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Downward Social Comparison
Definition
Social comparison involves thinking about one or more other people in relation to the self. Downward social comparison involves making comparisons with others who are inferior to, or less fortunate than, oneself in some way.
History and Background
Leon Festinger's theory of social comparison proposed that because people seek accurate self-evaluations, they compare themselves with other people who are similar to themselves. People also make upward social comparisons with others who are superior, in hopes of learning how to improve. Early researchers discovered, however, that people are not always unbiased selfevaluators. Sometimes people wish to self-enhance—to feel better about themselves—which may lead them to compare downward. In a highly influential article in 1981, Thomas Wills proposed that when individuals are low in subjective well-being, they often ...
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- Downward Social Comparison
- Dual Process Theories
- Egocentric Bias
- Emotional Intelligence
- Encoding
- Excuse
- Expectancy Effects
- Expectations
- Eyewitness Testimony, Accuracy of
- False Consciousness
- False Consensus Effect
- False Uniqueness Bias
- Focalism
- Fundamental Attribution Error
- Gain–Loss Framing
- Gambler's Fallacy
- Halo Effect
- Heuristic Processing
- Heuristic-Systematic Model of Persuasion
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- Hot Hand Effect
- Illusory Correlation
- Implicit Personality Theory
- Inference
- Integrative Complexity
- Interpersonal Cognition
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- Lay Epistemics
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- Meaning Maintenance Model
- Memory
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- Mimicry
- Mind-Wandering
- Misattribution of Arousal
- Moral Emotions
- Moral Reasoning
- Motivated Cognition
- Motivated Reasoning
- MUM Effect
- Nonconscious Processes
- Norms, Prescriptive and Descriptive
- Omission Neglect
- Person Perception
- Personality Judgments, Accuracy of
- Person-Positivity Heuristic
- Positive–Negative Asymmetry
- Primacy Effect, Attribution
- Primacy Effect, Memory
- Priming
- Projection
- Prototypes
- Recency Effect
- Responsibility Attribution
- Risk Appraisal
- Salience
- Satisficing
- Schemas
- Scripts
- Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
- Self-Reference Effect
- Self-Serving Bias
- Self-Verification Theory
- Shifting Standards
- Similarity-Attraction Effect
- Social Categorization
- Social Cognition
- Social Cognitive Neuroscience
- Social Comparison
- Social Impact Theory
- Social Projection
- Spontaneous Trait Inferences
- Spreading of Alternatives
- Subliminal Perception
- Subtyping
- Symbolic Interactionism
- Theory of Mind
- Thin Slices of Behavior
- Three-Dimensional Model of Attribution
- Transactive Memory
- Value Pluralism Model
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- Critical Social Psychology
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