Social Comparison

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zlatan Krizan
Keyword(s):  
Social Comparison ◽  
Role Models ◽  
Social Comparisons ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Social Identities ◽  
The Self ◽  
Human Functioning ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Better Than

Social comparison activity is one of the most important spheres of human functioning; it is necessary for appraising where one stands within his or her community and for establishing viable routes for connecting with others. Social comparison is thus a critical psychological phenomenon essential to understanding both social behavior and formation of identity. To this end, individuals look to similar others to evaluate their own abilities and opinions, look to those better than themselves for inspiration and guidance, and evaluate others depending on similarities and distinctions with the self. In addition, they evaluate their own position in life with reference to other’s positions, look to others for information about social norms and for clues about how to behave, and experience feelings toward others based on implications of mutual differences for their relationship. This renders the nature of social comparisons complex; they take horizontal forms that focus on connections or distinction, as well as vertical forms that focus on superiority or inferiority. Moreover, they may be experienced through interaction, subjectively constructed in one’s mind, or deliberately orchestrated in order to impact others. Complexities of social comparison activity are commensurate with multiple functions that they serve. First, people compare with others in order to gain self-knowledge and reduce uncertainty. Comparisons that fulfill this function typically occur with similar others, are biased toward comparing with those slightly better off, and are sensitive to diagnosticity that information about others carries for oneself. Second, people compare with others in order to self-enhance and protect well-being. Comparisons that fulfill this function often involve contrasting oneself from those worse off, although they can also involve perceiving similarities with superior others, especially when these are role models or close others. Third, people compare in order to self-improve, namely, boost their skills and abilities. Such comparisons typically occur with others that are better, yet similar in relevant attributes, and in domains that leave room for personal progress. Fourth and final, people compare in order to connect socially with others. Such comparisons occur through regular social interaction as individuals emphasize mutual similarities, through creation of comparisons to protect or embolden others, and through selection of social identities that maximize a sense of group belonging.

How Social Comparison Affects the Self

2019 ◽  
pp. 32-51
Author(s):  
Thomas Mussweiler
Keyword(s):  
Social Comparison ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Social Comparisons ◽  
The Self ◽  
Behavioral Consequences ◽  
Social Standard ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Selective Accessibility Model

Social comparisons have powerful effects on the self. They influence how people see themselves, how they feel about themselves, and how they behave. The selective accessibility model attributes these self-evaluative, affective, motivational, and behavioral consequences of social comparison to changes in the accessibility of self-knowledge. Comparing to a social standard changes what knowledge about the self is accessible, which, in turn, produces the variety of downstream comparison consequences. This chapter provides an overview of the selective accessibility model along with the pertinent empirical evidence.

scholarly journals Self Esteem and General Well Being in Adolescents with Low vs High Emotional Competence

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarvdeep Kohli ◽  
Anjali Malik ◽  
Varsha Rani
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Competence ◽  
Sample Selection ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Self Esteem ◽  
The Self ◽  
Successful Development ◽  
Emotional Evaluation ◽  
Competence Scale ◽  
Age Range ◽  
Selection Of

An essential component of youths’ successful development is learning to appropriately respond to emotions, including the ability to recognize, identify and describe one’s feelings. Emotional competence refers to one’s ability to express or release one’s inner feelings or emotions. Self-esteem reflects a person’s overall subjective emotional evaluation of his or her own worth. It is a judgment of oneself as well as an attitude toward the self. General well being refers to the harmonious functioning of the physical as well as psychological aspects of the personality, giving satisfaction to the self and benefit to the society. The present study focuses on the self esteem and general well being in adolescents with low vs high emotional competence. For this purpose, first of all emotional competence scale was administered on 260 adolescents within the age range of 15-18 years, to identify the low emotionally competent and high emotionally competent adolescents. After the sample selection of 152 subjects (76 low emotionally competent and 76 high emotionally competent) Rosenberg’s Self-esteem scale and General well being scale were administered. Results indicate that high emotionally competent adolescents have high self-esteem and better general well being than low emotionally competent adolescents.

