Putting big fish into a bigger pond: self-concept changes in psychology undergraduate entrants

ABSTRACT

The transition to higher education is a topic of concern for educators around the world. In fact, the shift to a more competitive educational environment can negatively impact students’ academic self-concept, which, in turn, might lead to lower persistence and less adaptive educational decisions. To examine how psychology students adapt to the transition to such an environment, the present article examines changes in psychology entrants’ academic self-concepts. A four-wave longitudinal study covering students’ first three semesters was conducted. Since the transition to higher education implies that students compare themselves to a stronger reference group, we expected academic self-concept to decrease over time (i.e. a big fish little pond effect). Moreover, we expected secondary school grades, study grades and gender to moderate self-concept development. While we found no evidence for a big fish little pond effect, we found that study grades and gender indeed moderate self-concept development: while self-concept scores of students with better grades increased with time, the contrary occurred for students with lower grades. Moreover, females’ self-concepts remained largely constant whereas those of men increased considerably over time. We conclude that, in terms of self-concept changes, psychology undergraduates seem to adapt rather well to the transition to higher education. Future research should investigate whether or not these findings are generalisable to other academic fields, especially to disciplines that attract students with a broader range of achievements.

KEYWORDS:

• academic self-concept
• longitudinal study
• psychology students
• social comparisons
• temporal comparisons

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. In Germany, the grading system for secondary and higher education is very similar and ranges from 1 (very good) to 5 (insufficient).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Joint Initiative for Research and Innovation with a grant acquired in the Leibniz Competition 2013 [grant number SAW-2013-ZPID-1 195].

Notes on contributors

Tom Rosman

Dr Tom Rosman is a post-doctoral researcher at ZPID. After graduating in 2012 (Dipl.-Psych.), he completed his PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) in 2015. His dissertation (‘WisE’, funded from 2013–2016 by the Leibniz Association) dealt with the measurement of information literacy through standardised tests. His current research focuses on epistemic beliefs, psychological processes involved in dealing with conflicting information and research literacy.

Anne-Kathrin Mayer

Dr Anne-Kathrin Mayer is Head of the Research Literacy and User-Friendly Research Support Department at the Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information.

Nikolas Leichner

Dr Nikolas Leichner was Research Associate at the Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information until 2016. Currently, he is working at the University of Koblenz Landau in Germany.

Günter Krampen

Professor Günter Krampen was Director of the Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information as well as Professor of Clinical Psychology, Psychotherapy, and Scientometrics at the University of Trier until 2017. To date, he is professor emeritus at the University of Trier.