Existing literature does not differentiate exposure and inference hypotheses, prompting Wald et al. (2022) to clarify what distinguishes the two. In this study, the exposure hypothesis suggests that overexposure to success can cause people to perceive a task as easy and, in turn, cause them to believe others should perform better. In contrast, the inference hypothesis suggests that people’s expectations of individuals are affected by their exposure to success, which causes hypercriticism and the expectation that they should perform better than anyone else on their first-time attempt. While previous research focused on how social judgment affects motivation, this study emphasizes that exposure to success can lead to self-judgment and leads to increased criticism. 

In this study, Wald et al. (2022) focuses on their primary question: does overexposure to success inflate people’s expectations of how successful others should be when attempting a task for the first time? To address their question, this study consists of two similar experiments. 

In experiment 1, 1006 participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk were assigned to learn about motor-skills tests. The test consisted of utilizing a computer trackpad to trace the shape of a maze in reverse (e.g. “move their finger downward in order to trace upward”) and watching someone successfully perform it while the researchers manipulated the number of times the video replayed. They sought to target the thoughts “looks easy,” highlighting that overexposure to one’s success does not improve others’ performance. The participants scored how successful they would be with no prior training. Their self confidence after exposure to success was also examined. The self-participants were asked how they would score someone who watched the video the same number of times they did, and the naive-other participants judged how someone would perform if they watched the video the same number of times but it cuts out at some parts. This enabled Wald et al. to test their inference and exposure hypothesis such that the participants’ over-confidence was calculated. 

In experiment 2, Wald et al. (2022) conducted a second study that replicated Experiment 1, consisting of 1000 participants from Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. The procedures were the same as Experiment 1, however, the naive-other participants were assigned to predict the performance of someone who did not watch the test successfully completed. This allowed the researchers to gather explicit information that justified how watching success can bias our expectations. 

Experiments 1 and 2 prove that overexposure to success inflates how people perceive the success of others’ first attempts, although simply watching does not improve anyone’s performance. This is evident in Experiment 1, where exposure is the main effect. Wald et al. (2022) found that participants who watched success 20 times compared to 1 time influenced the expected performance. In the actual performance, viewing success 20 times inflated the expected performance for people’s first-time attempts and for scoring others. Additionally, the participants grew overconfident in their own skills as a result of overexposure to success. Those who watched the video 20 times than 1 time predicted themselves and others would earn a higher score on their first attempt at the motor-skills task. However, higher expectations did not produce better performance. Wald et al.’s (2022) study highlights how repeated exposure to success raises our expectations of higher achievement for others and ourselves. For instance, students who observe their peers achieving good grades may affect their perceptions of how they should perform better without any prior practice. This questions if teachers should overexpose students to success before having them attempt a struggling problem themselves. Furthermore, people who had no prior experience in sports and see athletes “easily” finishing a race can cause them to perceive that they too can succeed in that sport with ease without understanding the athletes’ previous failures. This study provides potential directions for EPIC, as we can delve into how overconfidence affects people’s performance and motivation to persist after initial failures.

If you are interested in reading further about this study, check out this link:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022103122001007

This post is written by Eliza Hong. 

Reference: 

Wald, K. A., & O'Brien, E. (2022). Repeated exposure to success harshens reactions to failure. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 103, 104381