You seek it, too: Social comparison information
Some concepts in psychology never get old. Instead, they grow stronger. Social comparison — comparisons we make with other people — is one of such concepts.
Imagine all the thoughts that pass through an adult’s mind in an ordinary day. Of all those thoughts, 7.1% is social comparisons, a study shows. Similarly, my colleagues and I found in a study that social comparisons are also frequent in daily lives of adolescents.
But why are we so wrapped up in making social comparisons? That is because we’re motivated to:
know ourselves
evaluate ourselves
feel good about ourselves
and to improve ourselves
Besides, think about the society we live in. It offers many opportunities for social comparisons to make people feel good about themselves and their achievements. For example,TV shows such as Master Chef, competitions such as Olympics, educational systems, normative grading at schools, social media, and feedback we receive from others often encourage us to make social comparisons.
Social comparisons from childhood to adulthood
From ages 4–5, children begin to show interest in such comparisons. If you’ve ever visited a kindergarten classroom, you might have noticed children’s spontaneous social comparisons: “My painting is better than yours,” “I can run faster than you,” “My hair is black; yours is brown.”
It is not until age 8, however, social comparisons begin to affect how children evaluate themselves. This is an important milestone that we should be aware of. Because before this age children typically remain positive about their ability even though they do worse than their peers. But now performing worse than peers at a task could make children think that they must be pretty bad at that task.
As children progress through the primary school years, their interest in social comparison grows stronger. They want to receive social comparison feedback from adults (“You are one of the best at football”) and they begin to select their competitors based on how they do relative to others.
With transition to secondary school, adolescents become even more interested in social comparisons. These comparisons help them evaluate themselves in relation to their newly-formed peer group and if they meet the expectations of their new school context. Toward the end of secondary school, adolescents continue to use social comparisons. They compare themselves especially with better-off others to understand how be as good as others.
In early adulthood and later developmental periods, social comparisons remain to be used. As we transition to new contexts (for example, university, from one work to another), we continue to compare ourselves with others. Even in the absence of people, we tend to compare ourselves with a typical adult on our mind.
How do social comparisons make us feel?
Most studies focus on the emotional outcomes of social comparisons. I notice that sometimes we judge the effects of social comparison harshly, focusing merely the negative effects it entails. Here is a table that I like, as it offers a very comprehensive overview of the effects of social comparisons:
Obviously, how social comparisons make us feel depends on many aspects: the direction of comparison (downward and upward), the framing of comparison (contrast versus identification: whether we see ourselves different than or similar to the persons we compare ourselves with), and the focus of comparison (self and others: whether we focus strongly on ourselves or others).
Which emotions do you notice in yourself following social comparisons? (I can imagine some of you will be tempted to say they never make social comparisons. That is alright as social comparison tendency differs across people.)
How do social comparisons affect children?
We still know little about how such comparisons affect children and adolescents. We examined this in one of our studies.
In that study, we recruited 583 children and adolescents from 12 primary and secondary schools. We randomly assigned them to different experimental conditions. In those conditions, they wrote about their past experiences involving either social comparisons, temporal comparisons or no comparison at all. In the downward social-comparison condition, a 10-year-old boy wrote, “I’m much smarter than most others. I often know the answer sooner and I finish my work earlier.” By contrast, in the upward social-comparison condition, a 9-year-old boy wrote: “We went to the gym and we had to do some exercises. I was the only one who couldn’t do them. We formed groups, and I was grouped with many children who did well. When we started, I felt like the ground beneath [my feet] disappeared. I had to go first and I felt really ashamed.”
After they wrote their experiences, we asked them how they felt and perceived themselves and what they do desire.
We found that children and adolescents who compared themselves with worse-off others (downward social comparisons) felt proud, whereas those who compared themselves with better-off others (upward social comparisons) felt ashamed. Strikingly, children and adolescents who compared themselves with others wanted to be superior to others at the expense of self-improvement. This suggests that social comparisons contributes to a competitive interpersonal orientation.
Another study found that social comparisons, when given in the form of praise (“You are one of the best”), could undermine children’s intrinsic motivation.
This gives us a lot of food for thought.
If you ask how I could make my child focus on self-improvement over superiority, that’s a topic of another blog post.
“What about adults?” I can hear you asking. Well, we also see similar pattern in adults. Adults who make downward social comparisons look down on others with disdain, behave aggressively, and are less willing to collaborate with others.
Take-home message
Social comparison information is easy to access in daily life. We begin to use social comparisons frequently from a young age onward. They are informative as they help us assess ourselves. With good intentions, we give children and adolescents many opportunities to make social comparisons. However, such comparisons could backfire. They could engender in children and adolescents a desire for superiority over others — which can be quite toxic.