scholarly journals Kant be Compared: People High in Social Comparison Orientation Make Fewer—Not More—Deontological Decisions in Sacrificial Dilemmas

2020 ◽  
pp. 194855062094729
Author(s):  
Alexandra Fleischmann ◽  
Joris Lammers ◽  
Paul Conway ◽  
Adam D. Galinsky

The current work tests whether the dispositional tendency to compare oneself to others—social comparison orientation (SCO)—impacts decisions in moral dilemmas. Past research offers two competing predictions for how SCO impacts moral decision making: (a) SCO increases deontological judgments because people high in SCO care especially about social norms versus (b) SCO decreases deontological judgments because people high in SCO are competitive and thus unconcerned about causing harm to others. Four studies (two preregistered) find consistent support that SCO decreases deontological decisions. This relationship was robust in employing conventional (Study 1) and process dissociation (Studies 2–4) dilemma analytic techniques. Furthermore, we find that psychopathy uniquely mediates decreased deontological decisions among people high in SCO (Study 4). These results indicate that high-SCO people make fewer deontological decisions because they are less concerned with causing harm. Overall, the current research suggests that there is a dark side to making social comparisons.

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-32 ◽  
Author(s):  
N.G. Garanian ◽  
A.Y. Klykova ◽  
M.G. Sorokova

Annual reports of student counseling services and empirical findings demonstrate growing prevalence of student maladjustment. Perfectionism is among highly disputable factors of this tendency. A study was conducted in the sample of 226 Russian university students. Indices of perfectionism, social comparisons, envy and competitiveness were examined. Students high in perfectionism reported significantly higher levels of contrastive upward social comparisons, envy, hypercompetitiveness and depression than those low in perfectionism. Envy and social comparison orientation partially mediated a relationship between perfectionism and depression.


2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (13) ◽  
pp. 1743-1748
Author(s):  
Danielle Arigo ◽  
Kyle Haggerty

Little is known about social influences on long-term rehabilitation outcomes for traumatic brain injury, particularly social comparisons (i.e. self-evaluations relative to others). Patients in long-term rehabilitation ( n = 31) completed assessments at baseline and 1 year. Self-reported social comparison orientation was comparable to existing samples and showed stability over 1 year; affective responses to comparisons (e.g. frustration) were less stable. Social comparison orientation and affective responses were related to baseline executive and psychosocial functioning ( rs = 0.34–0.53) and predicted worse impairment and depression at 1 year ( ds = 0.67, 1.39). Greater attention to comparisons in long-term rehabilitation could improve outcomes.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niels van de Ven ◽  
Marcel Zeelenberg

Upward social comparison can give rise to the emotion of envy: the pain caused by the good fortune of others. We explain what envy is, and what the possible function of envy is to an organism experiencing it. We provide an overview of past work on envy, the distinction between two subtypes (benign and malicious envy), possible antecedents of envy, possible consequences of envy, and the responses to being envied by others. In each of these areas there are clear links to research on social comparison, and research on envy has greatly benefitted from insights from the social comparison literature. Given the surge in research on envy in the last decade, we hope that the findings on envy can also inspire those investigating social comparisons.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Kappes ◽  
Jay Joseph Van Bavel

From moral philosophy to programming driverless cars, scholars have long been interested in how to shape moral decision-making. We examine how framing can impact moral judgments either by shaping which emotional reactions are evoked in a situation (antecedent-focused) or by changing how people respond to their emotional reactions (response-focused). In three experiments, we manipulated the framing of a moral decision-making task before participants judged a series of moral dilemmas. Participants encouraged to go “with their first” response beforehand favored emotion-driven judgments on high-conflict moral dilemmas. In contrast, participants who were instructed to give a “thoughtful” response beforehand or who did not receive instructions on how to approach the dilemmas favored reason-driven judgments. There was no difference in response-focused control during moral judgements. Process-dissociation confirmed that people instructed to go with their first response had stronger emotion-driven intuitions than other conditions. Our results suggest that task framing can alter moral intuitions.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fanny Gyberg ◽  
Ann Frisén

The aim of this study was to investigate identity status globally and across identity domains among young Swedish adult women and men. Also, potential differences in social comparison between identity statuses were evaluated. The results showed that most of the 124 participants (50% women, Mage 33.29 years) were assigned to an achieved global identity and had made identity-defining commitments across domains. Gender differences in identity status were found in the occupational and parenthood domains. In addition, differences in social comparison orientation were found only in the parenthood domain, whereas those assigned to moratorium scored higher in social comparison than did those assigned to foreclosure and diffusion. These results bring important knowledge to our understanding of identity during young adulthood.


Author(s):  
Guoliang Yang ◽  
Zhihua Wang ◽  
Weijiong Wu

Little is known about the relationship between social comparison orientation and mental health, especially in the psychological capital context. We proposed a theoretical model to examine the impact of ability- and opinion-based social comparison orientation on mental health using data from 304 undergraduates. We also examined the mediating effect of the four psychological capital components of hope, self-efficacy, resilience, and optimism in the relationship between social comparison orientation and mental health. Results show that an ability (vs. opinion) social comparison orientation was negatively (vs. positively) related to the psychological capital components. Further, the resilience and optimism components of psychological capital fully mediated the social comparison orientation–mental health relationship. Our findings indicate that psychological capital should be considered in the promotion of mental health, and that the two social comparison orientation types have opposite effects on psychological capital.


Author(s):  
Marie-Christin Krebs ◽  
Anne Schüler ◽  
Katharina Scheiter

AbstractWe investigated in an experiment with 180 university students the joint role of prior knowledge, alleged model competence, and social comparison orientation regarding the effectiveness of Eye Movement Modeling Examples (EMME) for supporting multimedia learning. EMME consisted of short videos with gaze replays of an instructed model demonstrating effective multimedia processing strategies. Participants were either instructed that the model in the EMME-videos was a successful learner (competent model) or another participant (peer model). Participants in a control condition received no EMME. Furthermore, we activated domain-relevant prior knowledge in half of the participants before watching the EMME. Against our expectations, we found no influence of either prior knowledge activation or model-observer similarity. As expected, our results indicated that EMME fostered multimedia learning. This was also supported by findings from small-scale meta-analyses that were conducted with the focus on the effect of EMME for multimedia learning and potential moderators of the effect. Moreover, results showed first evidence that social comparison orientation interacts with (alleged) model competence regarding the effectiveness of EMME. Further research is needed to follow up on the influence of individual factors as well as social cues on the effectiveness of EMME.


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