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= Frog Pond Effect = The frog pond effect is the theory that individuals evaluate themselves as worse when in a group of higher performing individuals. This effect is a part of the wider social comparison theory. It relates to how individuals evaluate themselves based on comparisons to other people around them, and is generally due to upward comparisons toward people who are better than themselves.

Origin
James A. Davis first noticed this effect in 1966 in relation to college students' ambition and the impact of their local rank based on the environment they were surrounded by, i.e., they can choose to be “big frogs in little ponds or little frogs in big ponds.” Davis suggested that when students are surrounded by very high achieving classmates, they may then develop lower aspirations. His main findings related to how men (women were not included in the analysis because their results less generalizable) specifically had career decisions more closely related to their undergraduate GPA, rather than the actual quality of the school showing that students evaluated their performance as worse based on their peers from their school.

Context
McFarland and Buehler theorized that the effect happens because individuals self-monitor within-group rather than compare across groups. When evaluating oneself against in-group members versus out-group members, there is a tendency towards contextual neglect for available information, where people place more weight on their position within their group, rather than the larger general population. The closer intragroup contexts has more weight than the farther away intergroup comparison. Called the local dominance effect, this is the tendency for people to focus on the comparisons of few people around them rather than many people not as close, in regards to their self-perceptions.

A frame of reference context can be applied to look at the frog pond effect in regards to self perceptions in schools where comparing students from a nationwide sample, there were slightly negative influences of self-esteem and academic ability given the school environment. Controlling for socioeconomic status and academic potential, an average student in the a very high achieving school had lower academic self-conceptions versus an average student at a more typical school. The social comparison that comes from being in an environment of like-minded peers can contribute to the passage of privlidge in elite institutions, creating greater frog ponds.

Often times called a paradox, the frog pond effect goes against traditional social comparison theory in that high achieving people may have better self-concepts surrounded by lower achieving environments, than a comparison group of high achieving people in high achieving environments. This is paradoxical because in normal situations, one might be led to believe that a strong surrounding would lead to more achievement and greater self-evaluations, but in frog pond instances, the opposite happens.

Competition Entry
Looking at entry to competitive environments (such as in a work or school context), comparison within group significantly predicted what type of group participants wanted to be in. For example, participants were two-thirds as likely to prefer being a part of a less exclusive group where they were slightly above average compared to the other members of the group rather than those in other groups.

Espenshade, Hale, and Chung (2005) applied the frog pond effect to applications of high school students to elite universities, comparing students across their individual success as well as relative to their high school peers. They argued that basing admissions on the 3 components of the Academic Index (AI) of the primary SAT, SAT Subject Tests, and percentile class rank sets students at high achieving schools already at a disadvantage because their relative achievements are overshadowed by those of their competitive peers. Therefore, those students at less prestigious high schools would have a greater advantage for admission into those elite colleges. Indeed they found students with similar applications but different school environments were less likely to be offered admission if they came from a high achieving school where their class ranking would be lower than a similar student at a more average school.

Racial Diversity in Schools
Recently, there has been an increased focus on the impact of race into frog pond effects and how they can impact the accessibility in education contexts. Focusing on racial diversity in schools, there has been a lack of substantial success in increasing higher education representation, but with minority students having the comparable aspirations, the disconnect lies with the abilities for these students to go to college and succeed. In minority-concentrated schools, there is a tendency for lower achievement in education than comparative white-concentrated schools due in part to the peer influences of competitiveness in the latter.

There are also claims that affirmative action can inadvertently deter students from achieving their best because they are admitted to schools where they are amongst very competitive peers. Although this has been refuted by those that note the opportunities given to students who normally would not have access to them and the greater benefits for a university to have a diverse student body.

Moderators
A potential moderator for the frog pond effect is the extent to which one feels that there is a sense of collective self-esteem within the group that is high, which would then allow them to look past their local group to compare to others outside of their immediate area. Davis found was the extent that individuals felt they had "flair" or talent for the related subjects to their career choices, which was stronger for GPA than school quality.

Cross-Cultural Differences
Individuals are affected by the frog pond effect the most when they come from an individualistic culture, lack strong social connections, and have low collective self-esteem. Specifically, the decision on which "pond" to enter can be influenced by cultural differences--mainly with East Asian students more likely to choose to be in the more prestigious environment over European American students. When looking at Korean, Korean-American, and other American students, self-concepts in those of Korean students were much lower compared to the other two student groups, even give that subjectively, Korean students were better scholastically.

Big-fish-little-pond effect
In 1984, Marsh and Parker created a similar construct called the "big-fish-little-pond effect" (BFLPE) that has the same underlying concept of people evaluating their own worth against their immediate peers differs on the high or low achievements of those around them. While some people use this term interchangeably, his related phenomena gained popularity and most of the research focus from the popular book David and Goliath by Malcom Gladwell.

Dunning-Kruger effect
When people make false conclusions on their skill set in certain social or intellectual situations, this over qualifying perception of themselves is called the Dunning-Kruger effect. When people evaluate themselves, they sometimes do so because they are lacking sufficient information, in the frog pond effect, people do not have accurate representations of themselves relative to those around them and in the greater context of those not close. Specifically, these erroneous evaluations are due to the over reliance on local group comparisons, disregarding the greater comparison groups.

Mere Categorization
Mere categorization is the effect of multiple categories on consumer satisfaction, where having different categories to choose from (ex. in a magazine section you have fashion, music, current events, etc) people who are unsure of their choice will prefer having the categories. Alicke, Zell, and Bloom (2010) applied this concept to categories of evaluations groups where students were ranked in the middle of a group, either in the top 5 or bottom 5. When students appraised themselves, they had lower self-concepts if they were ranked 5th overall but categorized in the best group compared to higher evaluations when they were ranked 6th overall in the worse category group. So in this case, participants preferred to be the best of the worst than the worst of the best.