Social Comparison Theory - Assignment Example

 Social Comparison Theory Abstract Social comparison is a critical component of social psychology that focuses on how individuals compare themselves to other people. The comparison may be upward or downward in nature depending on the particular person. Today, social comparison is typical in many situations engaging from people seeking self-evaluation to those seeking to improve their lives. The social application theory can applied in various aspects of human life such as in health, education, decision-making and even spots. However, the most important application of the social comparison theory has been on the improvement of the health conditions of patients with chronic diseases. Social comparison research has developed a lot from studies focusing on the single phenomenon on such as self-evaluation to wide studies covering the influence of emotions and behaviors. Scholars are now studying the effects of social comparison in populations making the concept more important than a mere lab experiment. Despite the immense research conducted in the field, there are still greener areas that scholars can exploit. The link between social comparison and the bio-psychological functioning of humans can be an interesting area for future research. Social cognition theory and personality differences can also be linked to the social comparison process. Nevertheless, the amount of attention given to social psychology makes it an important phenomenon in human social life worth or research. Introduction The social comparison theory is a common theory in social psychology developed in the 1950’s by Leo Festinger. The theory supposes that human beings are to some extent innately driven by their personal evaluations of their opinions, abilities, and self-worth. In the process of self-evaluation, individuals often liken themselves with other people they can identify themselves with and make the subsequent comparisons. One of Festinger’s hypothesis was that the need for social comparison tends to increase the pressure for people to seek group uniformity. People try to assess themselves by discerning their individual abilities and opinions in relation to persons around them. In most cases, people tend to desire to increase their abilities thus, compare themselves to other people particularly those they consider somewhat superior to them. The upwards social comparison usually results in lower self-esteem while downwards comparison tend to increase an individual’s feeling of self-worth. Relevance of the social comparison theory today The social comparison theory is relevant in today’s society because people are constantly comparing themselves to other people in a variety of dimensions. In most cases, these comparisons play a critical role in shaping an individual’s identity, motivating, self-esteem and overall satisfaction with life. There are numerous examples where the applicability of the social comparison theory is evident. According to the theory, persons who make comparisons with other individuals that tend to be similar to them are always right at producing accurate appraisals of their capabilities, values, and beliefs. The comparisons make more sense when the comparison target possess the same aspects as the person making the comparison. However, as the differences between their capabilities and beliefs increase, the tendency to make the comparison diminishes. People engage in social comparisons for a variety of reasons. People compare themselves to other people based on motivational considerations whereby most people desire to know themselves. In the attempt to attain self-view, people seek informative feedback about their abilities and characteristics. When people fail to get objective standards to make such comparisons, they often compare themselves with other people. People also engage in social comparisons due to the need for self-evaluation and improving self-image. Most people seek additional information on how to improve and advance in life through social comparisons mainly upward comparisons with people who are better than they are. Therefore, social comparisons include the processes people execute to fulfill individual motives and goals in life (Corcoran, Crusius, & Mussweiler, 2011). Social comparison is relevant today because of its potential effects on the self. Social comparison can shape self-evaluation and self-image in a variety of ways. Self-perception, people’s affective reactions, motivation, and behaviors are all shaped variously when individual compare themselves with other people. Research on social comparison can help provide more evidence on the consequences of social comparisons on individuals. Applications of social comparison theory Applications of the social comparison theory are evident in our everyday lives and are an integral component of people’s psychological functioning. Social comparison theory is applicable in academic performance, organizational decision-making, marriages, and sports among other contexts. Particular interest in research has focused on the applications of social comparisons in health psychology. People faced with health problems need social comparisons. In such circumstances, health is the most critical thing to these people, and their futures are unclear. As such, these people require social comparisons during the onset of the illness. In addition to encouraging and providing necessary information to patients, the social comparison theory can also help in self-enhancement. Victims of chronic diseases such as cancer use social comparison principles to cope with their condition because it gives them