OBJECTIVE This study aimed to determine the relative extent of impairment in social and nonsocial cognitive domains in patients with bipolar disorder compared with schizophrenia patients and healthy comparison subjects. METHODS Sixty-eight clinically stable outpatients with bipolar disorder, 38 clinically stable outpatients with schizophrenia, and 36 healthy comparison subjects completed a ra...

The threat of comparison to intellectual superiors evokes a stress response, which, evidence suggests, depletes working memory capacity . Expectation of social comparison has been shown to increase physiological and perceived stress in individuals, especially in upward comparisons 7 & . Upward comparison is comparing oneself to someone the individual deems superior to themselves. In the present...

This paper presents a study of electronic brainstorming (EBS) that begins with theory building, tool development, and experimentation, and ends with practical guidance for facilitators and developers. The paper argues that social loafing impairs the productivity of EBS groups, and that social comparison is a way to decrease the effect{s) of social loafing. The literature on brainstorming produc...

Boundedly rational consumers rely on their social environment as a source of information. Drawing upon psychological theories about social comparison processes, we hypothesize that social reference groups underlie market segments. New reference groups can emerge from social comparison processes, leading to the establishment of new submarkets and the evolution of aggregate consumer heterogeneity...

People evaluate themselves more favorably when they outperform a referent (downward comparison) than when they underperform a referent (upward comparison). However, research has yet to examine whether people are sensitive to the status of the referent during social comparison. That is, does defeating a highly skilled referent yield more favorable selfevaluations than defeating an unskilled refe...