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2 - The why, who, and how of social comparison: a social-cognition perspective

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 October 2009

By
Thomas Mussweiler ,
Katja Rüter  and
Kai Epstude
Edited by
Serge Guimond
Thomas Mussweiler
Affiliation:
Psychologie II Universitaet Wuerzburg Wuerzburg Germany
Katja Rüter
Affiliation:
Psychologie II Universitaet Wuerzburg Wuerzburg Germany
Kai Epstude
Affiliation:
Psychologie II Universitaet Wuerzburg Wuerzburg Germany
Serge Guimond
Affiliation:
Université de Clermont-Ferrand II (Université Blaise Pascal), France
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Summary

People frequently engage in social comparisons. Whenever they are confronted with information about how others are, what others can and cannot do, or what others have achieved and have failed to achieve, they relate this information to themselves. And, whenever they try to determine how they themselves are or what they themselves can and cannot do, they do so by comparing their own characteristics, fortunes, and weaknesses to those of others. In fact, such social comparisons are so deeply engraved into our psyche that they are even engaged with others who are unlikely to yield relevant information concerning the self (Gilbert, Giesler, and Morris, 1995). Social comparisons are also engaged with others who – phenomenologically – are not even there, because they were perceived outside of conscious awareness (Mussweiler, Rüter, and Epstude, 2004a). In this respect, comparisons with others appear to be one of the most fundamental, ubiquitous, and robust human proclivities.

The proclivity to compare, however, goes much further. People not only compare themselves to others, they pretty much compare any target to a pertinent standard. This is apparent in psychophysical as well as social judgments. To evaluate how heavy a target weight is, for example, judges compare it to a given standard weight (Brown, 1953; Coren and Enns, 1993). Similarly, to evaluate how aggressive a target person is, judges compare him or her to an accessible standard (Herr, 1986). This essential relativity of human judgment has played a particularly prominent role in the domain of social cognition research.

Type
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Information
Social Comparison and Social Psychology
Understanding Cognition, Intergroup Relations, and Culture
 , pp. 33 - 54
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2005

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