hope of survival. Downward comparison helps patients cope with their diseases because of the mentality that there are other worst cases of diseases than what they are experiencing. Therefore, the downward comparison is known to contribute to subjective wellbeing of patients suffering from chronic illnesses (Corcoran, Crusius, & Mussweiler, 2011). On the contrary, upwards comparison can be devastating to the patient’s condition as the patients may lose their self-esteem and even worsen the cases. Social comparison is a social phenomenon that is also applicable to the study of the economic behavior of people. Social comparison is also applied in online shopping where individuals tend to compare their opinions with those of other people when shopping online. However, the extent to which people compare themselves to other when shopping online differs significantly. The social comparison takes place internally because of internalized and identification mechanisms that play a role in determining the online shopping behavior of people (Shen, 2012). Social comparison research The development of the social comparison theory by Festinger has inspired enormous research in the past fifty years or so. A long line of research has been developed to show how people use social comparisons in the society. People use social comparison for serving other purposes in life such as coping mechanisms, for self-enhancement and managing the negative effects of life. In addition to coping with the bad news and managing negative effects, research has showed that people use social comparison to improve their individual wellbeing. According to this argument, people tend to use social comparison in a simple manner. If they are better off that the similar other in the comparison, they feel satisfied with the comparison (downward social comparison). However, if they are worse off that their comparative others they remain dissatisfied and find methods to improve their self-worth (upward social comparison). While social comparison can help improve self-worth, a growing evidence from research suggests that it can also decrease the wellbeing of the individual making the comparison. Past research on social compassion theory mainly dealt with the direction of the social comparison. The upward and downward nature of social comparison have been extensively studied in the past years. Prior research suggested that upward social comparison often resulted in competitive behaviors among the acts of the comparison. However, current research are looking into other factors that interplay to drive the process of social comparison such as behaviors and attitudes (Garcia, Tor, & Schiff, 2013). Most encountered social comparison research have their roots in Festinger’s ideas of social psychology. The original research for social comparison and social communication theory focused the influence of the group on individual opinions, beliefs, and abilities. In this regard, individuals adopted and followed the beliefs and opinions of a group by comparing these standards to their personal opinions and abilities. Individuals were forced to modify their opinions and ability to conform to the needs of the group. The series of research that followed did not focus on the power of the group in influencing individual but rather, emphasized on individuals comparing themselves to other people in the society. Since these past works, scholars have conducted enormous research to show the contingent and broad nature of the social comparison process. In the past, research on social comparison theory, as postulated by Festinger emphasized on people comparing their individual opinions and abilities to others. Current research on the social comparison processes are shifting their focus to the effects of people comparing their emotions to those of other persons (Stets & Burke, 2014). Researchers are currently looking at the broad perspective of the social comparison process among people by focusing on the idea that social comparison in the society is a wide concept. It involves individuals comparing any of their personal characteristics to other persons. Social comparison is more than just people comparing their opinions and abilities. It includes all the aspects of life individual can compare with those of other people. Past research emphasized the importance of self-evaluation motive in determining social comparison behavior among people. These researchers maintained that people were likely to make comparisons with similar persons thus employing lateral comparison in evaluating their opinions and abilities. Years later, researchers were interested in the self-enhancement motive among people to improve their abilities and skills. Social comparison theory has developed from just a theoretical statement that people use of self-evaluation into a wider area of research to include many different paradigms, approaches, and applications. Today research on the social comparison theory has taken a new perspective in which the study of the theory has become broader (Dunn, Ruedy, & Schweitzer, 2012). The new perspective focuses on comparison motive other than self-evaluations. The new perspective of research is now emphasizing the importance of self-enhancement and self-improvement and include the various ways people use to engage in social comparison such as social construction of comparison targets. Current studies of the social comparison theory are more than laboratory experiment. The study collect information through interviewing people about their comparison preferences and habits. These studies confront people with vivid and open social comparison information. Scholars have made the social comparison to become more than a theory by studying social comparison in populations. For instance, numerous studies have assessed social comparison in cancer patients and in smoking cessation forums. Further implications for research Although an immense amount of information exists on social comparison theory, there exists gaps and avenues for future research to generate more information on the phenomenon. Several links can be established to the existing theory. Further research should link Social comparison processes to the general principles that underlie our psychological mechanisms and functioning. The urge to seek more information on social comparison processes and understand the fundamental processes may help clarify inconsistent findings that researchers encounter in this field. 