The Role of Cooperative Reward Interdependency in Success and Failure.
Abstract The self-worth-related consequences of success and failure for low and high performers under two reward structures (cooperative and competitive) and two reward standards (achievement and improvement) were compared. Participants were 282 middle school children who solved puzzles independently, but side-by-side in same-sex, same-grade pairs. Performance was experimentally manipulated to produce high and low performers in each pair and successful and unsuccessful pairs. Students worked under competitive or cooperative reward conditions. Results indicated that (a) regardless of reward contingencies, success or failure played a critical role in perceptions of individual differences: Failure depressed perceptions of the other student's ability in each pair and decreased reward allocations for both low and high performers, and (b) cooperative reward interdependency accentuated perceptions of ability differences.