Social Comparison in Close Relationships

People compare themselves to other people every day (B. P. Buunk et al., 2005; Faelens et al., 2021; Pinkus et al., 2008; Wheeler & Miyake, 1992). Sometimes people outperform others (i.e., make downward comparisons), and other times they are outperformed by others (i.e., make upward comparisons). How do these comparisons make people feel? Past research suggests relationship closeness is an important moderator of feelings about social comparisons. Yet, exactly how closeness moderates these feelings is unclear. Some studies suggest people feel particularly negatively about upward comparisons to close others and particularly positively about downward comparisons to close others; other studies show the reverse. Two factors may underlie this divide. First, past studies have measured and manipulated closeness in inconsistent ways. Second, responses to social comparisons may be heterogeneous as a function of individual differences such as agentic and communal values, avoidant and anxious attachment, trait self-esteem, and social comparison orientation. In this dissertation, I examine how people feel about social comparisons to highly close (“identity”), somewhat close (“unit”), and not at all close (“non-unit”) targets, and whether the aforementioned individual differences moderate feelings across and within these relationship types. Participants (N = 512 Prolific workers) completed individual difference measures and described important upward and downward comparisons to one of the three relationship types. After describing each comparison, they completed various outcome measures including explicit and implicit positive and negative affect, state closeness, and state self-esteem. Results show that people generally felt more positively about downward comparisons than upward comparisons. However, this effect was smaller in closer relationships because people felt more positively about upward comparisons to close (“identity”) relationship targets versus less close (“unit,” “non-unit”) targets. Closeness did not moderate responses to downward comparisons. Across relationship types, each of the examined individual differences predicted feelings about downward versus upward comparison. Namely, the people who felt more positively about downward comparisons than upward comparisons tended to score higher in agentic values, avoidant attachment, anxious attachment, and social comparison orientation, and lower in communal values and trait self-esteem. These individual differences were often stronger predictors of feelings about comparisons in close (“identity”) relationships than in less close (“unit,” “non-unit”) relationships. Taken together, these findings suggest that there is no one-size-fits-all answer to the question, “How does social comparison make people feel?” To understand how people feel about social comparisons, we have to understand their personalities and relationships.PHDPsychologyUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/174247/1/zreese_1.pd