Heterogeneous effects of grade framing

This paper analyzes whether manipulating the grading scheme affects students’ test performance. Students aged 9 to 10 years are randomly assigned to three experimental conditions: gain framing of points (Control), gain framing with a negative endowment of points (Negative), and loss framing of points (Loss). Students in the Loss Treatment put more effort into the test, i.e., they answer more questions without decreasing the probability of a correct answer conditional on answering the question. Moreover, we find heterogeneous effects of grade framing by ability. Low-ability students in the Loss Treatment significantly decrease their performance while we find no significant effect for low-ability students in the Negative Treatment. In contrast, both treatments increase test performance of high-ability students.