Social Psychology: Social Comparison

Introduction

  • Social Comparison: shapes our perceptions, memory, and behavior – even regarding the most trivial of issues

Basics

  • Social Comparison Theory
    • Leon Festinger (1954)
    • People compare themselves to others in order to fulfill a basic human desire: the need for self-evaluation
    • People come to know about themselves – their own abilities, successes, and personality – by comparing themselves with others
  • 2 Basic Categories
    • Social Norms and the Opinions of Others
    • Compare our own opinions and values to those of others when our own self-evaluation is unclear
    • Prone to look toward others – to make social comparisons – to help fill in the gaps
    • Abilities and Performance
    • The need for self-evaluation is driven by another fundamental desire: to perform better and better; “a unidirectional drive upward”
    • Compare our performance not only to evaluate ourselves but also to benchmark our performance related to another person
    • If we observe or even anticipate that a specific person is doing better than us at some ability then we may be motivated to boost our performance level

Relevance and Similarity

  • Relevance
    • The performance dimension has to be relevant to the self
    • Relevance is important when assessing opinion
    • If the issue at hand is relevant to you, you will compare your opinion to others; if not, you most likely won’t even bother
    • A necessary precondition for social comparison
  • Similarity
    • People compare themselves to those who are similar, whether similar in personal characteristics or in terms of performance
    • People will cross-reference their own opinions on an issue with others who are similar to them rather than dissimilar

Direction of Comparison

  • Upward Comparison
    • (POSITIVE): hope, inspirations
    • (NEGATIVE): dissatisfaction, envy
    • We compare ourselves to people who are better than us
    • Can threaten our self-evaluation and jeopardize self-esteem
    • Can also lead to joy and admiration for others’ accomplishments on dimensions that are not relevant to the self, where one’s self-evaluation is not under threat
  • Downward Comparison
    • (POSITIVE): gratitude
    • (NEGATIVE): scorn
    • We compare ourselves to people who are worse than us
    • May boost our self-evaluation on relevant dimensions leading to a self-enhancement effect
    • Can also lead to feelings of scorn
    • Boost to self-evaluation is so strong that it leads to an exaggerated sense of pride
  • Counterfactual: “what might have been”

Consequences of Social Comparison

  • Social comparison can impact self-esteem especially when doing well relative to others
  • Social comparison can lead to feelings of regret and envy
  • Behavioral Consequences
    • If you were to observe a discrepancy in performance between yourself and another person, then you might behave more competitively as you attempt to minimize the discrepancy
    • Although competition can raise performance it can also take more problematic forms, from inflicting actual harm to making a comment to another person
    • Likely to arise when the situation following the social comparison does not provide the opportunity to self-repair
    • When later opportunities to self-repair does exist, a more positive form of competitive motivation arises

Self-Evaluation Maintenance Model

  • Builds on social comparison theory
  • Points to a range of psychological forces that help and maintain our self-evaluation and self-esteem
  • Reveals the importance of relationship closeness
    • 2 people stand on the continuum from being complete strangers to being intimate friends
    • Affects self-evaluations
  • Can predict which of our friends and which of our comparison dimensions are self-relevant

Individual Differences

  • Social comparison and its effects on self-evaluation will often depend on personality and individual differences
  • Fixed Mindset
    • Think that their abilities and talents cannot change; thus, an upward comparison will likely threaten their self-evaluation and prompt them to experience negative consequences of social comparison
  • Growth Mindset
    • Likely to interpret an upward comparison as a challenge and an opportunity to improve themselves

Situational Factors

  • Number
    • As the number of comparison targets increases, social comparison tends to decrease
  • Local
    • Local Dominance Effect: people are more influenced by social comparison when the comparison is more localized rather than broad and general
  • Proximity to a Standard
    • Social comparison concerns increase
    • One consequence of this is an increase in competitive behavior
    • Social comparison concerns are only important in the proximity of a standard
  • Social Category Lines
    • Social comparison can also happen between groups. This is especially the case when groups come from different social categories vs the same social category

Related Phenomena

  • Frog Pond Effect
    • As a frog, would you rather be in a small pond where you’re a big frog, as a large pond where you’re a small frog?
    • People is general had a better academic self-concept if they were a big frog in a small pond rather than a small frog in a big one
  • The Dunning-Kruger Effect
    • Addresses the fact that unskilled people often think they are on par or superior to their peers in tasks
    • Overconfident; fail to accurately compare themselves or their skills within their surroundings