The Effect of Social Comparison Feedback and Value Statements in a Clinic

ABSTRACT

This report from the field assessed the effects of graphic and verbal social comparison feedback on the number of end-of-shift cleaning tasks completed by behavior technicians in an autism clinic. Participants consisted of three individuals identified as exhibiting low performance relative to peers. Prior to the intervention, there was a notable difference between low-performers and high-performers. Following the intervention, the number of tasks increased for all three low-performers, reaching levels that were similar to their high-performing peers. Results suggest that for simple and straightforward tasks, certain applications of social comparison feedback can be useful for increasing performance in low-performers despite initial discrepancies in performance.

KEYWORDS:

• Social comparison feedback
• peer comparison
• comparative feedback
• normative comparison

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).