- Email: [email protected]
Social Comparison, Psychology of
Social Comparison, Psychology of Ladd Wheeler, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia Jerry Suls, Division of Cancer Control and Population Sciences, National Cancer Institute, Bethesda, MD, USA Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract Social comparison theory deals with self-evaluation of abilities, opinions, and other personal attributes through comparing the self with others. We outline the original theory and the methods used to study it empirically. We discuss how individuals may compare upward or downward and may assimilate their self-evaluations toward or contrast away from the comparison person. We close with a discussion of implications for education, health, and happiness.
Social comparison occurs when an individual compares himself or herself to another person. The dimension on which the comparison is made can be almost anything – attractiveness, tennis skill, wealth, etc. The comparison might be sought deliberately, might occur in a chance encounter, or might be forced upon the person by the social environment. It is not social comparison when one compares one person to another, as in comparing one neighbor to another; the individual making the comparison must be included in the comparison for it to fit the commonly accepted definition of a social comparison. It is not a social comparison when one compares oneself at Time 1 to oneself at Time 2; this is a temporal comparison (Albert, 1977).
correctness of our opinions. Consequently, we will try to change others or ourselves in order to achieve similarity, and we will reject others if similarity with them cannot be achieved. Although the original theory dealt with opinions and abilities, most of the research done after the 1950s has been on abilities or ability like personal attributes. The original theory focused on the accurate evaluation of abilities/ opinions, but later research has focused less on the accuracy of evaluation and more on the self-esteem implications of evaluation. We do not just want to know how charming we are; we want to know that we are very charming indeed. Wanting to know certain things about ourselves influences both the comparisons we make and how we interpret or construe those comparisons.
The Original Theory Methods for Studying Social Comparison Leon Festinger’s (1954) paper, A Theory of Social Comparison Processes, still serves as the basic formulation, although there have been many additions and revisions. Festinger argued that it is necessary for people to know what they are capable of doing and to hold correct opinions about the world. Sometimes people can perform a physical reality test on their abilities and opinions, but that could be dangerous, inconvenient, or impossible. For example, if individuals want to know whether they can swim across a swift river, they could simply try it, but that could be dangerous. If it is a person’s opinion that the Russian Revolution would not have occurred without V.I. Lenin, there is simply no physical reality test for the truth of that opinion. Consequently, people often seek social reality rather than physical reality for their abilities and opinions, and that social reality is obtained through social comparison. An important difference between opinions and abilities in Festinger’s theory is a unidirectional drive upward for abilities but not for opinions. Regardless of the ability, people would generally like to have more of it than other people have. With opinions, however, people feel confident when they have the same opinions as others. Thus, all the members of a group can be satisfied when they have the same opinion, but not when they have exactly the same level of ability. The central argument of the theory is that we need to compare with similar people in order to achieve a precise estimate of our abilities and the
210
The three major methods for studying social comparison are ‘selection’ approaches, which examine the characteristics of the people with whom individuals choose to compare; ‘reaction’ approaches, which examine individuals’ emotional or cognitive reactions to comparison information; and ‘narration’ approaches, which examine individuals’ self-reports of comparisons made (Wood, 1996). Each of these will be examined below.
The Selection Approach Individuals are given the choice of two or more comparison targets that differ in theoretically important ways. The choices they make (and related data) provide clues concerning social comparison motives. The first notable example, known as the ‘rank-order paradigm,’ was introduced to study the unidirectional drive upward. Experimental participants were tested on a (fictitious) desirable or undesirable personality trait, such as ‘intellectual flexibility’ and were told that they occupied the middle rank in a group of several other participants tested at the same time. Participants were given their own (fictitious) score on the test, as well as the rank of each of the other participants, and were told that they could be shown the score of one other person in the group. The rank of the person participants chose to see could be of someone better off than
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 22
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.24026-9
Social Comparison, Psychology of themselves (known as an ‘upward comparison’) or worse off than themselves (a ‘downward comparison’). In most of the experiments using this method, participants chose to see the scores of those just above them in the rank order. That is, they wanted to compare their scores to slightly better scores (Wheeler, 1966), supporting the similarity hypothesis and the unidirectional drive upward.
The Reaction Approach Individuals are presented with social comparison information, and their responses to that information are measured. In what is known as the Mr Clean/Mr Dirty study, job applicants casually encountered another applicant whose appearance was either socially desirable (dark suit, well-groomed, and confident) or socially undesirable (torn and smelly clothes, poorly groomed, and confused). Those participants who encountered Mr Clean showed a decrease in self-esteem measured a few minutes later, whereas those who encountered Mr Dirty showed an increase in self-esteem (Morse and Gergen, 1970). In this research, participants contrasted themselves against the other job applicant, but this is not always what happens. As we will discuss below, sometimes people will assimilate their self-judgments to the comparison standard.
The Narrative Approach This nonexperimental approach attempts to measure the comparisons that people make or have made in their everyday lives. At the most basic level, participants are sometimes asked whom they have compared themselves with in the past. This places too great a burden on memory, however, and a better method is the Social Comparison Record, a diary recording of all comparisons as they occur over a period of 2 weeks, including the dimension of comparison, the direction (e.g., upward, downward), relationship to the target, and mood before and after the comparison (Wheeler and Miyake, 1992). When participants were experiencing negative affect, they made upward comparisons. In contrast, when the same participants were experiencing positive affect, they made downward comparisons. Such a result is consistent with affect–cognition priming models in which affect primes (make ready and available) cognitions about the self that are congruent with the affect. Experiencing negative affect primes a person to have negative thoughts about the self and thus to see others as superior to the self, leading to a contrastive upward comparison and further feelings of inferiority and negative affect. This research also showed that there was generally a negative emotional response to upward comparisons, and a positive emotional response to downward comparisons. Finally, downward comparisons were more frequent than upward comparisons. Free response measures are also narrative in approach. These are spontaneous statements, usually made during the course of an interview or conversation, implying comparisons. Wood et al. (1985) reported that breast cancer patients made many free response comparison statements, most of which seemed to indicate downward comparison, such as “I think I am coping a little better than these other women.”
