In Chapter 3, three studies were reported that explored the responses to someone's public statement that his or her relationship is faring well or badly. It was assumed that people would find another's boastful claims of superiority offensive and socially undesirable, especially when that person publicly engages in self-enhancing social comparison. That is, when a person openly discusses his or her superiority over other people, individuals who observe that person engaging in overt social comparisons might feel annoyance at this person's claim of superiority which may inflict a sense of inferiority on the observer.

However, it was assumed that it would turn out differently when the social comparisons served the purpose of creating an attractive image of one's intimate partner and it was reasoned that people in general would be more likely to engage in partner-enhancement rather then in self-enhancement. When doing so, someone's verbalization of boastful partner-evaluations would be regarded as more socially desirable and would evoke more sympathy than boastful statements concerning the self as a superior partner.

On the contrary, deprecatingly portraying one's partner as an inferior relationship partner will be considered as less socially desirable and would be more likely to prevent observers from sympathizing with the evaluator than publicly characterizing oneself (as a relationship partner) in a self-deprecating manner. These assumptions were tested in both laboratory and field studies among samples of undergraduates as well as among individuals from a representative sample of Dutch households. Participants were provided with a short fragment supposedly derived from a group discussion. They were asked to indicate, among others, the extent to which they considered the boastful statements as socially undesirable and the extent to which the evaluations evoked sympathy for the evaluator.

The results of Chapter 3 supported the aforementioned assumption that public self-enhancement is regarded as more socially undesirable than partner-enhancement and that negative reactions will be elicited to a greater extent in response to self- rather than to partner-enhancing statement. On the other hand, and also in complete agreement with the predictions, when someone makes deprecating statements in public, evaluations of the partner were judged more negatively by observers than self-deprecating evaluations. Hence, the fact that self-enhancement especially will be negatively sanctioned may reflect Wills' (1981) observation that people seem to develop private and implicit strategies to engage in downward comparison to avoid the possible negative reactions of others to such comparison activities.

In addition, Study 5 explored whether people would be able to generate more extensive partner-enhancing descriptions than self-enhancing evaluations on the one hand, and whether those who were asked to provide deprecating evaluations would be able to generate more extensive self- than partner-deprecating descriptions. As expected, participants who were asked to evaluate their intimate partner in an enhancing manner were able to generate more qualities than those who were asked to evaluate the self (as a partner) in like manner. These results suggest that people may anticipate possible negative interpersonal consequences and may feel a greater reluctance to evaluate themselves as a partner in an enhancing fashion than to engage in partner-enhancing evaluations. This line of reasoning was further elaborated in Chapter 2.

The subsequent effort in Study 6 was to examine the differential effects of comparative and noncomparative evaluations of the self and the partner. In this study, the manipulation of the comparative nature of the boastful self- and partner-enhancing evaluations consisted of scenarios wherein someone discusses the evaluations with or without references to social comparison. It was expected that comparative statements would be considered as more socially undesirable and would evoke less positive feelings than noncomparative statements, and that this difference would be more pronounced when the evaluations concerned the self rather than the intimate partner.

Accordingly, the results supported this expectation in that boastful expressions with reference to social comparison were considered to be more undesirable than boastful expressions without reference to social comparison activities, especially when someone expresses his or her evaluations about the self as a relationship partner rather than about the intimate partner. Furthermore, participants expressed fewer feelings of sympathy for a comparative than for a noncomparative evaluator, particularly for the evaluator who discussed his own qualities. Thus, hesitancy to publicly admitting social comparison activities might be considered a virtue.

These findings thus documented the notion that particularly self-enhancing downward comparison are regarded as socially inappropriate and will not gain people's approval and sympathy (cf. Brickman & Bulman, 1977; Wills, 1981, 1991b). It should be noted, however, that perceptions of social desirability appear to be driven by individuals' antipathy towards the evaluator. Mediational analyses provided support for this supposition in Study 5 and 6 (though not in Study 4), although it must be emphasized that both studies cannot settle causal relations since the results are correlational.

