Social comparison processes

Social comparison theory addresses people’s tendency to compare their own attributes or behaviors to those of others, especially when the characteristics (e.g., beauty) are important and when standards for evaluation are ambiguous. In the contrast effect, social comparison denotes the mediating process in which females compare themselves with idealized images in the mass media, and, on perceiving that their own body shape or weight ‘fails’ to meet the thin standard, show increased weight and body dissatisfaction.

Several lines of evidence support the proposition that social comparison mediates the relationship between media exposure and negative body image. A recent cross-sectional study found a significant positive correlation between Australian high school females’ exposure to fashion and beauty magazines (but not television programs), and to the Internet sites with an appearance focus, and internalization of the thin ideal, appearance comparison, weight dissatisfaction, and drive for thinness. As predicted by Thompson’s tripartite model of sociocultural influences, the relationships between extent of exposure to the two forms of media and both drive for thinness and weight dissatisfaction were mediated independently by thin-ideal internalization and by the tendency toward greater appearance comparisons.

Two cross-sectional US studies found that young women who self-consciously divide their attention between the slender models in magazines and themselves are more likely to demonstrate a contrast effect, whereas those who focus intensely on the models while defocusing attention on the self are more likely to identify with the models and to show an assimilation effect. The unhealthy division of attention probably represents social comparison as a form of self-evaluation. However, the mechanisms by which social comparison operates are far from clear. On the one hand, several studies have found that explicit self-evaluative instructions, as compared to instructions emphasizing self-improvement, generate body dissatisfaction. On the other hand, Stephen Want’s recent meta-analysis of variables that moderate experimental effects (see Criterion 4) found that explicit comparison instructions produced significantly smaller effect sizes for body dissatisfaction than distracter instructions. Want offers the testable hypothesis that distracter instructions facilitate automatic social comparison processes and also interfere with conscious defensive or buffering reactions like those induced by laboratory inoculation studies (see Criterion 5).

There is a complex interplay between the potential standard for comparison (i.e., media images as social stimuli), the perceiver’s self-concept, the dispositional tendency toward social comparison as a moderator variable, the mediating process of social comparison, and media effects. Many adolescent girls and young women are, like most social scientists, critical of the media’s restrictive and unrealistic thin beauty ideal. Yet these females remain motivated to seek and use such media for social comparisons, because they consider professional models to embody (1) social norms endorsed by female and male peers, and (2) realistic possibilities for a majority of girls and women. And yet surveys of girls and women ages 8–25 indicate that the tendency to engage in self-evaluative social comparisons using slender models and celebrities as a beauty standard is a moderator of media’s negative effects on body image. Girls and women who compare themselves to models in fashion magazines and on television report greater body dissatisfaction. Indeed, even though the two variables potentiate each other, some studies indicate that this social comparison trait is more determinative of body dissatisfaction than extent of media exposure.

The relationship between preexisting (trait) body dissatisfaction as a moderator of negative media effects on body image (see above) and social comparison as both a mediator and a moderator was recently confirmed by researchers in the Netherlands. Relative to women expressing body satisfaction, undergraduate women who were already dissatisfied with their own bodies tended to be negatively affected by exposure to and comparison with a variety of thin, physically attractive people. They even showed a contrast effect after seeing a drawing of a thin vase versus a fatter, rounded vase.

Social Comparison Theory

According to social comparison theory, individuals need to evaluate their accomplishments, and they do so by comparing themselves to similar individuals (Festinger, 1954). Demographic characteristics (e.g., age or race) and occupation are common comparative bases. Individuals tend to select social comparisons who are slightly better than themselves (Festinger, 1954). Researchers have applied social comparison theory to explain the processes for setting executive compensation (O’Reilly et al., 1988).

As we discussed earlier, compensation committees play an important role in setting executive compensation, and compensation committees often include CEOs from other organizations of equal or greater stature. Based on social comparison theory, compensation committee members probably rely on their own compensation packages and the compensation packages of CEOs in organizations of equal or greater stature to determine executive compensation.

Assimilation and Contrast

Until the 1990s, most students of social comparison theory believed that comparison always led to contrast with the comparison target. That is, an upward comparison (with someone better) lowered a person’s self-evaluation, and a downward comparison (with someone worse) raised the self-evaluation, as shown in the Mr Clean/Mr Dirty study. There was even a subsidiary theory called ‘Downward comparison principles in social psychology’ that argued that when people are psychologically threatened they will deliberately seek out someone worse to compare themselves to in order to relieve their distress (Wills, 1981). This theory was quite influential during the 1980s until accumulating evidence caused it to be abandoned. The basic problem with the theory is that when people are psychologically threatened, they are more inclined to see others as superior to themselves and would have difficulty in finding and using downward comparison targets. We discussed previously the research showing that when people are experiencing negative affect, they are more likely to make upward comparisons rather than downward comparisons (Wheeler and Miyake, 1992). Presumably, this happens because negative affect causes people to perceive themselves negatively and to perceive most other people as superiors to themselves. In short, although downward comparison does generally make people feel better, people who are distressed or threatened find it difficult to find and use downward comparisons.

While believing that comparison usually led to contrast, researchers were aware that the rank-order studies, among others, had shown that people usually compare upward. If comparing upward leads to contrasting feelings of inferiority, why would people do it?

3.1 Challenges to Downward Comparison Theory

There is substantial controversy about the empirical support for downward comparison theory. The theory makes the intuitively appealing prediction that when people are experiencing distress they will make a downward comparison to reduce the distress. Others have questioned whether people experiencing distress are psychologically capable of making a downward comparison; their attention may be so focused on their distress that they are unable to see others as being worse off than themselves. In research using the Social Comparison Record (see above), Wheeler and Miyake (1992) found that when participants were experiencing negative affect, they made upward comparisons rather than the downward comparisons predicted by downward comparison theory. In contrast, when the same participants were experiencing positive affect, they made downward comparisons. Such a result is not consistent with downward comparison theory but is consistent with affect-cognition priming models in which affect primes (makes ready and available) cognitions about the self that are congruent with the affect. Experiencing negative affect primes a person to have negative thoughts about the self and thus to see others as superior to the self, leading to a contrastive upward comparison and further feelings of inferiority and negative affect.