Cooperation and Competitive Goals: A Social-Comparison Analysis

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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Comparisons Across Dimensions, People, and Time: On the Primacy of Social Comparison in Self-Evaluations

Social Psychological and Personality Science ◽

10.1177/1948550619884564 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (6) ◽

pp. 791-800 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Ethan Zell ◽

Jason E. Strickhouser

Keyword(s):

Social Comparison ◽

Social Comparisons ◽

The Other ◽

Affective Reactions ◽

Past Performance ◽

Temporal Comparison ◽

Upward Comparison

People often consider how their performance in one domain compares to their performance in other domains, the performance of other people, and their past performance (i.e., dimensional, social, and temporal comparison). The present research is the first to test whether social comparisons have a significantly larger effect on self-evaluations than dimensional and temporal comparisons. Study 1 participants received downward versus upward dimensional, social, and temporal comparison feedback ( N = 393). Study 2 participants received downward versus upward comparison feedback for one type and lateral comparisons for the other two types ( N = 281). Dimensional and social comparison significantly influenced self-evaluations and affective reactions in both studies. As anticipated, however, social comparison had a significantly larger effect on self-evaluations and affective reactions than either dimensional or temporal comparison. These data provide novel, causal evidence for the primacy of social comparison when people receive three feedback types.

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The Effect of Malicious Envy on Schadenfreude When Schadenfreude Is Elicited Through Social Comparisons

Frontiers in Psychology ◽

10.3389/fpsyg.2021.769826 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 ◽

Author(s):

Huiyan Lin ◽

Jiafeng Liang

Keyword(s):

Social Comparison ◽

Social Comparisons ◽

The Other ◽

Malicious Envy ◽

Gain And Loss ◽

Loss Frame ◽

Gain Frame ◽

Exact Amount

Previous studies have investigated whether envy, particularly malicious envy, increases feelings of schadenfreude and whether this effect is evident in both gain and loss frames. However, as a social-comparison-based emotion, schadenfreude was not investigated through social comparisons in these previous studies. Thus, the present study aimed to investigate whether malicious envy influences schadenfreude when schadenfreude is elicited in the context of precise and ambiguous social comparisons. To address this issue, participants in the present study were asked to play a monetary game with several other players. In the experimental condition, participants gained less or lost more than the other player; in the control condition, both the participants and the player gained little or lost much. Subsequently, the participants observed that the player encountered a misfortune, that is, gained less or lost more money than the participant. The results showed that when participants knew the exact amount of monetary gained and lost by themselves and the other player (i.e., precise social comparisons), malicious envy increased feelings of schadenfreude only in the loss frame rather than in the gain frame. More importantly, malicious envy turned out to reduce feelings of schadenfreude in both gain and loss frames, when participants did not know the exact amount (i.e., ambiguous social comparisons). The findings provide novel evidence that malicious envy does not always increase schadenfreude particularly when schadenfreude is elicited through social comparisons.

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Mother to mother: Mothers’ social comparison-based emotions on social networking sites

Europe’s Journal of Psychology ◽

10.5964/ejop.v16i4.2159 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 16 (4) ◽

pp. 602-618

Author(s):

Leman Pinar Tosun ◽

Ahu Öztürk ◽

Gamze Özdemir

Keyword(s):

Social Networking ◽

Social Comparison ◽

Social Networking Sites ◽

Online Survey ◽

Social Comparisons ◽

The Other ◽

Emotion Classification ◽

Internal Process ◽

The Social ◽

Wide Range

Social networking sites (SNSs) are platforms where people make social comparisons very frequently, and because of those comparisons, they have the potential for evoking a wide range of emotions. According to typology of social comparison-based emotions, the emotions felt after social comparisons may vary according to the direction of comparison (upward vs. downward) as well as the internal process that triggered by those comparisons (assimilation vs. contrast). The current study aims to examine the mothers' emotions they felt after social comparisons they make with other mothers on the SNSs, and search out the usefulness of using the typology of social comparison-based emotions in examining those emotions. For this purpose, an online survey was conducted on 42 mothers between the ages of 20 and 48, who have been a member of SNSs for at least six months. Mothers responses to two open-ended questions; one is about the emotions they feel after upward comparisons, and the other is about the ones that they felt after downward comparison they made with other mothers on SNSs, were examined through thematic analyses. The results pointed out that the emotion classification offered in Smith’s theory might be useful in examining the social comparisons on SNSs made by mothers, with the addition of some new categories. Specifically, it was found that some mothers feel doubts about the credibility of information in other mothers’ posts, and some others denied they are emotionally influenced by social comparisons. Another interesting finding was that mothers reported to feel assimilative and contrastive emotions simultaneously.

