I Feel Competent, Therefore I Am: Self-concept and Skill Interact at Different Speeds

Do perceptions about one’s competence shape learning, or are they simply reflections of actual skills? This study revisits this longstanding question by replicating and extending preliminary findings by Marsh et al. (2024) on the temporal dynamics linking students’ academic self-concept (i.e., their perceived academic competence) and their academic skills. Using longitudinal data from a large-scale field study ( N > 9000 students, 3 measurement points), we tested how academic self-concept and skills relate to each other over time. Consistent with Marsh et al., results revealed a consistent temporal asymmetry: Academic skills predicted concurrent changes in self-concept within the same semester (contemporaneous effects), whereas self-concept predicted changes in academic skills across semesters (lagged effects). These findings were robust to several stress tests, including measurement error, unmeasured confounding, and competing models of change. Together, the results are consistent with a renewed theory of learning behavior, in which perceived competence and skills influence each other at different speeds. This temporal asymmetry helps integrate short-term and long-term cognitive-motivational processes in theories of learning behavior. It also underscores the importance of aligning intervention strategies and model specifications with the timescales of the underlying psychological processes, with implications for both fundamental and intervention research.