Comparing One and Many

2019 ◽  
pp. 386-429
Author(s):  
Eleanor Putnam-Farr ◽  
Carey K. Morewedge
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Social Comparison ◽  
Social Comparisons ◽  
Judgment And Decision Making ◽  
Mental Processes ◽  
Comparison Research ◽  
Anchoring Bias ◽  
Comparison Standards ◽  
One And Many ◽  
Selection Of

Social comparisons are not only ubiquitous and influential but also represent a naturally occurring example of more general evaluative judgment. As such, they can be examined using the general types of mental processes that are used in the judgment and decision-making literature. While the direction of social comparison processes can be easily characterized as upward or downward, for instance, their specific calibration (e.g., sensitivity to absolute differences) is more difficult to determine. Insights gleaned from judgment and decision-making can inform research examining the calibration of social comparisons to different standards. In turn, the specific lessons gleaned from social comparisons, particularly with respect to how comparison targets are chosen, can inform judgment and decision-making. The chapter begins with a successful example of the integration of these literatures, research on anchoring bias. The authors then explain how social comparison research might benefit from judgment and decision-making research examining how calibration and sensitivity to absolute differences depend on the number of standards in the comparison set and their relative position on a continuum. The authors review different prototype, exemplar, and hybrid models explaining how people compare a target to distributions and sets of multiple standards, which could be of use to researchers examining social comparisons to multiple targets and groups. The chapter ends by noting how judgment and decision-making may benefit from the insight that social comparisons provide into the selection of comparison standards and directions for cross-pollination between these fields.

scholarly journals On the Etiology of Self-Enhancement and Its Association With Psychological Well-Being

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 435-445
Author(s):  
Yu L. L. Luo ◽  
Constantine Sedikides ◽  
Huajian Cai
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Common Core ◽  
Twin Study ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Intermediate Level ◽  
The Self ◽  
Psychological Well Being ◽  
Subjective Level ◽  
Positive Light ◽  
Better Than

Self-enhancement, the motive to view oneself in positive light, and its manifestations have received wide attention in behavioral sciences. The self-enhancement manifestations vary on a continuum from a subjective level (agentic narcissism, communal narcissism, narcissistic grandiosity) through an intermediate level (better-than-average judgments) to an objective level (overclaiming one’s knowledge). Prior research has established the heritability of self-enhancement manifestations at the subjective and intermediate levels. The present twin study demonstrated that (1) the objective level of self-enhancement manifestation is also heritable; (2) a common core, which is moderately heritable, underlies the three levels of self-enhancement manifestations; (3) the relation between self-enhancement (manifested at all three levels) and psychological well-being is partly heritable; and (4) environmental influences, either shared by or unique to family members, are evident through (1), (2), and (3). The findings deepen understanding of the etiology of individual differences in self-enhancement and their links to psychological well-being.

I'm “better” than you: Social comparison language suggests quantitative differences

2011 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amber N. Bloomfield ◽  
Jessica M. Choplin
Keyword(s):  
Social Comparison ◽  
The Self ◽  
Personal Attribute ◽  
Comparison Standard ◽  
Contrast Effects ◽  
The Third ◽  
Single Process ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Attribute Value

AbstractComparison-induced distortion theory (Choplin 2007; Choplin and Hummel 2002) describes how comparison words like “better” suggest quantitative differences between compared values. When a comparison word is used to contrast a personal attribute value with some standard (e.g. “Your score is better than average”), the comparison-suggested difference for the word may bias estimates or recall of personal attribute values. Three studies investigated how comparison-suggested differences determine the effect of social comparison on estimates or recall of personal attribute values. The first study demonstrated that estimates of attributes are biased towards (assimilation) or away from (contrast) a comparison standard depending on whether the difference between the compared attribute values exceeds or falls below the comparison-suggested difference. The second study showed that the comparison language selected by participants (through the difference suggested by the language) mediated the effect of standard similarity on attribute estimates following a social comparison. The third study demonstrated concurrent assimilation and contrast effects in recall of attribute values due to the size of the observed difference between the self and the standard for the attribute. Unlike in previous research on social comparison, assimilation and contrast patterns in these studies can be explained through a single process.