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Passive Facebook Use and Depression

Journal of Media Psychology Theories Methods and Applications ◽

10.1027/1864-1105/a000269 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 32 (4) ◽

pp. 165-175 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Leman Pınar Tosun ◽

Ezgi Kaşdarma

Keyword(s):

Social Comparisons ◽

Path Model ◽

The Other ◽

Facebook Use ◽

Psychological Mechanism ◽

Model Fits

Abstract. In the current study we examined a psychological mechanism linking Facebook use to depression. A survey was conducted with 319 undergraduates about their passive Facebook use, their frequency of making upward social comparisons on Facebook, the emotions evoked through these comparisons, and their levels of depression. Half of the participants were given questions about the Facebook comparisons they made with their close friends, while the other half were given questions about the Facebook comparisons they made with acquaintances. Analysis of the whole sample revealed that upward Facebook comparison elicited assimilative emotions (inspiration, optimism, and admiration) more than contrastive emotions did (envy and resentment). A path model was developed in which passive use of Facebook predicted the frequency of making upward social comparisons, and, in turn, the frequency of making upward Facebook comparisons predicted depression through two routes: one through contrastive emotions and other through assimilative emotions. The results suggested that the model fits the data. As expected, the frequency of upward Facebook comparisons was associated with the increases in frequency of both contrastive and assimilative emotions, and the associations of these two types of emotions with depression were in opposite directions: Depression increased as the frequency of contrastive emotions increased, and it decreased as the frequency of assimilative emotions increased. The strength of the latter aforementioned association was stronger when the comparison targets were acquaintances rather than close friends.

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Envy and Social Comparison

10.31234/osf.io/d2cq9 ◽

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.

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The Prisoner's Dilemma Game and Cooperation in the Rat

Psychological Reports ◽

10.2466/pr0.1984.55.3.687 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 55 (3) ◽

pp. 687-696 ◽

Cited By ~ 14

Author(s):

Rick M. Gardner ◽

Terry L. Corbin ◽

Janelle S. Beltramo ◽

Gary S. Nickell

Keyword(s):

Game Theory ◽

Visual Communication ◽

Prisoner's Dilemma ◽

Human Subjects ◽

Cooperative Behavior ◽

Prisoner’S Dilemma ◽

The Other ◽

Prisoner’S Dilemma Game ◽

Prisoner's Dilemma Game ◽

Cooperative Behaviors

Cooperation in pairs of rats playing the prisoner's dilemma game was investigated. Six pairs of animals were taught to make either cooperative or uncooperative responses by running to one or the other end of a T-maze. Two T-mazes were joined together such that animals could respond simultaneously. Animals were run under conditions in which visual communication was present and absent. Mutually uncooperative responses were the most common and mutually cooperative behaviors the least preferred. Introduction of a barrier between the mazes, which removed visual communication between pairs, sharply accentuated uncooperative behavior. Similarities of the present findings to results with human subjects and the implications of using game theory for studying cooperative behavior in animals are discussed.

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Choice-Driven Counterfactuals

Journal of Philosophical Logic ◽

10.1007/s10992-021-09629-1 ◽

2021 ◽

Author(s):

Ilaria Canavotto ◽

Eric Pacuit

Keyword(s):

Choice Behavior ◽

The Other ◽

Philosophical Literature ◽

Stit Logic

AbstractIn this paper, we investigate the semantics and logic of choice-driven counterfactuals, that is, of counterfactuals whose evaluation relies on auxiliary premises about how agents are expected to act, i.e., about their default choice behavior. To do this, we merge one of the most prominent logics of agency in the philosophical literature, namely stit logic (Belnap et al. 2001; Horty 2001), with the well-known logic of counterfactuals due to Stalnaker (1968) and Lewis (1973). A key component of our semantics for counterfactuals is to distinguish between deviant and non-deviant actions at a moment, where an action available to an agent at a moment is deviant when its performance does not agree with the agent’s default choice behavior at that moment. After developing and axiomatizing a stit logic with action types, instants, and deviant actions, we study the philosophical implications and logical properties of two candidate semantics for choice-driven counterfactuals, one called rewind models inspired by Lewis (Nous13(4), 455–476 1979) and the other called independence models motivated by well-known counterexamples to Lewis’s proposal Slote (Philos. Rev.87(1), 3–27 1978). In the last part of the paper we consider how to evaluate choice-driven counterfactuals at moments arrived at by some agents performing a deviant action.

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

Animal Behavior and Cognition ◽

10.26451/abc.08.03.02.2021 ◽

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.

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