Why are we comparing?

So much social science for one week ☺

Notes

People compare themselves to others intentionally or unintentionally all the time. This phenomenon, called social comparison is one source of self-evaluative information among others such as comparison with past selves. The article discusses two motivations for social comparison: self-evaluation and self-enhancement.

Two models are proposed for explaining self-evaluation. The first one is proxy model – social comparison of ability. According to this model, we compare ourselves to people similar to us that are called proxies. People expect to perform at the level of proxy on a new task if one’s history of performance on some initial relevant task is similar to the proxy’s history of performance on that task and the proxy is known to have exerted maximal effort on that preliminary task. The second model for self-evaluation is the triadic model (opinion formation) relying on current preferences, beliefs, and future preferences.

Self-enhancement part of the article discusses the upward and downward comparisons in terms of assimilation and contrast and it concludes that self-evaluations are not intrinsically linked to the direction of the comparison. Comparison can produce positive and negative contrastive and assimilative effects.  

Critique

The proxy model makes perfect sense to me; it’s like a controlled experiment in that you try to keep as many variables constant as you can. For example, you compare your performance in graduate school to people whom you went to college with who have similar backgrounds as yourself.

For self-enhancement, I find it natural for people to do upward comparisons since it is generally good to shoot for higher targets rather than lower ones. I think the results of a downward or upward comparison depends greatly on the mood a person is in and his or her experience on the task.

Application

Relative standing is not as salient in 43T as it is in other online communities such as the activity-based ones. But the number of completed goals, entries and cheers received might be elements in social comparison. Additionally whether a user completed a particular goal or not might also be important for comparison. For example, a person who completed the goal of quitting smoking might make down comparisons and feel himself better as a result of the comparison.