The impact of forced social comparison on adolescents? self-esteem and appearance satisfaction research, conducted on a sample of 133 high school seniors, consisted of two phases. In phase one, participants were given the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Inventory, Appearance Satisfaction Scale and Appearance Relevance Scale, and in phase two, one month later, they were exposed to photographs of attractive and unattractive individuals. Two groups of boys and girls each assessed attractive or unattractive individuals of their own gender, while two control groups (of both genders) were not exposed to any photographs. Immediately after assessing the photographs, the participants were again given the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Inventory and Appearance Satisfaction Scale. We found that forced social comparison had an impact on self-esteem and a marginally significant effect on appearance satisfaction in the group of participants (of both genders) assessing the photographs of unattractive individuals, while no effects were found in the either the control group or the group assessing the photographs of attractive individuals. We also examined the impact of self-esteem, appearance satisfaction and appearance relevance as moderating variables on the effect size of social comparison and showed that higher pretest self-esteem and appearance relevance and lower appearance satisfaction predict higher posttest self-esteem scores, regardless of the participants? group membership. The group of participants exposed to photographs of unattractive people, however, showed the opposite pattern - those participants who had initially lower self-esteem have increased it more as a result of the experimental exposure.

Relationship between epistemological beliefs and motivational orientation of high school students was studied and their relationship with school majoring, GPA and gender. To estimate epistemological beliefs and motivational orientation Schommer’s Epistemological Questionnaire (EQ) and Work Preference Inventory (WPI) were used. Through factor analysis of EQ 5 factors were extracted, that differ from those Schommer singled out. Negative correlation between naive epistemological beliefs on one side, and intrinsic (-0.327, p<0.01) and general motivation (-0.247, p<0.01) on the other, was determined. Students majoring in social sciences have more mature epistemological beliefs (F=11.278, df=1, p<0.01. Boys have more mature epistemological beliefs than girls only on factor Avoiding relating, ambiguity and dependence on authority (F=16.899, df=1, p<0.01). Correlation between epistemological beliefs and GPA was not determined. Students majoring in social sciences have higher level of motivation (F=6.626, df=1, p<0.05). Girls are more motivated by enjoying in what they are doing (F=6.261, df=1, p<0.05). [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179018