A Study of Reward Preference in Taiwanese Gifted and Nongifted Students with Differential Locus of Control

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate whether gifted and nongifted students' preferences for different types of reward were affected by differential locus of control. In total, 181 gifted and 107 nongifted junior high school students in Taiwan participated. The Nowicki-Strickland Locus of Control Scale was used as a measure of locus of control. A survey of reward preference was designed to look at students' evaluations of the reward systems. The results showed that the gifted students tended to evaluate competition rewards significantly higher when compared to the nongifted students; the nongifted students tended to evaluate chance rewards significantly higher than the gifted students. However, there was no significant difference between the gifted students and nongifted students in their evaluation of performance rewards. An interaction effect between ability and locus of control for chance rewards indicated that the nongifted/moderate and nongifted/external students preferred chance rewards more than the other groups. Irrespective of ability level, however, the findings indicated that the higher the internality, the higher were the students' preferences for the contingent (competition and performance) rewards.