211
The Changing Face of Similarity Festinger (1954) argued that we must compare with similar others in order to make accurate self-evaluations, but he was not clear about the kind of similarity that was important. At first, investigators focused on (1) similarity on the dimension under evaluation, as we described for the rank-order paradigm. A person wanting to evaluate his or her speed in messaging would compare to someone who is slightly faster. This really does not tell you how fast you are compared to all other people, or whether you should take up thumb work as a profession; it merely tells you that you are or are not faster than the other person. Moreover, there is circularity in saying that we should compare to similar others – if we already know they are similar, why compare with them? To deal with this problem, Goethals and Darley (1977) proposed the ‘related attributes’ hypothesis. A person should compare to (2) someone who is similar to him or her on attributes related to and predictive of the dimension to be evaluated. Thus, the person should seek a comparison standard who is equally young and dexterous and who spends the same amount of time each day messaging. The person ought to perform about the same as this comparison standard, and if the person outperforms the standard, they will feel that he or she has an unusual ability. In short, the related attributes hypothesis does allow us to get a better understanding of our capabilities and to choose appropriate competitors. A later attempt to untangle the question of similarity was based on the realization that Festinger was not so concerned with whether one labeled oneself as having low or high ability, but rather with the action possibilities of having a given level of ability. For example, one of the questions addressed by Festinger’s theory was ‘Can I do X?’ Can I swim across the river? Can I complete a college degree? Can I have both a family and a career? One way to answer such questions is to compare oneself to someone – called a proxy – who seems to have a similar level of ability and who has already succeeded at the task (Wheeler et al., 1997). If people seem to have the same amount or more of the ability required as the proxy does, they could conclude with some confidence that they could also perform the task. There are two ways that people can be confident that they have as much of the underlying ability as the proxy: (1) they previously have competed directly against the proxy and have performed as well as the proxy at his best, or (2) they have observed the proxy performing and are similar to the proxy on attributes related to the ability. In both cases, they have established with some degree of certainty that they are similar in ability to the proxy and thus have the same action possibilities. This allows them to pursue the task with some confidence that they, like the proxy, have the right stuff to succeed. We believe that this is the correct interpretation of why Festinger argued that the comparison target should be similar in order for accurate self-evaluation to occur. Individuals want to evaluate their ability to perform some action successfully, and they determine this by comparing with a proxy of similar ability who has already performed that action. Lockwood and Kunda (1997), who exposed first year and fourth year university students to a newspaper article about a superstar fourth year student, illustrated this nicely. Participants and superstar were matched on the related attributes of
212
Social Comparison, Psychology of
gender and academic major. In a control condition, participants did not read about any target. The dependent variable was self-ratings on 10 adjectives related to career success. The first year students, with time to work toward the success of the superstar, gave themselves high self-ratings, but the fourth year students, who had missed the chance to be a superstar, did not. The first year students used the superstar as a proxy to determine what they might achieve in the future.
Opinion Comparison As mentioned earlier, comparison of opinions has not been as actively studied as abilities and traits. This is somewhat surprising because persuasion has been an intense area of social psychological research for decades. The likely explanation is in everyday life, persuasive messages most often involve not just learning the source’s (comparative) view but also being exposed to arguments. To identify the pure ‘comparison effect,’ researchers need to strip the comparison process away from the persuasive content, but this limits ecological validity. Despite this matter, the related attribute approach devoted some attention to opinion comparison. First, in contrast to Festinger who treated opinions generically, Goethals and Darley distinguished between belief and value opinions. Beliefs refer to verifiable facts, whereas values are personal preferences. Comparisons with similar others on related attributes, such as background and general worldview, are of most utility for value assessment. For beliefs, however, someone who is dissimilar on related attributes was hypothesized to be more useful because they provide a different perspective to ‘triangulate on’ the truth. The more recent triadic model (Suls et al., 2000) concurs with Goethals and Darley’s prediction about values, but to assess facts, people should prefer to compare with someone who is superior on related attributes (conferring more expertise) not just dissimilar per se. Since few facts are completely value-free, however, someone who has more expertise and also shares the same basic values (i.e., worldview) is probably most preferred. The triadic model refers to such a person as a ‘similar expert,’ and illustrated by the finding that gay men are more likely to adopt safe-sex practices when they are advocated by someone who is both more knowledgeable and shares their sexual orientation (Kelly et al., 1991). The new model is called ‘triadic’ because it adds a third kind of opinion comparison, which concerns predictions about affective responses to future situations (e.g., will I like that new film ‘X’?). I can predict my future response with some confidence by learning about the response to ‘X’ of a proxy who has already viewed the film. The proxy should be considered appropriate if he/she shares related attributes or past pattern of agreement with respect to other films. Suls et al. (2000) presented supportive empirical evidence for the triadic model predictions.
Assimilation and Contrast Until the 1990s, most students of social comparison theory believed that comparison always led to contrast with the
comparison target. That is, an upward comparison (with someone better) lowered a person’s self-evaluation, and a downward comparison (with someone worse) raised the selfevaluation, as shown in the Mr Clean/Mr Dirty study. There was even a subsidiary theory called ‘Downward comparison principles in social psychology’ that argued that when people are psychologically threatened they will deliberately seek out someone worse to compare themselves to in order to relieve their distress (Wills, 1981). This theory was quite influential during the 1980s until accumulating evidence caused it to be abandoned. The basic problem with the theory is that when people are psychologically threatened, they are more inclined to see others as superior to themselves and would have difficulty in finding and using downward comparison targets. We discussed previously the research showing that when people are experiencing negative affect, they are more likely to make upward comparisons rather than downward comparisons (Wheeler and Miyake, 1992). Presumably, this happens because negative affect causes people to perceive themselves negatively and to perceive most other people as superiors to themselves. In short, although downward comparison does generally make people feel better, people who are distressed or threatened find it difficult to find and use downward comparisons. While believing that comparison usually led to contrast, researchers were aware that the rank-order studies, among others, had shown that people usually compare upward. If comparing upward leads to contrasting feelings of inferiority, why would people do it?
Upward Assimilation Theory Buunk et al. (1990) asked married individuals and cancer patients to indicate how often they experienced both positive and negative emotions when comparing upward and downward. In the case of cancer patients, the downward comparison target was doing worse with the cancer, and the upward target was doing better. In the case of married individuals, the downward comparison was a marital relationship worse than that of the respondent, and the upward comparison was better. For both cancer and marital quality, the direction of comparison did not dictate how often positive or negative affect was experienced – both directions had positive and negative aspects. The paper was important in showing that upward comparison does not necessarily lead to negative affect, but can also lead to feeling inspired, comforted, happy, and pleased. Collins (1996, 2000), one of the authors of the paper just described, undertook a thorough review of the positive effects of upward comparison and proposed a theory of upward assimilation. She argued that upward comparison could lead to either contrast or assimilation depending upon whether the comparison was construed as showing similarity to, or difference from, the comparison standard. People are more likely to construe themselves as similar to upward targets if they expect to be similar to the upward targets. In the rank-order paradigm study discussed above (Wheeler, 1966), participants who expected to be more similar to the person above them in the rank order than to the person below them choose to compare with the person above them. The interpretation was that they had
Social Comparison, Psychology of
assumed similarity upward and wanted to confirm that they were indeed similar to that person. According to Collins, some variables that might lead to such expectations of similarity to upward targets are (1) high self-esteem, (2) shared distinctiveness with the upward target (such as belonging to the same club), and (3) the direction of comparison. People with high self-esteem generally think that they are as good or better than others are and so should expect to be similar to upward targets. People who share distinctiveness with the upward target draw the conclusion that if they are similar on one distinctive thing, they are probably similar on performance as well. People who are comparing upward have higher expectation of similarity than those comparing downward because of the unidirectional drive upward. Of course, other variables in addition to selfesteem, shared distinctiveness, and the direction of comparison, such as similarity on related attributes (Goethals and Darley, 1977), might lead to expectations of similarity on performance. Whatever leads us to expect similarity and thus to construe that we are similar to upward comparison targets, the result is an increase of some sort in our own self-evaluations. For example, an academic person with six publications might compare with another academic person with 10 publications. If individuals construe 6 publications to be similar to 10 publications, they will conclude that they are solid (and satisfied) members of that class of academician with 6 to 10 publications. If they construe 6 publications and 10 publications to be dissimilar, they will feel inferior to those with 10 publications. Nosanchuk and Erickson (1985) provided a dramatic example of upward assimilation among bridge players. Players indicated that in a variety of situations, they would prefer to compare themselves to players of similar ability. However, when they named the particular players they would compare with, these players turned out to be objectively better players with more master points. Thus, the bridge players had assimilated their ability to the ability of the superior players. Upward assimilation is an increase in one’s self-evaluation because of making an upward comparison. Although this has often been obscured, it is not simply a happy feeling or feeling positive about the future but is a perceptual change in one’s self-evaluation. Collins (1996, 2000) noted that downward assimilation is not likely to occur, because of the unidirectional drive upward. Our need to be better and to improve works against downward assimilation.