1. Social cognition should be linked to the principles of the social comparison theory. Despite the enormous studies conducted on social cognition, it was not until recent years that social cognition found its way into social comparison research. Research should aim at linking social comparison processes to the cognitive basis evident in psychological functioning in any situation. The idea is for research in social comparison theory to take on an informational perspective and generate new information in this field. Notably, people assume that one needs to examine elements of self-knowledge before understanding the consequences social comparison on self-evaluation and perception. Future insights in social comparison might be enhanced by the techniques, methods and models developed for social cognition research and social judgment literature. 2. Further implication for social comparison research may switch its focus to a similar meta-theoretical goal that characterizes social comparison research with a bio-psychological focus. Particularly, the relationship between social comparison theory and neuroscience (Swencionis & Fiske, 2014). Based on this context, the objective is to link social comparison theory and principle to the physiological responses that people exhibit when making the comparisons. Taking on a bio-physiological perspective and focus in social comparison research is an interesting area that scholars can exploit in enriching their understanding of the phenomenon. Another interesting bio-psychological perspective approach would be to understand the social comparison theory and processes from an evolutionary perspective. Such a focus can provide a unique unifying focus on the single dimensional social comparison theory developed by Festinger in the past. 3. It is evident from scholarly studies that there are individual differences in the magnitude and extent to which people make comparisons with others. There are also the differences in the way comparison information is overall interpreted. Due to such differences, it would be ideal to include individual difference variables and their corresponding reactions when studying the cognitive processes involved in the social comparison. Factors that result in individual difference may include self-esteem, social orientation, and personality among others. Assessing such individual difference in studying social comparison theory may shed more light on the opinion comparison component of social comparison that is poorly studied. Although the initial research by Festinger majorly focused on the factors affecting comparison choice, this topic lost its relevance and prominence in contemporary social comparison research. Conclusion Despite the fact that the social comparison phenomenon started as a small theory by a single psychologist, it has grown and emerged as a broad concept in social psychology. The social comparison has developed from a simply defined theory to a broad field of research that links to other areas of psychology. From studies on individual self-evaluations and comparison among people, social comparison research has developed into a broad field that encompasses various perspectives of psychology. Further research on social comparison should seek to generate more information on the influence of a variety of factors on the phenomenon. To do so future researchers should create important links between social comparison research and physiological psychology, evolutionary psychology and personality psychology. This paper has clearly demonstrated that social comparison is rapidly changing and has the potential to develop further only if it is given the attention it deserves as a fundamental phenomenon in human social life. References Corcoran, K., Crusius, J., & Mussweiler, T. (2011). Social Comparisons: Motives, Standards, and Mechanisms. In D. Chadee, Theories in social psychology (pp. 119-139). Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell. Dunn, J., Ruedy, N., & Schweitzer, M. (2012). It hurts both ways: How social comparisons harm affective and cognitive trust. Organizational behaviour and Human Decision processes, 117, 2-14. Garcia, M., Tor, A., & Schiff, T. (2013). The Psychology of Competition: A Social Comparison Perspective. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 8(6), 634-650. Shen, J. (2012). Social Comparison, Social Presence, and Enjoyment in the Acceptance of Social Shopping Websites. Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, 13(3), 198-212. Stets, J., & Burke, P. (2014). Social comparison in identity theory. In K. Zlatan, & G. Frederick, Communal Functions of Social Comparison (pp. 39-59). New York: Cambridge University Press. Swencionis, J., & Fiske, S. (2014). How social neuoscience can inform theories of social comparison. Neuropsychologia, 56, 140-146. Read More