Social Comparison

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Chapter 14
Social Psychology
were fleeing the damaged buildings return to their offices after hearing an announcement telling them to do so? Is there any reason to hope that the hatred and distrust
that brought about this disaster can someday be reduced or eliminated?
We may never have final answers to such questions as these, but some partial answers
may lie in the study of social psychology, the scientific study of how people’s thoughts
and feelings influence their behavior toward others and how the behavior of others
influences people’s own thoughts, feelings, and behavior. In this chapter, we focus on
several topics in social psychology, including social cognition (the mental processes
associated with how people perceive and react to other individuals and groups) and
group and interpersonal behaviors such as conformity, aggression, and helping. One
important aspect of social cognition is how it affects the way we see ourselves.
Social Influences on the Self
䉴 How do we compare ourselves with others?
Each of us lives in both a personal and a social world. This means that although you
experience your thoughts and feelings as your own, they have been strongly influenced
by other people.
The thoughts, feelings, and beliefs about what characteristics you have and who you
are make up your self-concept. Although your self-concept is unique to you, it is a
product of your social and cultural environment. In the chapters on human development and personality, we describe how each individual develops within a cultural context and how collectivist and individualist cultures emphasize different core values and
encourage contrasting definitions of the self. As you will see in this chapter, culture also
provides the context for self-esteem, the evaluations you make of your worth as a
human being. Let’s look at how self-esteem develops.
Social Comparison
social psychology
The subfield of psychology that explores the effects of the
social world on the behavior and mental processes of individuals and groups.
social cognition
Mental processes associated with people’s perceptions of
and reactions to other people.
self-concept
The way one thinks of
oneself.
self-esteem The evaluations people
make about their worth as human
beings.
social comparison Using other people
as a basis of comparison for evaluating
oneself.
reference groups Categories of people with whom individuals compare
themselves.
People spend a lot of time thinking about themselves, trying to evaluate their own perceptions, opinions, values, abilities, and so on (Mussweiler, 2003). Decades ago, Leon
Festinger (1954) noted that self-evaluation involves two distinct types of questions:
those that can be answered by taking objective measurements and those that cannot.
You can determine your height or weight by measuring it, but for other types of questions—about your creativity or attractiveness, for example—there are no objective criteria, no obvious yardsticks. In these cases, according to Festinger’s theory of social
comparison, people evaluate themselves in relation to others. When you use others as
a basis for evaluating how intelligent, athletic, interesting, or attractive you are, you are
engaging in social comparison (Buunk et al., 2005).
Who serves as your basis of comparison? Festinger said that people usually look to
others who are similar to themselves. For example, if you are curious about how good
you are at swimming or science, you will probably compare yourself with people who
are at about your own level of experience and ability, not with Olympic champions or
Nobel Prize winners (Major, Sciacchtinano, & Crocker, 1993). The categories of people
you feel you belong to and usually compare yourself with are called your reference
groups.
The performance of individuals in your reference groups can affect your self-esteem
(Baumeister, 1998). For example, if being good at science is important to you, knowing that someone in your reference group always scores much higher than you on science tests can lower your self-esteem. To protect their self-esteem and make themselves
feel better, people sometimes compare themselves with those who are not as good, a
strategy called downward social comparison. They may also sometimes engage in upward
social comparison, in which they compare themselves with people who are doing much
better than they are (Buunk et al., 2005; Frieswijk et al., 2004). At first glance, this might