Chapter 5. Social Comparison

5.1 Introduction

As discussed in the chapter 5, we often come to know who we are through reflected appraisals, seeing ourselves through the eyes of others. With this idea in mind, it’s important to consider that our perceptions of the behaviors and abilities of the people around us can play a role in how they ultimately view themselves. Although the self can also be understood by simply observing one’s own behavior (self-perception theory), social psychologists emphasize that many aspects of people’s lives are greatly influenced by their social environment.

For the first part of this task you will (very briefly) write about a student you know. You can think of this task as playing a role in the student’s reflected appraisals.

5.2 Instructions

On the next screen you will be given space to write about a student who is currently in one of your classes. For this particular task, think about a student who seems to perform poorly in class and a student who seems to perform well. This is just a guess and does not fully reflect either student. You will be prompted to write around 5 sentences on one of these students (no need to use names). After writing about your classmate, you will then be asked to rate yourself.

5.3 Experiment

5.4 Results

5.5 Debriefing

The purpose of this task is to further understanding of how we come to know the self. As mentioned earlier, we often come to know who we are by seeing ourselves through the eyes of others (reflected appraisals) or by simply observing our own behavior (self-perception theory). The majority of this task focused on an additional means of understanding the self: social comparison. It can be informative to compare ourselves to the people around us, whether those comparisons be with people who are better off than we are (upward comparison) or worse off than we are (downward comparison). Although the Morse and Gergen (1970) study discussed during the task suggests that upward comparison produces negative effects, it’s important to note that this type of comparison can also be used as a source of motivation for people to improve (e.g. Blanton et al., 1999).

5.6 Quiz