About me
Analyzing Prediction Error and Social Comparison in Audio Data
Location: 8
Mentor: Dr. Aaron Heller
We compare ourselves to the goals that we set for ourselves along with how we perform compared to our peers allowing us to determine whether we have done better, worse, or just as expected compared to our expectations or compared to other people. These comparisons, which we call prediction error (PE) and expected value prediction error (EVPE), play a role in our emotions and self-evaluation. PE is the difference between the actual outcome and the expected outcome. Social comparison can be studied as the EVPE, which is the difference between the actual outcome and the expected group outcome. Undergraduate students (N = 218) provided audio recordings after they initially received their chemistry exams scores and once every 90 minutes three times (0, 90, 180, and 270 minutes) after they received their scores for a total of four exams. Prediction errors were scored if they were mentioned in the audios. Recordings were further analyzed if the predictions errors and the social comparison factors were better or worse than anticipated. Students who did much better or worse than anticipated were likely to evaluate their prediction errors and how they performed compared to their peers, and they reported feeling positive and negative emotions, respectively. With this knowledge, we can further dive into the scored emotionality of the audio recordings, especially those of mixed sentiment, and analyze how they change over time.
