Abstract
Research in the psychological and medical fields has consistently found that children with behavioural disorders exhibit ‘positive illusory bias’ in their perceptions of self (Hoza, Pelham, Dobbs, Owens, & Pillow, 2002). Positive Illusory Bias (PIB) is ‘operationally defined as a disparity between self-report of competence and actual competence’ (Owens, Goldfine, Evangelista, Hoza, & Kaiser, 2007, p. 336) leading to ‘an artificially inflated level of self-esteem’ (Gresham, MacMillan, Bocian, Ward, & Forness, 1998, p. 405). Prior studies have compared the self-reports of behaviourally disordered boys relative to un-referred controls either on performance tasks or in relation to parent, peer, or teacher reports. Findings are varied; however, there is some evidence that boys with social, emotional, academic, and behavioural difficulties overestimate their competence, particularly in the domains in which they are weakest (Hoza et al., 2004; Jiang & Johnston, 2014).
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Recommended reading
• Davies, B. (2006). Subjectification: The relevance of Butler’s analysis for education. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 27(4), 425–438.
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• Youdell, D. (2004). Wounds and reinscriptions: Schools, sexualities and performative subjects. Discourse, 25(4), 477–493.
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Graham, L.J. (2015). ‘I’m Happy with Who I Am’: A Discursive Analysis of the Self-Characterisation Practices of Boys in ‘Behaviour’ Schools. In: O’Reilly, M., Lester, J.N. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Child Mental Health. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137428318_28
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137428318_28
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