The Motive for Social Comparison

Actually, individuals not prefer to compare themselves with similar others in all

situation. Traditionally, different directions of comparison have been linked to

different motivational states. Wood (1989) studied the literature and divided the social

comparison motivation into self-evaluation, self-improvement and self-enhancement.

The following sections demonstrate the three motivations for social comparison.

（1） Self-Evaluation

The purpose of self-evaluation is self-understand and self-defining. When

individuals want to understand their own ability, they tend to compare themselves

with others who have about the same level of ability. In the rank-order study (Wood,

1989), the researcher provided a false transcript, and told the subject that his

performance is on the middle position. The subjects had an opportunity to select one

member of all participants and get his/her grade. The result showed that most subjects

selected the person who is also on the middle position. This is similar to the central

proposition of Festinger’s theory “similarity hypothesis,” The tendency to compare

oneself with some other specific person decreases as the difference between his[or her]

opinion or ability and one’s own increase. (Wood, 1989)

Moreover, studies of the comparison selections for self-evaluation indicate that

on unfamiliar dimensions, or on earlier familiar dimensions in a new social context,

one will prefer to learn the distribution of others’ standings, because knowing other’s

specific score may have little help (Wheeler, 1969). As individuals become familiar

with the dimension, their comparison choices change. That is, a man who has a high

capacity tends to choose a task that will discriminate between high-ability levels; a

man who has a low capacity tends to choose a task that will discriminate between

low-ability levels. All of this amounts to saying that people prefer to compete with

others who have the same level of ability (Wood, 1989).

（2） Self-Improvement

Humans have a drive to evaluate their opinions and ability. Besides, they also

strive to improve themselves. There is evidence that people with high motivation,

high competitiveness, and high ambition are especially likely to make upward

comparisons (Matthews, 1983). Even when they compare themselves with similar

others, they still choose those who are close but a little better than their own in the

rank order rather than worse than their own (Wheeler, 1969). If a person measures

himself against these successful individual, his self-evaluative comparisons may

ultimately lead to self-improvement, and it could help them progress or be inspired by

their comparison object.

However, when upward comparison occurs to fulfill the motivation of

self-improvement, people may be demoralizing since they are forced to their own

inferiority (Wood, 1989). Wood (1989) suggested that surrounding dimensions are

important not only in serving one’s comparison goal but in determining the impact of

comparisons offered by the environment. When similar others are competitors,

individuals in upward comparison will feel threatened and aversive, but when their

relationship is not a competition, the superior performance of comparison people is an

inspiration for the individuals (Morse, 1970). Under competitive conditions, put it

briefly, people tend to avoid comparisons with superiors.

Moreau and Herd’s study (2009) is worth a mention. They examine the effect of

social comparison on the evaluation of self-designed product. The result showed that

if consumers are prompted to process defensively or have the opportunity to repair

their threatened self-regard by completely engaging in a task, the negative evaluation

could be reduced.

（3） Self-Enhancement

Another motivation of social comparison is self-enhancement or protection of

self-esteem. The best way to fulfill the self-enhancement is to make downward

comparison, which means that people could get the superiority and achievement

through downward comparison. To put it another way, when people want to have own

more confidence, they will try to compare with others whose ability worse than their

own.

However, some scholars believe that if upward comparison does not result in

negative self-evaluations, people can get a chance to self-enhance (Collins, 1996).

Therefore, what direction of social comparison is most effective in self-enhancement?

Buunk, et al. (1990) suggested it depends on situations. In normal situations (such as

the evaluation of an ongoing marriage), people in upward comparisons feel more

threatened because they are reminded that how poorly they are doing, whereas in

stressful situation (such as getting cancer), seeing better example may encouraging

and inspiring.

Previous studies using comparative rating measures have pointed out that when

individuals have unpleasant characteristics, like no friends or scares, they may rate

others as similar, that is, as also having these difficulties or bad situation (Suls & Wan,

1987). On the contrary, people on desirable dimension tend to rate themselves as

superior to others or as unique in their superiority. For example, when participant say

that they donate to orphans regularly, they would estimate that few others would do

the same, so they felt they are outstanding than others (Wood, 1989).

It should be concluded, from what has been said above, that in general situation,

the motivation for self-evaluation could be fulfill by comparing the similar one, the

motivation for self-improvement could be fulfill by upward comparison, and the

motivation for self-enhancement could be achieved by downward comparison.