Self-Determination

2009 ◽  
pp. 356-366 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael L. Wehmeyer ◽  
Todd D. Little ◽  
Julie Sergeant
Keyword(s):  
Positive Psychology ◽  
Human Agency ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Psychological Construct ◽  
Human Behaviors ◽  
Human Functioning ◽  
Theoretical View ◽  
The Impact

Self-determination is a general psychological construct within the organizing structure of theories of human agency which refers to self- (vs. other-) caused action—to people acting volitionally, based on their own will. Human agency refers to the sense of personal empowerment involving both knowing and having what it takes to achieve goals. Human agentic theories share the meta-theoretical view that organismic aspirations drive human behaviors. An organismic perspective of self-determination that views people as active contributors to, or “authors” of their behavior, where behavior is self-regulated and goal-directed, provides a compelling foundation for examining and facilitating the degree to which people become self-determined and the impact of that on the pursuit of optimal human functioning and well-being. Further, an organismic approach to self-determination requires an explicit focus on the interface between the self and context. This chapter discusses the self-determination construct within an organismic perspective, surveys the construct's history and usage in philosophy and psychology, and summarizes four overarching theories of self-determination that are applicable to the field of positive psychology, as well as examining a number of complementary views of human agency as a process of self-determination. Finally, research implications based upon existing knowledge and research in self-determination and positive psychology are identified.

Self-as-Subject for Doctoral Research

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Heuristic Inquiry ◽  
Doctoral Level ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Institutional Aspects ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Internal Experience ◽  
Selection Of

This chapter presents reflections on the use of self-as-subject research within doctoral education as a pathway to explore meaning of study phenomena to uncover new knowledge from the individual of the self. Knowledge is contextual and discoverable from within this rich internal experience of the researcher-participant and extant and contemporary perspectives are presented to illustrate the importance and appropriateness of the selection of self-as-subject research methods including autoethnography and heuristic inquiry for doctoral-level research. The importance of the relational aspects of the doctoral researcher and doctoral research supervisor is briefly considered as well as contextual and institutional aspects necessary to inform doctoral researchers who may choose these methods of inquiry.

Social Comparison: Why, With Whom, and With What Effect?

2002 ◽  
Vol 11 (5) ◽  
pp. 159-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerry Suls ◽  
René Martin ◽  
Ladd Wheeler
Keyword(s):  
Social Comparison ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Evaluation ◽  
Maximum Effort ◽  
Utility Evaluation ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Relative Standing ◽  
Comparison Target

Social comparison consists of comparing oneself with others in order to evaluate or to enhance some aspects of the self. Evaluation of ability is concerned with the question “Can I do X?” and relies on the existence of a proxy performer. A proxy's relative standing on attributes vis‐à‐vis the comparer and whether the proxy exerted maximum effort on a preliminary task are variables influencing his or her informational utility. Evaluation of opinions is concerned with the questions “Do I like X?”“Is X correct?” and “Will I like X?” Important variables that affect an individual's use of social comparison to evaluate his or her opinions are the other person's expertise, similarity with the individual, and previous agreement with the individual. Whether social comparison serves a self-enhancement function depends on whether the comparer assimilates or contrasts his or her self relative to superior or inferior others. The kinds of self‐knowledge made cognitively accessible and variables such as mutability of self-views and distinctiveness of the comparison target may be important determinants of assimilation versus contrast.

Self-Complexity and Well-Being: A Review and Research Synthesis

2002 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 31-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eshkol Rafaeli-Mor ◽  
Jennifer Steinberg
Keyword(s):  
Information Theory ◽  
Life Events ◽  
Meta Analysis ◽  
Research Synthesis ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Self ◽  
Counting Procedure ◽  
Self Knowledge ◽  
Stress Buffer ◽  
Effect Magnitude

We reviewed the extant literature examining Linville's (1985, 1987) self-complexity (SC) model. SC is a structural feature of people's self-knowledge. Linville (1987) proposed that SC serves as a cognitive buffer against extreme affective reactions to life events. We report results of two procedures: a classic meta-analysis and a more primitive vote-counting procedure. Overall, SC was negatively, but weakly, related to well-being, a relationship qualified by strong heterogeneity among studies. We found little support for SC as a stress buffer, but more support as a moderator of uplifting events. Several methodological and substantive variables (e.g., the type of well-being studied, the valence of SC, and characteristics of the samples and designs used) were associated with effect magnitude. We discuss implications for competing theories of self-structure and comment on the use of information theory in studying the self.

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