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Frequent Social Comparisons and Destructive Emotions and Behaviors: The Dark Side of Social Comparisons
Frequent Social Comparisons and Destructive Emotions
and Behaviors: The Dark Side of Social Comparisons
Judith B. White,
1,5
Ellen J. Langer,
2
Leeat Yariv,
3
and John C. Welch IV
4
Social comparisons may seem to serve several positive functions, including self-enhancement.
Frequent social comparisons, however, have a dark side. Two studies examined the rela-
tionship between frequent social comparisons and destructive emotions and behaviors. In
Study 1, people who said they made frequent social comparisons were more likely to expe-
rience envy, guilt, regret, and defensiveness, and to lie, blame others, and to have unmet
cravings. In Study 2, police ocers who said they made frequent social comparisons were
more likely to show ingroup bias and to be less satised with their jobs. The dark side of
frequent social comparisons was not associated with self-esteem. Results are discussed in terms
of the role of individual dierences in social comparison processes.
KEY WORDS: social comparison styles; well-being; self-esteem.
Will I ever be rich, successful, and famous? I had
spent my entire high school career constantly com-
paring myself to others. I played sports, made the
grades, was in the popular crowd...but none of
this was good enough, because I was never satisfied
with who I was.... Five years later, I am still com-
paring myself to my old high school friends and
striving for that kind of success. (Koehn, 2000)
Many people say they constantly compare
themselves to others and they tend to say they are
unhappy. According to classic social comparison
theory, people who make frequent social compari-
sons should be happy if they believe they are better
o than the people to whom they compare themselves
(Wills, 1981; Wood, Taylor, & Lichtman, 1985). An
emerging literature on individual dierences in social
comparison styles (Buunk & Gibbons, 2000; Gibbons
& Buunk, 1999), however, is beginning to nd stable
dierences that link frequent social comparisons with
negative
aect
(Lyubomirsky
&
Ross,
1997;
Lyubomirsky, Tucker, & Kasri, 2001; VanderZee,
Buunk, & Sanderman, 1996).
In this paper, we hypothesize that making
frequent social comparisons has a dark side. While
other researchers have considered the relationship
between
frequency
of
social
comparisons
and
unhappiness in the laboratory (Swallow & Kuiper,
1992), we take a dierent approach. We nd that
people who spontaneously make frequent social
comparisons experience more destructive emotions
and behaviors. Further, an individuals self-esteem
does not predict destructive emotions and behaviors
as well as his or her frequency of social comparison.
SOCIAL COMPARISONS AND WELL-BEING
Social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954)
posits that individuals compare themselves to others
when they need an external standard against which to
judge their abilities or opinions. A long line of theory
and research has since developed that shows that
1
Tuck School of Business, Dartmouth College, 100 Tuck Hall,
Hanover, NH 03755, USA.
2
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA,
USA.
3
Department of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles,
CA, USA.
4
Chapman University, Orange, CA, USA.
5
Correspondence should be directed to Judith B. White, Tuck
School of Business, Dartmouth College, 100 Tuck Hall, Hanover,
NH 03755, USA; e-mail: judith.b.white@dartmouth.edu
Journal of Adult Development, Vol. 13, No. 1, March 2006 (
Ó 2006)
DOI: 10.1007/s10804-006-9005-0
36
1068-0667/06/0300-0036/0
Ó 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. people use social comparisons to serve
other
functions: as a coping mechanism (Wills, 1981; Wood
et al., 1985), to manage negative aect (Aspinwall &
Taylor, 1993; Wood, Giordano-Beech, & Ducharme,
1999), for self-enhancement (Wood, Giordano-Beech,
Taylor, Michela, & Gaus, 1994), or to aliate
upward (Collins, 1996). In daily life, people use social
comparisons to serve many or all of these functions
(Wheeler & Miyake, 1992).