The Selective Accessibility Model Mussweiler (2003) proposed a theory in agreement with that of Collins (1996, 2000) but using concepts from the social cognition literature and giving more detail about the mechanisms involved in social comparison. At the moment of exposure to social comparison information, a person makes a tentative judgment of similarity or dissimilarity to the comparison target. Salient features (such as gender, race, or age) of the comparison target determine this judgment. Then the person searches for information consistent with the preliminary judgment of similarity or dissimilarity. Whether one searches for similarity information or dissimilarity information, one is likely to find it because our view of ourselves is remarkably rich and complicated. It is easy to find information
213
whether one is similar or dissimilar to another person. That information then becomes selectively accessible when we make judgments about ourselves. If we have searched for information that we are similar to the standard, we are likely to assimilate our self-evaluations toward the target. If we have searched for information that we are dissimilar to the target, we are likely to contrast our self-evaluations away from the target. The selective accessibility model (SAM) is elegantly simple and explains a wide variety of empirical results. Contrast is more likely if the standard is extreme or unattainable, or if the standard belongs to an out-group, both of which would lead to an initial hypothesis of dissimilarity. Assimilation is more likely to occur if there is psychological closeness with the standard, which would lead to a search for similarity. If people prior to comparison are asked to point out similarities between two drawings (i.e., procedural priming), they subsequently will more likely assimilate to the comparison standard than if they have pointed out differences. A shortcoming is that the SAM does not explicitly recognize that self-protective concerns may bias comparisons. For example, there is abundant evidence that people assimilate upward, but there is almost no evidence of downward assimilation. The SAM would argue that upward and downward assimilation are equally likely. In fairness, however, one could modify the SAM slightly and state that one would not search for similarity with a downward standard because of self-esteem concerns. Mussweiler and colleagues have performed numerous experiments that support the SAM. However, an unfortunate aspect of this research is that adequate control groups are rarely used. Conditions that should lead to assimilation are compared to conditions that should lead to contrast. When there is a difference, the researchers argue that they have confirming evidence for the SAM. However, without a control group that is not exposed to any comparison target, there is no way to know whether assimilation has occurred, contrast has occurred, or both have occurred. Mussweiler makes an important distinction between subjective and objective self-evaluation. An upward comparison standard has two effects. First, it produces a search for similarity to the standard and thus makes accessible knowledge that the self is similar to the high standard. Second, it serves as a reference point (or scale anchor) for making a subjective self-evaluation. The comparison standard may alter the interpretation of subjective rating scales (‘very intelligent’ may be interpreted differently in the context of a professor than in the context of an infant). These two influences work in opposite directions when making a subjective judgment. If one compares to an intelligent standard (say, professor) one may search for and find information about the self that indicates high intelligence. If then asked to indicate one’s intelligence on a subjective scale from 1 to 10, one may assume that 10 is close to the professor’s intelligence and so may contrast oneself away from this endpoint despite having accessible information that one is intelligent. Whether assimilation or contrast occurs depends upon the relative strength of the selective accessibility and the reference point effects. On the other hand, if objective self-evaluations are used, there is
214
Social Comparison, Psychology of
no reference point effect to worry about. Objective selfevaluation questions pertaining to intelligence might inquire about the amount of time taken to solve a crossword puzzle, or the number of unknown words encountered in a typical book. Because of the ambiguity of subjective self-evaluations, Mussweiler always uses objective self-evaluations.
Assimilation and Contrast in Education Social comparison tendencies should be strong in education settings when students compare their performance with others in their class or school and draw conclusions about their academic ability. The frog pond effect (Davis, 1966) refers to the fact that students attending highly selective schools have lower academic self-concepts than those attending nonselective schools (holding academic ability constant). This has been demonstrated in elementary, middle, and high schools across more than 40 countries (Seaton et al., 2009). The explanation is that people compare with those around them and ignore the larger context. Students in a highly selective school ought to have high academic selfconcepts; after all, they have earned a place in the highly selective school. However, when they compare themselves with their classmates, they find that they are not superior in ability, and they ignore the fact that their classmates are near the top of the ability continuum. Zell and Alicke (2009) have referred to this contextual neglect of general comparison information as the ‘local dominance effect’ and have shown that being the best or worst performer in a group of five people influences self-evaluation more than the information about one’s standing among 1500 other individuals. During early development, we compare with family members and small groups of peers, and this continues to be a salient mode of self-evaluation as we mature. In an international collaboration, Huguet et al. (2009) conducted a highly detailed study of social comparison in French public schools. They showed that the frog pond effect was indeed due to the students’ perceived relative standing in the class; those who perceived themselves as having relatively low standing had lower academic self-concepts. Thus, contrastive social comparison caused the frog pond effect. The students also named those classmates with whom they chose to compare grades. They named classmates who on average had slightly better grades, and to the extent that they did so, the students had higher academic self-concepts. Thus, assimilative social comparison occurred independently of contrastive social comparison. The assimilative comparison related to comparisons the students deliberately chose to make, whereas the contrastive comparison related to the comparisons forced on the students by the class average. Of the two effects, the reduction in self-concept due to contrastive comparison was much larger than the increase in self-concept due to assimilative comparisons. Although students named objectively superior classmates as the ones they usually compared with, they believed that they were similar to these superior others, precisely the results of the Nosanchuk and Erickson (1985) study of bridge players. They had assimilated their own ability upward.
Chronic Illness and Social Comparison Earlier we mentioned the application of comparison processes to the coping of cancer patients. As illness creates uncertainty and stress, social comparison can play a role in coping and adjustment of medical patients. There have been many descriptive–correlational studies and a smaller set of experiments using the reaction methodology to explore the role of social comparison among medical patients (e.g., Stanton et al., 1999). There are two aspects of illness that can be compared: (1) the severity of the illness and (2) how well one is coping with the illness. A recent literature review (Arigo et al., 2012) concluded that identifying or having an actual contact with someone who is coping better tends to be beneficial for patients, while contrasting or being exposed to information about someone with more severe illness tends to be beneficial. In contrast, downward comparisons about coping and upward comparisons about illness severity seem to be unhelpful. The descriptive–correlational research, based on narration and selection methods, provides the most consistent evidence. Making strong claims from these trends is premature, however. As in the basic research literature, few experimental studies included no-comparison controls to be able to determine whether assimilation or contrast has occurred or both have occurred. The few studies that did include no-comparison groups have not found consistent and statistically significantly greater benefits for upward comparisons vs no-comparison controls, and the evidence for downward comparison is also mixed. The review notes that in most of the experiments, patients learn very little about the comparison patient beyond their relative standing with the patient. Consequently, patients may not perceive them to be appropriate proxies to assess their success in the future. The proxy model suggests that the remedy would be to present higher functioning proxies who share underlying attributes (age, socioeconomic status, life circumstances) with the patients. This kind of research has the potential to inform medical professionals about the kinds of comparison targets and instructions that would be most beneficial for psychoeducational materials (e.g., videos) in medical rehabilitation (see also Kulik and Mahler, 1987).
