The present study was conducted to examine the self-reported social standards of socially efficacious and non-efficacious individuals. Converging evidence from different research domains, including studies on self-attentional processes and standard-setting in performance motivation, suggests that the socially anxious person may have standards for him or herself that are beyond that person's perceived abilities; alternatively, standards may be so high that they are beyond the reach of even the most socially confident person. Ninety-six male undergraduate students were dichotomized into low and high social-efficacy groups on the basis of their response to a measure of self-efficacy and anxiety in social situations. The subjects were told they would be interacting with a female research assistant in order to practice before meeting another subject. The success of the practice interaction was manipulated by varying the assistant's behavior and feedback by the experimenter so that subjects believed they handled the conversation well or not well; a third condition was included with no feedback. Subjects were asked to rate their standards using a visual scale that displayed different levels of social interaction. The standards rated were: (1) the level of interaction that they consider successful, (2) the level of interaction that they would be happy with, (3) the level of interaction they think the experimenter wants, and (4) the level of a typical interaction. Additional measures were included to assess other aspects of standard and to determine the success of the manipulations. The results revealed that there is a consensus among high and low social-efficacy persons of what constitutes a successful interaction. The distinguishing feature appeared to be what level of interaction high and low efficacy persons are happy with and the level of interaction they felt capable of achieving. Low efficacy subjects had lower expectations and lower minimum goals of satisfaction whereas high efficacy subjects expected to achieve a level of interaction at least as high as their personal standard and beyond the level that they thought most others achieve. Further, when the interaction was successful, high efficacy subjects thought the situation demanded a lower level of interaction than they were capable of; low efficacy subjects, given the same successful experience, reported the demands of the situation to be higher than they felt capable of. The results hint at a dysfunctional standard-setting process in socially anxious persons whereby success is interpreted in a manner that may maintain anxiety. The implications that these results have for the treatment of shyness, and future directions for research on standard-setting are discussed. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

M.Ed. (Educational Psychology) / The purpose of this study is to determine what teachers' beliefs are concerning their profession: their tasks and behavior: their beliefs about themselves as educators: whether these beliefs enhance effective teaching: and how to ensure that teachers' beliefs about themselves are positive. If teachers make a difference in the classroom, it is essential to explore the perceptions teachers believe to be true about themselves. Although very little research has been done to determine what teachers believe about themselves, current research has indicated beyond doubt that teachers' beliefs and perceptions can no longer be regarded as of minor importance and has found that the teacher's beliefs about himself and his students, are the most important factors which determine the success of a teaching program. The point of departure is the Perceptual tradition and Self-concept theory. This tradition operates on the premise that all behavior is a function of the individual's perceived world. Each person has a unique system of perceptions about self and this self-concept: causes behavior and is selective as far as the assimilation of other perceptions is concerned. This tradition maintains that each person is a conscious agent who considers, constructs, interprets and then acts. Research was undertaken to investigate the beliefs that teachers hold true about themselves in respect of certain characteristics of the effective teacher as described in earlier research. The database is a conversion of the Invitational Teaching Survey (ITS) and was used to study aspects of this phenomenon. The data involved was analyzed by means of Chi-square, a cluster analysis and a factor analysis.

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