The results of Study 6 support the conclusions from the preceding studies. Firstly, evaluations containing explicit references to social comparison were considered as more socially inappropriate than evaluations without reference to comparison with others. Secondly, it was seen as more socially acceptable to discuss the positive qualities of one's intimate partner than one's own qualities (as a partner). This difference was more pronounced when the evaluations contained explicit references to social comparison. That is, someone's boastful self-evaluation gained less approval than someone boasting about the positive qualities of his or her partner. This divergence became more pronounced when the discussant included explicit references to social comparison in the self- and partner-evaluations.

Further, feelings of sympathy for the discussant appeared to mediate the interactive effect on social desirability. These feelings yielded a pattern of results that was mainly in line with those of the desirability ratings. People expressed more sympathy for noncomparative than for comparative discussants. Also, those evaluating the qualities of the partner could count on more sympathy than self-evaluations, and this was especially true when the discussant used social comparison to come to a judgment. The absence of an interactive effect on the desirability ratings when sympathy was controlled for suggests that the weak effects may be attributable to participants's sympathy for the discussant. The pattern of annoyance was opposite to the pattern of results obtained for the sympathy ratings. However, in contrast to the sympathy variable, social desirability mediated the effects on feelings of annoyance.

The findings of Study 6 were compatible with those of the studies reported in Chapter 2, in that participants believed a discussant to be more satisfied with his or her relationship when the discussant's evaluations focused on positive qualities of the partner in comparative terms rather than in noncomparative terms. The reverse appeared to be true with respect to self-evaluations. That is, in contrast to the prediction, people tended to believe that someone who evaluated the self (as a partner) in a comparative manner would be less satisfied with his or her relationship than someone who evaluated the self noncomparative terms.

One possible explanation may be that self-enhancing social comparison is regarded as a form of defensive coping which may arouse the suspicion that the discussant is somewhat unhappy with his or her relationship. A second alternative explanation may be that the supposed extent to which the discussant would be satisfied with his or her relationship could have been influenced by participants's feelings of sympathy for the discussant. However, this second alternative account had no evidence to support it as additional analyses did not indicate that sympathy mediated the effects on presumed relationship satisfaction.¹²

Finally, a measure of the social comparison orientation (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999) was included in Study 6 to evaluate the possibly moderating role of recipients' orientation toward social comparison on the reactions to comparative and noncomparative evaluations of the self and the partner. Firstly, the aforementioned effects were independent of the order in which the variables --social comparison and the dependent variables referring to the scenario-- were assessed. Secondly, reactions to comparative evaluations were not moderated by individual differences in recipients' orientation toward social comparison.