Social Inequality, Invidious Comparisons, and Health A provocative finding in research on social determinants of health is what is referred to as the ‘socioeconomic gradient’ (Marmot, 2004; Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010). Individuals who rank higher in the social hierarchy enjoy better health than those who are below. Of course, poor nutrition, crowding, inadequate medical care, etc., no doubt, play a role. However, the association with health occurs at every level of the hierarchy, not simply below the poverty threshold. Marmot et al. (1991) found that individuals at the highest level of the British civil service had better health than those just below (all levels were well above the poverty line). Wilkinson and Pickett (2010) reported that differences in average income across countries had little effect on health, but where the person falls in the pecking order of their peers does have an effect on health. These researchers have proposed that invidious social
Social Comparison, Psychology of
comparisons are the culprit, producing chronic stress among those lower on the social ladder, which may in turn increase the risk of psychological and physical illness. This is a continuing area of research by health psychologists and epidemiologists as not all of the evidence is consistent, and political economists are looking for other explanations. Whereas some researchers maintain that relative standing influences health when one looks at aggregate-level studies (population or community levels), other researchers argue that only individual-level studies can differentiate between relative and absolute income effects on health (Wagstaff and van Doorslaer, 2000). The individual-level research has not shown definitive evidence implicating relative income. Our previous description of advances in basic theory and research also suggests that caution may be appropriate. The social gradient hypothesis assumes that upward comparisons are universally aversive, but as we have noted certain conditions facilitate upward assimilation. Some members of a population may convert a potentially invidious upward comparison into an inspiration. Income inequality also leads to lower happiness (Oishi et al., 2011). Between 1972 and 2008, Americans were, on average, happier in those years of lesser income inequality than in those years of greater inequality. This was true only of lower income people and was due to the feeling of unfairness and lack of trust rather than to household income itself. This means that the subtleties revealed by recent social comparison theory and research may have important societal consequences for a world in which income inequality is increasing.
See also: Academic Achievement Motivation, Development of; Attitude Formation and Change; Group Processes, Social Psychology of; Health Self-Regulation, Motivational and Volitional Aspects of; Heuristics in Social Cognition; Pay, Compensation, and Performance, Psychology of; Power, Politics, and Influence in Organizations; Schooling: Impact on Cognitive and Motivational Development; Social Categorization; Social Cognition; Social Identity in Social Psychology; Social Psychology: Research Methods; Social Psychology.
Bibliography Albert, S., 1977. Temporal comparison theory. Psychological Review 84 (6), 485–503. Arigo, D., Suls, J., Smyth, J., 2012. Social comparisons and chronic illness: research synthesis and clinical implications. Health Psychology Review 6, 1–62. Buunk, B., Collins, R., Taylor, S., VanYperen, N., 1990. The affective consequences of social comparison: either direction has its ups and downs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59, 1238–1249. Collins, R.L., 1996. For better or worse: the impact of upward social comparison on self-evaluations. Psychological Bulletin 119 (1), 51–69. Collins, R.L., 2000. Among the better ones: upward assimilation in social comparison. In: Suls, J., Wheeler, L. (Eds.), Handbook of Social Comparison: Theory and Research. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press, New York, pp. 159–171.
215
Davis, J., 1966. The campus as frog pond: an application of the theory of relative deprivation to career decisions of college men. The American Journal of Sociology 72, 17–31. Festinger, L., 1954. A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations 7, 117–140. Goethals, R.R., Darley, J.M., 1977. Social comparison theory: an attributional approach. In: Suls, J.M., Miller, R.L. (Eds.), Social Comparison Processes: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives. Hemisphere, Washington, DC, pp. 259–278. Huguet, P., Dumas, F., Marsh, H., Regner, I., Wheeler, L., Suls, J., Goethals, G.R., Nezlek, J., 2009. Clarifying the role of social comparison in the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE): an integrative study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 97 (1), 156–170. Kelly, J., St Lawrence, J., Diaz, Y., et al., 1991. HIV risk prevention following intervention with key opinion leaders in the population: an experimental analysis. American Journal of Public Health 81, 168–171. Kulik, J., Mahler, H., 1987. Effects of preoperative roommate assignment on preoperative anxiety and postoperative recovery from coronary bypass surgery. Health Psychology 6, 525–543. Lockwood, P., Kunda, Z., 1997. Superstars and me: predicting the impact of role models on the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73, 91–103. Marmot, M.G., 2004. The Status Syndrome. Holt, NY. Marmot, M.G., Smith, G.D., Stansfeld, S., Patel, C., North, F., Head, J., White, I., Brunner, E., Feeney, A., 1991. Health inequalities among British civil servants: the Whitehall study. Lancet 337, 1387–1393. Morse, S., Gergen, K.J., 1970. Social comparison, self-consistency, and the concept of self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 16, 148–156. Mussweiler, T., 2003. Comparison processes in social judgement. Psychological Review 110, 472–479. Nosanchuk, T.A., Erickson, B.H., 1985. How high is up: calibrating social comparison in the real world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48, 624–634. Oishi, S., Kesebir, S., Diener, E., 2011. Income inequality and happiness. Psychological Science 22 (9), 1095–1100. Seaton, M., Marsh, H., Craven, R.G., 2009. Earning its place as a pan-human theory: universality of the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE) across 41 culturally and economically diverse countries. Journal of Educational Psychology 101, 403–419. Stanton, A., Danoff-Burg, S., Cameron, C., Snider, P., Kirk, S., 1999. Social comparison and adjustment to breast cancer: an experimental examination of upward assimilation and downward evaluation. Health Psychology 18, 151–158. Suls, J., Martin, R., Wheeler, L., 2000. Three kinds of opinion comparison: the Triadic model. Personality and Social Psychology Review 4, 219–237. Wagstaff, A., van Doorslaer, E., 2000. Income inequality and health: what does the literature tell us? Annual Review of Public Health 21, 543–567. Wheeler, L., 1966. Motivation as a determinant of upward comparison. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 2 (Suppl. 1), 27–31. Wheeler, L., Miyake, K., 1992. Social comparison in everyday life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 62 (5), 760–773. Wheeler, L., Martin, R., Suls, J., 1997. The proxy model of social comparison for selfassessment. Personality and Social Psychology Review 1, 54–71. Wills, T.A., 1981. Downward comparison principles in social psychology. Psychological Bulletin 90, 245–271. Wilkinson, R., Pickett, K., 2010. The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. Bloomsbury Press, New York. Wood, J.V., 1996. What is social comparison and how should we study it? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 22 (5), 520–537. Wood, J.V., Taylor, S.E., Lichtman, R.R., 1985. Social comparison in adjustment to breast cancer. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 49, 1169–1183. Zell, E., Alicke, M.D., 2009. Contextual neglect, self-evaluation, and the frog-pond effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 97 (3), 467–482.