Nevertheless, the findings suggest that self-enhancing downward comparisons may be considered socially undesirable because such boastful statements may trigger negative reactions and may temper the observer's sympathy for the swanker who verbalizes his or her superior self-perceptions in public. Moreover, despite the fact that partner-enhancement might suggest someone's praiseworthy effort to be a self-effacing person, it should be noted in this context that partner-enhancement may be considered as an indirect means of self-enhancement (cf. Schütz & Tice, 1997; see also Brown et al, 1988; Cialdini et al, 1989). That is, one can maintain and facilitate one's own reputation by basking in the success of the partner (see Tesser, 1988; Beach & Tesser, 1993, 1995; see also Cialdini et al., 1976; Cialdini & Richardson, 1980; Snyder et al., 1989).

In addition, with this line of reasoning in mind, and given that public self-enhancing downward comparison will evoke more negative reactions than partner-enhancement, people pursuing self-enhancement might show more prudence by publicly praising the extraordinary qualities of one's own intimate partner rather than by overtly evaluating themselves (as a partner) as better than other people.

Additionally, in Study 6, the moderating role of individual differences in social comparison orientation (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999) was explored. It was examined to what extent recipients' reactions to someone else's comparative and noncomparative evaluations of the self and the partner were affected by orientation toward social comparison. Gibbons and Buunk's (1999) research indicated that individuals high in social comparison orientation respond more strongly to social comparison information, thereby leading to the expectation that especially those high in social comparison orientation would react negatively to other individuals who make boastful statements with an explicit reference to social comparison.

However, the expected moderating effect of social comparison orientation was not observed, that is the responses to comparative evaluations were not moderated by individual differences in recipients' orientation toward social comparison. This may indicate that the impact of individuals' orientation toward social comparison is restricted to their own social comparison behavior and that their disposition does not affect their responses to other people displaying social comparison activities. Indeed, Chapter 2 reported evidence that social comparison orientation can affect the positive consequences of comparison with other people.

Considered as a whole, then, the results of the studies reported in Chapter 3 have several important implications for theory and research on (downward) social comparison. First, from the perspective advanced here, individuals' reluctance to admit social comparisons should be traced not to its non-existence or to the possibility that social comparison may not be as prevalent as previous research has implied (e.g. Kasin, 1979; Marks & Miller, 1987; Mullen & Hu, 1988), but rather to the social undesirability of social comparison behavior and the negative reactions to such behavior.

As mentioned earlier, in the past several researchers have suggested that social desirability might decrease people's inclination to admit that they engaged in social comparison behavior, but few have assessed the role of social desirability perceptions of social comparison (see for instance, Helgeson & Taylor, 1993; Hemphill & Lehman, 1991; Van der Zee et al., 1996), and even fewer have examined perceptions of comparers who publicly claim their superiority over others.

Hence the research reported in Chapter 3 is one of few to examine the possible obstacles to studying social comparison. The evidence for the social undesirability of (downward) social comparison could help explain why past researchers have frequently observed that their participants in social comparison research were reluctant to admit their own social comparison behavior (e.g., Helgeson & Taylor, 1993; Schoeneman, 1981; Schulz & Decker, 1985; Taylor et al., 1993; Wayment & Taylor, 1995; Wood et al., 1985; Van der Zee, 1996; Van der Zee et al., 1996). The evidence substantiates Brickman and Bulman (1977) and Wills' (1981) assertion that social comparison in general, and downward comparison in particular, is considered as socially undesirable. Moreover, such comparisons may also evoke negative feelings on the part of those who are considered as inferior to the individual who engages in down comparison.

Second, social comparison researchers should take into account participants' possible reticence to admit social comparisons which they might have employed to evaluate their own situation. To overcome their reluctance, it is advisable for researchers to provide participants in social comparison research with careful instructions about the questionnaire.

These instructions might indicate, for instance, that most ordinary people from time to time compare how they are doing themselves with how other people similar to us are doing. See for example Taylor and Wayment, who tactfully told participants in their study that: "Sometimes when people are trying to assess their academic performance, they compare their own performance to other people around them" (Taylor & Wayment, 1995, p. 736; see also Helgeson & Taylor, 1993). Likewise, the instructions for answering the Iowa Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999) as employed in the current research stressed that most people compare themselves from time to time with others, and that there is nothing "good" or "bad" about social comparison (see Chapter 2 of this dissertation, page 29).