Previous research suggests that self-evaluations can be influenced by social comparison feedback. The present study tested whether social comparison feedback has stronger effects on self-evaluations of performance than ability. Participants received social comparison feedback indicating that they had performed above or below average. In addition to rating their performance and ability, particip...

The goal of this article is to frame some new directions to social comparison research in organizational settings. Four themes are developed. First, we examine the role of organizational variables in shaping the basic sub processes in social comparison, such as the selection of referents. The second theme focuses on the meaning of level of analysis in social comparison processes. The third them...

• Participants learned that they performed better or worse than other people (social comparison). • Participants learned that they performed better or worse in one domain than another domain (dimensional comparison). • Both comparison types significantly influenced self-evaluations and affective reactions. • The influence of social comparison was significantly stronger than dimensional comparison.

Previous research in the domain of social comparison theory has suggested that the same factors that have been hypothesized as antecedents to response shift, primarily significant life events, also prompt an increase in interest in social comparison. Based on this research, it is suggested that social comparison, or more specifically, change in social comparison, is a mediator of the relation b...

The purpose of the study was to explore whether personality traits moderate the association between social comparison on Facebook and subjective well-being, measured as both life satisfaction and eudaimonic well-being. Data were collected via an online questionnaire which measured Facebook use, social comparison behavior and personality traits for 337 respondents. The results showed positive as...

This article introduces the N-effect-the discovery that increasing the number of competitors (N) can decrease competitive motivation. Studies 1a and 1b found evidence that average test scores (e.g., SAT scores) fall as the average number of test takers at test-taking venues increases. Study 2 found that individuals trying to finish an easy quiz among the top 20% in terms of speed finished signi...

OBJECTIVES To examine the emotional and cognitive impact of personal and social comparison information about health risk. METHODS A total of 970 adults responded to vignettes describing risk presentation scenarios that varied in terms of having (a) a 'real world' analogue (cardiac event) versus no such analogue (a fictitious pancreatic disease) condition, (b) high versus low levels of persona...

Theories (and experiments) on decision making under risk typically ignore (and exclude) a social context. We explore whether this omission is detrimental. To do so we experimentally investigate the simplest possible situation with both social comparison and risk: participants choose between two lotteries while a referent faces a fixed payoff. Participants are more risk averse when they can earn...

Social comparison, that is, the process of comparing oneself to other people, is a ubiquitous social cognitive mechanism; however, so far its neural correlates have remained unknown. The present study tested the hypothesis that social comparisons are supported by partly dissociated networks, depending on whether the dimension under comparison concerns a physical or a psychological attribute. We...

We study cake cutting on a graph, where agents can only evaluate their shares relative to their neighbors. This is an extension of the classical problem of fair division to incorporate the notion of social comparison from the social sciences. We say an allocation is locally envy-free if no agent envies a neighbor’s allocation, and locally proportional if each agent values its own allocation as ...