Abstract Social comparison theory deals with self-evaluation of abilities, opinions, and other personal attributes through comparing the self with others. We outline the original theory and the methods used to study it empirically. We discuss how individuals may compare upward or downward and may assimilate their self-evaluations toward or contrast away from the comparison person. We close with a discussion of implications for education, health, and happiness.
Social comparison occurs when an individual compares himself or herself to another person. The dimension on which the comparison is made can be almost anything – attractiveness, tennis skill, wealth, etc. The comparison might be sought deliberately, might occur in a chance encounter, or might be forced upon the person by the social environment. It is not social comparison when one compares one person to another, as in comparing one neighbor to another; the individual making the comparison must be included in the comparison for it to fit the commonly accepted definition of a social comparison. It is not a social comparison when one compares oneself at Time 1 to oneself at Time 2; this is a temporal comparison (Albert, 1977).
correctness of our opinions. Consequently, we will try to change others or ourselves in order to achieve similarity, and we will reject others if similarity with them cannot be achieved. Although the original theory dealt with opinions and abilities, most of the research done after the 1950s has been on abilities or ability like personal attributes. The original theory focused on the accurate evaluation of abilities/ opinions, but later research has focused less on the accuracy of evaluation and more on the self-esteem implications of evaluation. We do not just want to know how charming we are; we want to know that we are very charming indeed. Wanting to know certain things about ourselves influences both the comparisons we make and how we interpret or construe those comparisons.
The Original Theory Methods for Studying Social Comparison Leon Festinger’s (1954) paper, A Theory of Social Comparison Processes, still serves as the basic formulation, although there have been many additions and revisions. Festinger argued that it is necessary for people to know what they are capable of doing and to hold correct opinions about the world. Sometimes people can perform a physical reality test on their abilities and opinions, but that could be dangerous, inconvenient, or impossible. For example, if individuals want to know whether they can swim across a swift river, they could simply try it, but that could be dangerous. If it is a person’s opinion that the Russian Revolution would not have occurred without V.I. Lenin, there is simply no physical reality test for the truth of that opinion. Consequently, people often seek social reality rather than physical reality for their abilities and opinions, and that social reality is obtained through social comparison. An important difference between opinions and abilities in Festinger’s theory is a unidirectional drive upward for abilities but not for opinions. Regardless of the ability, people would generally like to have more of it than other people have. With opinions, however, people feel confident when they have the same opinions as others. Thus, all the members of a group can be satisfied when they have the same opinion, but not when they have exactly the same level of ability. The central argument of the theory is that we need to compare with similar people in order to achieve a precise estimate of our abilities and the
210
The three major methods for studying social comparison are ‘selection’ approaches, which examine the characteristics of the people with whom individuals choose to compare; ‘reaction’ approaches, which examine individuals’ emotional or cognitive reactions to comparison information; and ‘narration’ approaches, which examine individuals’ self-reports of comparisons made (Wood, 1996). Each of these will be examined below.
The Selection Approach Individuals are given the choice of two or more comparison targets that differ in theoretically important ways. The choices they make (and related data) provide clues concerning social comparison motives. The first notable example, known as the ‘rank-order paradigm,’ was introduced to study the unidirectional drive upward. Experimental participants were tested on a (fictitious) desirable or undesirable personality trait, such as ‘intellectual flexibility’ and were told that they occupied the middle rank in a group of several other participants tested at the same time. Participants were given their own (fictitious) score on the test, as well as the rank of each of the other participants, and were told that they could be shown the score of one other person in the group. The rank of the person participants chose to see could be of someone better off than
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 22
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.24026-9
Social Comparison, Psychology of themselves (known as an ‘upward comparison’) or worse off than themselves (a ‘downward comparison’). In most of the experiments using this method, participants chose to see the scores of those just above them in the rank order. That is, they wanted to compare their scores to slightly better scores (Wheeler, 1966), supporting the similarity hypothesis and the unidirectional drive upward.
The Reaction Approach Individuals are presented with social comparison information, and their responses to that information are measured. In what is known as the Mr Clean/Mr Dirty study, job applicants casually encountered another applicant whose appearance was either socially desirable (dark suit, well-groomed, and confident) or socially undesirable (torn and smelly clothes, poorly groomed, and confused). Those participants who encountered Mr Clean showed a decrease in self-esteem measured a few minutes later, whereas those who encountered Mr Dirty showed an increase in self-esteem (Morse and Gergen, 1970). In this research, participants contrasted themselves against the other job applicant, but this is not always what happens. As we will discuss below, sometimes people will assimilate their self-judgments to the comparison standard.
The Narrative Approach This nonexperimental approach attempts to measure the comparisons that people make or have made in their everyday lives. At the most basic level, participants are sometimes asked whom they have compared themselves with in the past. This places too great a burden on memory, however, and a better method is the Social Comparison Record, a diary recording of all comparisons as they occur over a period of 2 weeks, including the dimension of comparison, the direction (e.g., upward, downward), relationship to the target, and mood before and after the comparison (Wheeler and Miyake, 1992). When participants were experiencing negative affect, they made upward comparisons. In contrast, when the same participants were experiencing positive affect, they made downward comparisons. Such a result is consistent with affect–cognition priming models in which affect primes (make ready and available) cognitions about the self that are congruent with the affect. Experiencing negative affect primes a person to have negative thoughts about the self and thus to see others as superior to the self, leading to a contrastive upward comparison and further feelings of inferiority and negative affect. This research also showed that there was generally a negative emotional response to upward comparisons, and a positive emotional response to downward comparisons. Finally, downward comparisons were more frequent than upward comparisons. Free response measures are also narrative in approach. These are spontaneous statements, usually made during the course of an interview or conversation, implying comparisons. Wood et al. (1985) reported that breast cancer patients made many free response comparison statements, most of which seemed to indicate downward comparison, such as “I think I am coping a little better than these other women.”
