scholarly journals Insights into the Use of Social Comparison in Migrants’ Transnational Social Positioning Strategies

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 104-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Inka Stock
Keyword(s):  
Social Comparison ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Social Comparisons ◽  
Subjective Assessment ◽  
Social Position ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Host Countries ◽  
Social Positioning ◽  
Economic Strategies ◽  
Political Actions

This article discusses the role of social comparisons in the processes through which migrants make sense of their own social position from a transnational perspective. Migrants are often involved in transnational forms of life which influence their forms of belonging, their economic strategies, their moral values and their political actions. There is also evidence to suggest that migrants use transnational frames of reference to evaluate their social positioning within their origin and host countries. In this article, we offer a methodological approach to the study of social positions in transnational spaces which aims to account for the interplay between the markers of objectively verifiable social positions and their subjective assessment by migrants. Concretely, we focus on social comparison as a mechanism for symbolic boundary drawing processes, which help migrants to make sense of their (often differing) social positions within host and origin countries. Social comparisons help migrants to evaluate how they are seen and positioned by others and subsequently bring these assessments into line with their own social categories and evaluations of their social position in different places. These findings highlight the importance of social comparisons as a tool to investigate the interaction between social and spatial mobility.

Envy and Social Comparison

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Niels van de Ven ◽  
Marcel Zeelenberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Comparison ◽  
Social Comparisons ◽  
Past Work ◽  
Good Fortune ◽  
Malicious Envy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Upward Social Comparison

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.

scholarly journals Identificação de Unidades de Paisagem: metodologia aplicada a Portugal Continental

Finisterra ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 36 (72) ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Pinto Correia ◽  
António Cancela Abreu ◽  
Rosário Oliveira
Keyword(s):  
Spatial Planning ◽  
Satellite Images ◽  
Methodological Approach ◽  
Subjective Assessment ◽  
The Other ◽  
Field Surveys ◽  
Flexible Approach ◽  
Landscape Units ◽  
The One ◽  
The University

IDENTIFICATION AND CHARACTERISATION OF LANDSCAPE IN PORTUGAL –This paper presents the concepts and methodology used in the study «Identification and characterisation of landscape in continental Portugal» undertaken by theDepartment of Landscape and Biophysical Planning of the University of Evora for the General Directorate for Spatial Planning and Urban Development (DGOT-DU) at the Ministry of the Environment and Spatial Planning, between 1999 and 2001. On the one hand, the methodological approach developed is based on the methodologies used recently for the same purpose in different European countries and on the way landscape has been considered in various European documents in the last years. On the other hand, it is also based on the team’s concern to approach the landscape as an holistic entity, and to examine its various components: ecological, cultural, socio-economic and sensorial. The set aim has been to define landscape units and to characterize these units in relation to the present landscape and the recorded trends, related problems and possibilities. Thus, the cartography relative to selected variables has been combined and related to satellite images and field surveys. The results of cross-referencing all this information has than been combined with expert examination of landscape coherence and character within each unit. The assessment was completed after careful bibliographic research and consultation with regional experts. The result is a flexible approach that combines objective analysis with a more subjective assessment, which the team considered fundamental for a true understanding of landscape.

scholarly journals Performance-based Social Comparisons in Humans and Long-tailed Macaques

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 325-350
Author(s):  
Stefanie Keupp ◽  
Farhan Abedin ◽  
Lena Jeanson ◽  
Carolin Kade ◽  
Josefine Kalbitz ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Comparison ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Social Comparisons ◽  
Task Type ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Evolutionary Origins ◽  
Human Thinking ◽  
Human Participants ◽  
Set Up ◽  
Foraging Task

Social comparisons are a fundamental feature of human thinking and affect self-evaluations and task performance. Little is known about the evolutionary origins of social comparison processes, however. Previous studies that investigated performance-based social comparisons in nonhuman primates yielded mixed results. We report three experiments that aimed (a) to explore how the task type may contribute to performance in monkeys, and (b) how a competitive set-up affects monkeys compared to humans. In a co-action touchscreen task, monkeys were neither influenced by nor interested in the performance of the partner. This may indicate that the experimental set-up was not sufficiently relevant to trigger social comparisons. In a novel co-action foraging task, monkeys increased their feeding speed in competitive and co-active conditions, but not in relation to the degree of competition. In an analogue of the foraging task, human participants were affected by partner performance and experimental context, indicating that the task is suitable to elicit social comparisons in humans. Our studies indicate that specifics of task and experimental setting are relevant to draw the monkeys’ attention to a co-actor and that, in line with previous research, a competitive element was crucial. We highlight the need to explore what constitutes “relevant” social comparison situations for monkeys as well as nonhuman animals in general, and point out factors that we think are crucial in this respect (e.g., task type, physical closeness, and the species’ ecology). We discuss that early forms of social comparisons evolved in purely competitive environments with increasing social tolerance and cooperative motivations allowing for more fine-grained processing of social information. Competition driven effects on task performance might constitute the foundation for the more elaborate social comparison processes found in humans, which may involve context-dependent information processing and metacognitive monitoring.

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.

Envy and Social Comparison

2019 ◽  
pp. 226-250
Author(s):  
Niels van de Ven ◽  
Marcel Zeelenberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Comparison ◽  
Social Comparisons ◽  
Past Work ◽  
Good Fortune ◽  
Malicious Envy ◽  
The Social ◽  
Upward Social Comparison

Upward social comparison can give rise to the emotion of envy: the pain caused by the good fortune of others. This chapter explains what envy is and what the possible function of envy is to an organism experiencing it. The authors 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 benefited from insights from the social comparison literature. Given the surge in research on envy in the last decade, the authors hope that the findings on envy inspires those investigating social comparisons.

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
Keyword(s):  
Social Comparison ◽  
Social Comparisons ◽  
Past Research ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Social Comparison Orientation ◽  
Harm To Others ◽  
Conventional Study ◽  
Consistent Support

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.

Cooperation and Competitive Goals: A Social-Comparison Analysis

1974 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 887-894 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven P. McNeel ◽  
James D. Sweeney ◽  
Peter C. Bohlin
Keyword(s):  
Social Comparison ◽  
Goal Orientation ◽  
Choice Behavior ◽  
Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽  
Social Comparisons ◽  
The Other ◽  
Comparison Analysis ◽  
Relative Gain ◽  
Competitive Outcomes ◽  
Average Condition

Ss' choice behavior in two types of mixed-motive games was used to classify them according to their predominant goal orientation. Ss with competitive (Relative Gain) goals and those with individualistic (Own Gain) goals were then presented with 50 decomposed Prisoner's Dilemma games in which they interacted with a conditionally cooperative other. Some Ss saw their own and the other person's outcomes displayed on each trial, while others also saw a bogus Average outcome. The latter outcome was constructed such that comparison with it made the mutually competitive outcomes “look bad” and the mutually cooperative outcomes “look good.” On the basis of social-comparisons, it was predicted that Relative-gain Ss would learn to cooperate in the “Average” condition but not in the Other condition. Own-gain Ss were expected to show high levels of cooperation over-all and to cooperate sooner in the Average condition than in the Other condition. Predictions were significant only for Own-gain Ss, though they were also in the expected direction for Relative-gain Ss. The discussion focused on problems with using social-comparison processes as a basis for training Ss to be cooperative, with special emphasis placed on the issue of the relevance of the available comparisons.

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