Past research shows that people use local social comparison information more than general social comparison information when both are given (Zell & Alicke, 2010). The present studies examined the extent to which people seek local comparisons when they have already received general comparison information. In Study 1, students received their exam grades and were either told or not told the averag...

Social physique anxiety has been found to be associated with disordered eating. However, what is not yet known is what behaviors college women may engage in that strengthen this relation. In the current study, we examined two possible moderating factors, social comparison and body surveillance. We examined whether these moderators might also generalize to trait anxiety, as well. Participants we...

This study investigated the relationship of two social psychological constructs (social anxiety and social comparison) with bulimic and restrictive eating attitudes among nonclinical women. Eighty young women completed a measure of social anxiety (the Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale, FNE), a measure of social comparison (the Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure, INCOM), the Beck De...

Potential backers of crowdfunding campaigns often need to make investment decisions based on limited information, as the project they invest in has not come into existence at the time the campaign is running. As a consequence, other evidence for the trustworthiness and quality of a crowdfunding campaign, such as popularity information and electronic Word-of-Mouth (eWOM), are becoming increasing...

OBJECTIVE The central nervous system representation of social phobia (social anxiety disorder) is largely unknown. The aim of this study was to examine brain activity during symptom provocation in social phobics. METHOD Positron emission tomography with the use of (15)O water was used to measure regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in 18 subjects with DSM-IV-defined social phobia and a nonphob...

This dissertation examines the relationship between two social psychological theories: Social Comparison Theory (Festinger, 1954) and Construal Level Theory (Liberman & Trope, 1998). More specifically, this research assesses how a person’s level of mental abstraction (i.e., construal level) might influence the way social comparison information from individuals or aggregates is used to form self...

The comparison of long-term care (LTC) expenditures is a difficult task. National LTC systems differ widely in terms of eligibility criteria, level of benefits, institutional variety and regional heterogeneity. In this commentary I will first give some general remarks on cross country comparisons. Then I discuss the role of the informal sector which is the most importan...