211
The Changing Face of Similarity Festinger (1954) argued that we must compare with similar others in order to make accurate self-evaluations, but he was not clear about the kind of similarity that was important. At first, investigators focused on (1) similarity on the dimension under evaluation, as we described for the rank-order paradigm. A person wanting to evaluate his or her speed in messaging would compare to someone who is slightly faster. This really does not tell you how fast you are compared to all other people, or whether you should take up thumb work as a profession; it merely tells you that you are or are not faster than the other person. Moreover, there is circularity in saying that we should compare to similar others – if we already know they are similar, why compare with them? To deal with this problem, Goethals and Darley (1977) proposed the ‘related attributes’ hypothesis. A person should compare to (2) someone who is similar to him or her on attributes related to and predictive of the dimension to be evaluated. Thus, the person should seek a comparison standard who is equally young and dexterous and who spends the same amount of time each day messaging. The person ought to perform about the same as this comparison standard, and if the person outperforms the standard, they will feel that he or she has an unusual ability. In short, the related attributes hypothesis does allow us to get a better understanding of our capabilities and to choose appropriate competitors. A later attempt to untangle the question of similarity was based on the realization that Festinger was not so concerned with whether one labeled oneself as having low or high ability, but rather with the action possibilities of having a given level of ability. For example, one of the questions addressed by Festinger’s theory was ‘Can I do X?’ Can I swim across the river? Can I complete a college degree? Can I have both a family and a career? One way to answer such questions is to compare oneself to someone – called a proxy – who seems to have a similar level of ability and who has already succeeded at the task (Wheeler et al., 1997). If people seem to have the same amount or more of the ability required as the proxy does, they could conclude with some confidence that they could also perform the task. There are two ways that people can be confident that they have as much of the underlying ability as the proxy: (1) they previously have competed directly against the proxy and have performed as well as the proxy at his best, or (2) they have observed the proxy performing and are similar to the proxy on attributes related to the ability. In both cases, they have established with some degree of certainty that they are similar in ability to the proxy and thus have the same action possibilities. This allows them to pursue the task with some confidence that they, like the proxy, have the right stuff to succeed. We believe that this is the correct interpretation of why Festinger argued that the comparison target should be similar in order for accurate self-evaluation to occur. Individuals want to evaluate their ability to perform some action successfully, and they determine this by comparing with a proxy of similar ability who has already performed that action. Lockwood and Kunda (1997), who exposed first year and fourth year university students to a newspaper article about a superstar fourth year student, illustrated this nicely. Participants and superstar were matched on the related attributes of
212
Social Comparison, Psychology of
gender and academic major. In a control condition, participants did not read about any target. The dependent variable was self-ratings on 10 adjectives related to career success. The first year students, with time to work toward the success of the superstar, gave themselves high self-ratings, but the fourth year students, who had missed the chance to be a superstar, did not. The first year students used the superstar as a proxy to determine what they might achieve in the future.
Opinion Comparison As mentioned earlier, comparison of opinions has not been as actively studied as abilities and traits. This is somewhat surprising because persuasion has been an intense area of social psychological research for decades. The likely explanation is in everyday life, persuasive messages most often involve not just learning the source’s (comparative) view but also being exposed to arguments. To identify the pure ‘comparison effect,’ researchers need to strip the comparison process away from the persuasive content, but this limits ecological validity. Despite this matter, the related attribute approach devoted some attention to opinion comparison. First, in contrast to Festinger who treated opinions generically, Goethals and Darley distinguished between belief and value opinions. Beliefs refer to verifiable facts, whereas values are personal preferences. Comparisons with similar others on related attributes, such as background and general worldview, are of most utility for value assessment. For beliefs, however, someone who is dissimilar on related attributes was hypothesized to be more useful because they provide a different perspective to ‘triangulate on’ the truth. The more recent triadic model (Suls et al., 2000) concurs with Goethals and Darley’s prediction about values, but to assess facts, people should prefer to compare with someone who is superior on related attributes (conferring more expertise) not just dissimilar per se. Since few facts are completely value-free, however, someone who has more expertise and also shares the same basic values (i.e., worldview) is probably most preferred. The triadic model refers to such a person as a ‘similar expert,’ and illustrated by the finding that gay men are more likely to adopt safe-sex practices when they are advocated by someone who is both more knowledgeable and shares their sexual orientation (Kelly et al., 1991). The new model is called ‘triadic’ because it adds a third kind of opinion comparison, which concerns predictions about affective responses to future situations (e.g., will I like that new film ‘X’?). I can predict my future response with some confidence by learning about the response to ‘X’ of a proxy who has already viewed the film. The proxy should be considered appropriate if he/she shares related attributes or past pattern of agreement with respect to other films. Suls et al. (2000) presented supportive empirical evidence for the triadic model predictions.
Assimilation and Contrast Until the 1990s, most students of social comparison theory believed that comparison always led to contrast with the
comparison target. That is, an upward comparison (with someone better) lowered a person’s self-evaluation, and a downward comparison (with someone worse) raised the selfevaluation, as shown in the Mr Clean/Mr Dirty study. There was even a subsidiary theory called ‘Downward comparison principles in social psychology’ that argued that when people are psychologically threatened they will deliberately seek out someone worse to compare themselves to in order to relieve their distress (Wills, 1981). This theory was quite influential during the 1980s until accumulating evidence caused it to be abandoned. The basic problem with the theory is that when people are psychologically threatened, they are more inclined to see others as superior to themselves and would have difficulty in finding and using downward comparison targets. We discussed previously the research showing that when people are experiencing negative affect, they are more likely to make upward comparisons rather than downward comparisons (Wheeler and Miyake, 1992). Presumably, this happens because negative affect causes people to perceive themselves negatively and to perceive most other people as superiors to themselves. In short, although downward comparison does generally make people feel better, people who are distressed or threatened find it difficult to find and use downward comparisons. While believing that comparison usually led to contrast, researchers were aware that the rank-order studies, among others, had shown that people usually compare upward. If comparing upward leads to contrasting feelings of inferiority, why would people do it?
Upward Assimilation Theory Buunk et al. (1990) asked married individuals and cancer patients to indicate how often they experienced both positive and negative emotions when comparing upward and downward. In the case of cancer patients, the downward comparison target was doing worse with the cancer, and the upward target was doing better. In the case of married individuals, the downward comparison was a marital relationship worse than that of the respondent, and the upward comparison was better. For both cancer and marital quality, the direction of comparison did not dictate how often positive or negative affect was experienced – both directions had positive and negative aspects. The paper was important in showing that upward comparison does not necessarily lead to negative affect, but can also lead to feeling inspired, comforted, happy, and pleased. Collins (1996, 2000), one of the authors of the paper just described, undertook a thorough review of the positive effects of upward comparison and proposed a theory of upward assimilation. She argued that upward comparison could lead to either contrast or assimilation depending upon whether the comparison was construed as showing similarity to, or difference from, the comparison standard. People are more likely to construe themselves as similar to upward targets if they expect to be similar to the upward targets. In the rank-order paradigm study discussed above (Wheeler, 1966), participants who expected to be more similar to the person above them in the rank order than to the person below them choose to compare with the person above them. The interpretation was that they had
Social Comparison, Psychology of
assumed similarity upward and wanted to confirm that they were indeed similar to that person. According to Collins, some variables that might lead to such expectations of similarity to upward targets are (1) high self-esteem, (2) shared distinctiveness with the upward target (such as belonging to the same club), and (3) the direction of comparison. People with high self-esteem generally think that they are as good or better than others are and so should expect to be similar to upward targets. People who share distinctiveness with the upward target draw the conclusion that if they are similar on one distinctive thing, they are probably similar on performance as well. People who are comparing upward have higher expectation of similarity than those comparing downward because of the unidirectional drive upward. Of course, other variables in addition to selfesteem, shared distinctiveness, and the direction of comparison, such as similarity on related attributes (Goethals and Darley, 1977), might lead to expectations of similarity on performance. Whatever leads us to expect similarity and thus to construe that we are similar to upward comparison targets, the result is an increase of some sort in our own self-evaluations. For example, an academic person with six publications might compare with another academic person with 10 publications. If individuals construe 6 publications to be similar to 10 publications, they will conclude that they are solid (and satisfied) members of that class of academician with 6 to 10 publications. If they construe 6 publications and 10 publications to be dissimilar, they will feel inferior to those with 10 publications. Nosanchuk and Erickson (1985) provided a dramatic example of upward assimilation among bridge players. Players indicated that in a variety of situations, they would prefer to compare themselves to players of similar ability. However, when they named the particular players they would compare with, these players turned out to be objectively better players with more master points. Thus, the bridge players had assimilated their ability to the ability of the superior players. Upward assimilation is an increase in one’s self-evaluation because of making an upward comparison. Although this has often been obscured, it is not simply a happy feeling or feeling positive about the future but is a perceptual change in one’s self-evaluation. Collins (1996, 2000) noted that downward assimilation is not likely to occur, because of the unidirectional drive upward. Our need to be better and to improve works against downward assimilation.
