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Social Comparison Theory

Generally speaking, as one of many theories and concepts dedicated to understanding the self, social comparison theory can be described as a sociological framework that addresses the complex process of self-evaluation to further one's understanding of one's identity. This entry begins with a historical overview and then discusses historical and current understandings and applications of social comparison theory.

Historical Overview

The formal articulation of social comparison theory can be traced back to Leon Festinger who published an article titled “A Theory of Social Comparison Processes” in 1954 that called attention to the ways that self-knowledge and social knowledge are connected. More specifically, people learn and draw conclusions about who they are by comparing themselves with who they perceive other people to be. Festinger's original essay and a subsequent symposium paper titled “Motivation Leading to Social Behavior” placed specific emphasis on how comparison information was used rather than on how comparison information was acquired. In his original works, Festinger examined how people socially evaluated their opinions and abilities compared with similar others (rather than dissimilar others) when there was a lack of objective information to base comparisons on. He noted that dissimilar others were not used for social comparison to generate accurate information about the self. Likewise, those who were selected for comparison represented similarities along abilities, opinions, and characteristics that were deemed relevant by the person drawing comparisons. At the foundation of Festinger's early work was the assertion that people have the desire to perform well, rather than worse than or even equal to, compared with similar others. Within his theoretical premise, he also highlighted how pressures toward uniformity were relevant as well. In essence, being similar to, in alignment with, or competitive with those held in high regard as representatives of what is good, correct, or appropriate fosters positive perceptions of the self. Essentially, these individuals serve as favorable role models to whom the comparer wants to measure up.

Although Festinger's original essay was relatively overlooked for a number of years and sparked only a minimal amount of scholarly research, social comparison theory resurfaced in 1966 with an issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology dedicated to its examination. The first book on social comparison theory titled Social Comparison Processes: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives, edited by social psychologists Jerry Suls and Richard Miller, emerged 11 years after the special issue. Since these two major publications, social comparison theory has become a staple in social psychological research.

Understandings of Social Comparison Theory

At the foundation of social comparison theory is the desire to succeed in implicit or explicit competition with others as a means to engage in identity formation. Reflecting on William James's historical essay on the self, Suls asserts that people engage in social comparison only when the element being compared is salient to their self-definition. Although these two points of emphasis are rooted in Festinger's work, which remains highly acclaimed, social comparison theory has since been extended in many ways. Inspired by his work, researchers have examined the desire for self-enhancement and the desire for self-improvement as motivating factors for individuals to engage in social comparison in addition to Festinger's emphasis on self-evaluation. The roots of social comparison theory also highlight how individuals evaluate their opinions and abilities via social comparison and were substantially extended to include comparisons of affiliation, fear, threat, and emotion by Stanley Schachter in 1959. For example, Schachter's work indicated that social comparisons were used by individuals to ascertain whether their affective responses were appropriate in specific situations. In addition to the inroads made regarding what people tend to compare, research has also indicated that comparisons can be made at the individual level (micro) as personal comparisons or at the group level (macro) as categorical comparisons. When engaging in group comparisons, evaluations may be intragroup (comparisons within a particular group) or intergroup (comparisons between two groups). Researchers have also termed the need for social comparison information as social comparison orientation.

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