As noted earlier in the current thesis, individuals often display a reluctance to admit that they actually compare themselves with others. This reticence about social comparison activities may result from a lack of awareness or problems in selectivity, recall, and aggregation (cf. Wood, 1996). On the other hand, individuals may also be reluctant to admit that they compare themselves with others, because some people lack an interest in social comparison information, and indeed, because they seldom do engage in social comparison. In other words, the extent to which people compare themselves with others may vary among individuals, thus pointing to the possibility there are considerable individual differences in the tendency to engage in social comparison (c.f. Brickman and Bulman, 1977; Hemphill & Lehman, 1991; Taylor et al., 1992; Wills, 1981).

Gibbons and Buunk (1999) have elaborated this notion by developing and validating a measure of social comparison orientation to assess individual differences in the tendency toward social comparison. They proposed the concept of social comparison orientation to refer to the personality disposition of individuals to compare their accomplishments, their situation, and their experiences with those of others in similar circumstances. In this chapter, it is explored to what extent the consequences of cognitive downward social comparison are moderated by individual differences in social comparison orientation.