The Selective Accessibility Model Mussweiler (2003) proposed a theory in agreement with that of Collins (1996, 2000) but using concepts from the social cognition literature and giving more detail about the mechanisms involved in social comparison. At the moment of exposure to social comparison information, a person makes a tentative judgment of similarity or dissimilarity to the comparison target. Salient features (such as gender, race, or age) of the comparison target determine this judgment. Then the person searches for information consistent with the preliminary judgment of similarity or dissimilarity. Whether one searches for similarity information or dissimilarity information, one is likely to find it because our view of ourselves is remarkably rich and complicated. It is easy to find information
213
whether one is similar or dissimilar to another person. That information then becomes selectively accessible when we make judgments about ourselves. If we have searched for information that we are similar to the standard, we are likely to assimilate our self-evaluations toward the target. If we have searched for information that we are dissimilar to the target, we are likely to contrast our self-evaluations away from the target. The selective accessibility model (SAM) is elegantly simple and explains a wide variety of empirical results. Contrast is more likely if the standard is extreme or unattainable, or if the standard belongs to an out-group, both of which would lead to an initial hypothesis of dissimilarity. Assimilation is more likely to occur if there is psychological closeness with the standard, which would lead to a search for similarity. If people prior to comparison are asked to point out similarities between two drawings (i.e., procedural priming), they subsequently will more likely assimilate to the comparison standard than if they have pointed out differences. A shortcoming is that the SAM does not explicitly recognize that self-protective concerns may bias comparisons. For example, there is abundant evidence that people assimilate upward, but there is almost no evidence of downward assimilation. The SAM would argue that upward and downward assimilation are equally likely. In fairness, however, one could modify the SAM slightly and state that one would not search for similarity with a downward standard because of self-esteem concerns. Mussweiler and colleagues have performed numerous experiments that support the SAM. However, an unfortunate aspect of this research is that adequate control groups are rarely used. Conditions that should lead to assimilation are compared to conditions that should lead to contrast. When there is a difference, the researchers argue that they have confirming evidence for the SAM. However, without a control group that is not exposed to any comparison target, there is no way to know whether assimilation has occurred, contrast has occurred, or both have occurred. Mussweiler makes an important distinction between subjective and objective self-evaluation. An upward comparison standard has two effects. First, it produces a search for similarity to the standard and thus makes accessible knowledge that the self is similar to the high standard. Second, it serves as a reference point (or scale anchor) for making a subjective self-evaluation. The comparison standard may alter the interpretation of subjective rating scales (‘very intelligent’ may be interpreted differently in the context of a professor than in the context of an infant). These two influences work in opposite directions when making a subjective judgment. If one compares to an intelligent standard (say, professor) one may search for and find information about the self that indicates high intelligence. If then asked to indicate one’s intelligence on a subjective scale from 1 to 10, one may assume that 10 is close to the professor’s intelligence and so may contrast oneself away from this endpoint despite having accessible information that one is intelligent. Whether assimilation or contrast occurs depends upon the relative strength of the selective accessibility and the reference point effects. On the other hand, if objective self-evaluations are used, there is
214
Social Comparison, Psychology of
no reference point effect to worry about. Objective selfevaluation questions pertaining to intelligence might inquire about the amount of time taken to solve a crossword puzzle, or the number of unknown words encountered in a typical book. Because of the ambiguity of subjective self-evaluations, Mussweiler always uses objective self-evaluations.
Assimilation and Contrast in Education Social comparison tendencies should be strong in education settings when students compare their performance with others in their class or school and draw conclusions about their academic ability. The frog pond effect (Davis, 1966) refers to the fact that students attending highly selective schools have lower academic self-concepts than those attending nonselective schools (holding academic ability constant). This has been demonstrated in elementary, middle, and high schools across more than 40 countries (Seaton et al., 2009). The explanation is that people compare with those around them and ignore the larger context. Students in a highly selective school ought to have high academic selfconcepts; after all, they have earned a place in the highly selective school. However, when they compare themselves with their classmates, they find that they are not superior in ability, and they ignore the fact that their classmates are near the top of the ability continuum. Zell and Alicke (2009) have referred to this contextual neglect of general comparison information as the ‘local dominance effect’ and have shown that being the best or worst performer in a group of five people influences self-evaluation more than the information about one’s standing among 1500 other individuals. During early development, we compare with family members and small groups of peers, and this continues to be a salient mode of self-evaluation as we mature. In an international collaboration, Huguet et al. (2009) conducted a highly detailed study of social comparison in French public schools. They showed that the frog pond effect was indeed due to the students’ perceived relative standing in the class; those who perceived themselves as having relatively low standing had lower academic self-concepts. Thus, contrastive social comparison caused the frog pond effect. The students also named those classmates with whom they chose to compare grades. They named classmates who on average had slightly better grades, and to the extent that they did so, the students had higher academic self-concepts. Thus, assimilative social comparison occurred independently of contrastive social comparison. The assimilative comparison related to comparisons the students deliberately chose to make, whereas the contrastive comparison related to the comparisons forced on the students by the class average. Of the two effects, the reduction in self-concept due to contrastive comparison was much larger than the increase in self-concept due to assimilative comparisons. Although students named objectively superior classmates as the ones they usually compared with, they believed that they were similar to these superior others, precisely the results of the Nosanchuk and Erickson (1985) study of bridge players. They had assimilated their own ability upward.
Chronic Illness and Social Comparison Earlier we mentioned the application of comparison processes to the coping of cancer patients. As illness creates uncertainty and stress, social comparison can play a role in coping and adjustment of medical patients. There have been many descriptive–correlational studies and a smaller set of experiments using the reaction methodology to explore the role of social comparison among medical patients (e.g., Stanton et al., 1999). There are two aspects of illness that can be compared: (1) the severity of the illness and (2) how well one is coping with the illness. A recent literature review (Arigo et al., 2012) concluded that identifying or having an actual contact with someone who is coping better tends to be beneficial for patients, while contrasting or being exposed to information about someone with more severe illness tends to be beneficial. In contrast, downward comparisons about coping and upward comparisons about illness severity seem to be unhelpful. The descriptive–correlational research, based on narration and selection methods, provides the most consistent evidence. Making strong claims from these trends is premature, however. As in the basic research literature, few experimental studies included no-comparison controls to be able to determine whether assimilation or contrast has occurred or both have occurred. The few studies that did include no-comparison groups have not found consistent and statistically significantly greater benefits for upward comparisons vs no-comparison controls, and the evidence for downward comparison is also mixed. The review notes that in most of the experiments, patients learn very little about the comparison patient beyond their relative standing with the patient. Consequently, patients may not perceive them to be appropriate proxies to assess their success in the future. The proxy model suggests that the remedy would be to present higher functioning proxies who share underlying attributes (age, socioeconomic status, life circumstances) with the patients. This kind of research has the potential to inform medical professionals about the kinds of comparison targets and instructions that would be most beneficial for psychoeducational materials (e.g., videos) in medical rehabilitation (see also Kulik and Mahler, 1987).