Diener and Fujita (1997) suggest that social
comparisons are not only a way of coping with bad
news and managing negative aect, but also of
enhancing well-being. Well-being is a state in which
one is happy, in which one experiences many plea-
sures and few pains, or has many positive and few
negative emotions, in which one is well satised with
ones life (Diener, 2000). According to this view,
people use social comparison in a simple, straight-
forward fashion: if they are better o than similar
others (downward social comparison), they feel
satised, if they are worse o than similar others
(upward social comparison), they feel dissatised.
Kleinke and Miller (1998), for example, found a lin-
ear relationship between how much better o people
thought they were than others, and well-being. While
social comparisons can increase well-being, a growing
body of evidence suggests that this eect is temporary
and that frequent social comparisons may actually
decrease well-being.
THE DARK SIDE OF FREQUENT SOCIAL
COMPARISONS
Unhappy people, not happy people, may be the
ones who actually make spontaneous frequent social
comparisons (Lyubomirsky & Ross, 1997; Lyubo-
mirsky et al., 2001). In one study (Lyubomirsky &
Ross, 1997), happy and sad people had the oppor-
tunity to compare themselves to a better or worse
peer. Sad people felt worse when paired with a better
performer, and better when paired with a worse
performer. Happy people had less aective vulnera-
bility to the available social comparison information;
they simply did not pay as much attention to how
well others were doing. Similarly, Giordano, Wood,
and Michela (2000) found that unhappy people make
more frequent social comparisons, and Swallow and
Kuiper (1992) found that mildly depressed people
made more frequent social comparisons. Gibbons
and Buunk (1999) found the tendency to seek social
comparison information is correlated with low self-
esteem, depression and neuroticism. This suggests
that people who make frequent social comparisons
are not only likely to be unhappy, but also they are
more vulnerable to an aective responsemore
positive aect when they make a downward social
comparison, but also more negative aect when they
make an upward social comparison.
People make social comparisons when they need
both to reduce uncertainty about their abilities, per-
formance, and other socially dened attributes, and
when they need to rely on an external standard
against which to judge themselves. The implication is
that people who are uncertain of their self-worth,
who do not have clear, internal standards, will engage
in frequent social comparisons. Although self-esteem
has been found to correlate with positive aspects of
well-being (Diener & Diener, 1995), there is some
evidence that clarity of the self-concept, rather than
high self-esteem per se, contributes to well-being
(Campbell,
1990;
Kernis,
Paradise,
Whitaker,
Wheatman, & Goldman, 2000). Self-esteem may not
be as good predictor of negative aspects of well-being
as frequency of social comparisons.
A Cycle of Frequent Social Comparisons
and Destructive Emotions and Behaviors
Festinger (1954) claimed that we make social
comparisons because we have a drive to evaluate
ourselves, yet research suggests it is precisely this
evaluative aspect that is problematic. In order to
compare oneself to an external standard, one must
view ones self objectively, as an object to be judged,
rather than experience ones self subjectively (Langer,
in press). Frequent social
comparisons
should
therefore be associated with objective self-awareness
(Duval & Wicklund, 1972), a state in which ones
attention is focused on ones self as an object, and
indeed they are (Silvia & Duval, 2001). Furthermore,
a state of objective self-awareness leads to more
frequent social comparisons (Stapel & Tesser, 2001).
Add to this cycle the link between self-focused
attention and negative aect (Langer, 1989, 1992;
Nolen-Hoeksema,
Larson,
&
Grayson,
1999;
Pyszczynski & Greenberg, 1987), and the drive to
evaluate ourselves can put us on the road to chronic
dissatisfaction. Indeed, Mor and Winquists (2002)
meta-analysis
found
a
signicant
relationship
between objective self-awareness and negative aect.
Even though social comparisons can reduce
uncertainty and aect well-being, these consequences
must be temporal. Moreover, the consequences of
social comparisons could act as reinforcement to
37
Dark Side of Social Comparisons teach the individual to make more, and more
frequent, social comparisons, leading the individual
to become dependent on social compariso