Unexpectedly however, high accountability participants demonstrated a positive change in perceptions of subjective self-worth (i.e., Self-liking) after feedback delivery. The theoretical and practical implications and future research directions are discussed.
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| Item Type: | Thesis (Non-Research) (Honours) |
|---|---|
| Item Status: | Live Archive |
| Additional Information: | Current UniSQ staff and students can request access to this thesis. Please email research.repository@unisq.edu.au with a subject line of SEAR thesis request and provide: Name of the thesis requested and Your name and UniSQ email address |
| Faculty/School / Institute/Centre: | Historic - Faculty of Sciences - Department of Psychology (Up to 30 Jun 2013) |
| Supervisors: | Carla Jeffries |
| Qualification: | Bachelor of Science (Honours) |
| Date Deposited: | 01 Oct 2025 23:26 |
| Last Modified: | 01 Oct 2025 23:26 |
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | performance evaluations ; accountability ; social exclusion ; social self-worth |
| Fields of Research (2008): | 17 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 1799 Other Psychology and Cognitive Sciences > 179999 Psychology and Cognitive Sciences not elsewhere classified |
| Fields of Research (2020): | 52 PSYCHOLOGY > 5299 Other psychology > 529999 Other psychology not elsewhere classified |
| URI: | https://sear.unisq.edu.au/id/eprint/52344 |
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