Social Inequality, Invidious Comparisons, and Health A provocative finding in research on social determinants of health is what is referred to as the ‘socioeconomic gradient’ (Marmot, 2004; Wilkinson and Pickett, 2010). Individuals who rank higher in the social hierarchy enjoy better health than those who are below. Of course, poor nutrition, crowding, inadequate medical care, etc., no doubt, play a role. However, the association with health occurs at every level of the hierarchy, not simply below the poverty threshold. Marmot et al. (1991) found that individuals at the highest level of the British civil service had better health than those just below (all levels were well above the poverty line). Wilkinson and Pickett (2010) reported that differences in average income across countries had little effect on health, but where the person falls in the pecking order of their peers does have an effect on health. These researchers have proposed that invidious social
Social Comparison, Psychology of
comparisons are the culprit, producing chronic stress among those lower on the social ladder, which may in turn increase the risk of psychological and physical illness. This is a continuing area of research by health psychologists and epidemiologists as not all of the evidence is consistent, and political economists are looking for other explanations. Whereas some researchers maintain that relative standing influences health when one looks at aggregate-level studies (population or community levels), other researchers argue that only individual-level studies can differentiate between relative and absolute income effects on health (Wagstaff and van Doorslaer, 2000). The individual-level research has not shown definitive evidence implicating relative income. Our previous description of advances in basic theory and research also suggests that caution may be appropriate. The social gradient hypothesis assumes that upward comparisons are universally aversive, but as we have noted certain conditions facilitate upward assimilation. Some members of a population may convert a potentially invidious upward comparison into an inspiration. Income inequality also leads to lower happiness (Oishi et al., 2011). Between 1972 and 2008, Americans were, on average, happier in those years of lesser income inequality than in those years of greater inequality. This was true only of lower income people and was due to the feeling of unfairness and lack of trust rather than to household income itself. This means that the subtleties revealed by recent social comparison theory and research may have important societal consequences for a world in which income inequality is increasing.
See also: Academic Achievement Motivation, Development of; Attitude Formation and Change; Group Processes, Social Psychology of; Health Self-Regulation, Motivational and Volitional Aspects of; Heuristics in Social Cognition; Pay, Compensation, and Performance, Psychology of; Power, Politics, and Influence in Organizations; Schooling: Impact on Cognitive and Motivational Development; Social Categorization; Social Cognition; Social Identity in Social Psychology; Social Psychology: Research Methods; Social Psychology.
Bibliography Albert, S., 1977. Temporal comparison theory. Psychological Review 84 (6), 485–503. Arigo, D., Suls, J., Smyth, J., 2012. Social comparisons and chronic illness: research synthesis and clinical implications. Health Psychology Review 6, 1–62. Buunk, B., Collins, R., Taylor, S., VanYperen, N., 1990. The affective consequences of social comparison: either direction has its ups and downs. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 59, 1238–1249. Collins, R.L., 1996. For better or worse: the impact of upward social comparison on self-evaluations. Psychological Bulletin 119 (1), 51–69. Collins, R.L., 2000. Among the better ones: upward assimilation in social comparison. In: Suls, J., Wheeler, L. (Eds.), Handbook of Social Comparison: Theory and Research. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Press, New York, pp. 159–171.
215
Davis, J., 1966. The campus as frog pond: an application of the theory of relative deprivation to career decisions of college men. The American Journal of Sociology 72, 17–31. Festinger, L., 1954. A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations 7, 117–140. Goethals, R.R., Darley, J.M., 1977. Social comparison theory: an attributional approach. In: Suls, J.M., Miller, R.L. (Eds.), Social Comparison Processes: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives. Hemisphere, Washington, DC, pp. 259–278. Huguet, P., Dumas, F., Marsh, H., Regner, I., Wheeler, L., Suls, J., Goethals, G.R., Nezlek, J., 2009. Clarifying the role of social comparison in the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE): an integrative study. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 97 (1), 156–170. Kelly, J., St Lawrence, J., Diaz, Y., et al., 1991. HIV risk prevention following intervention with key opinion leaders in the population: an experimental analysis. American Journal of Public Health 81, 168–171. Kulik, J., Mahler, H., 1987. Effects of preoperative roommate assignment on preoperative anxiety and postoperative recovery from coronary bypass surgery. Health Psychology 6, 525–543. Lockwood, P., Kunda, Z., 1997. Superstars and me: predicting the impact of role models on the self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 73, 91–103. Marmot, M.G., 2004. The Status Syndrome. Holt, NY. Marmot, M.G., Smith, G.D., Stansfeld, S., Patel, C., North, F., Head, J., White, I., Brunner, E., Feeney, A., 1991. Health inequalities among British civil servants: the Whitehall study. Lancet 337, 1387–1393. Morse, S., Gergen, K.J., 1970. Social comparison, self-consistency, and the concept of self. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 16, 148–156. Mussweiler, T., 2003. Comparison processes in social judgement. Psychological Review 110, 472–479. Nosanchuk, T.A., Erickson, B.H., 1985. How high is up: calibrating social comparison in the real world. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 48, 624–634. Oishi, S., Kesebir, S., Diener, E., 2011. Income inequality and happiness. Psychological Science 22 (9), 1095–1100. Seaton, M., Marsh, H., Craven, R.G., 2009. Earning its place as a pan-human theory: universality of the big-fish-little-pond effect (BFLPE) across 41 culturally and economically diverse countries. Journal of Educational Psychology 101, 403–419. Stanton, A., Danoff-Burg, S., Cameron, C., Snider, P., Kirk, S., 1999. Social comparison and adjustment to breast cancer: an experimental examination of upward assimilation and downward evaluation. Health Psychology 18, 151–158. Suls, J., Martin, R., Wheeler, L., 2000. Three kinds of opinion comparison: the Triadic model. Personality and Social Psychology Review 4, 219–237. Wagstaff, A., van Doorslaer, E., 2000. Income inequality and health: what does the literature tell us? Annual Review of Public Health 21, 543–567. Wheeler, L., 1966. Motivation as a determinant of upward comparison. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 2 (Suppl. 1), 27–31. Wheeler, L., Miyake, K., 1992. Social comparison in everyday life. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 62 (5), 760–773. Wheeler, L., Martin, R., Suls, J., 1997. The proxy model of social comparison for selfassessment. Personality and Social Psychology Review 1, 54–71. Wills, T.A., 1981. Downward comparison principles in social psychology. Psychological Bulletin 90, 245–271. Wilkinson, R., Pickett, K., 2010. The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger. Bloomsbury Press, New York. Wood, J.V., 1996. What is social comparison and how should we study it? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 22 (5), 520–537. Wood, J.V., Taylor, S.E., Lichtman, R.R., 1985. Social comparison in adjustment to breast cancer. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 49, 1169–1183. Zell, E., Alicke, M.D., 2009. Contextual neglect, self-evaluation, and the frog-pond effect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 97 (3), 467–482.