To examine the beneficial consequences of downward comparison in the development and maintenance of relationship well being, an experimental paradigm was designed to test the prediction that relationship quality is not so much positively affected by noncomparative evaluations in terms of good but instead by the belief that one's own situation is better than that of most others (cf. Emmons & Diener, 1985; Keith & Schafer, 1987; Klein, 1997).

Downward comparisons in the current paradigm were comparisons of one's own intimate relationship with relationships that are worse than one's own. The experimental paradigm was a thought-generating task which asked participants to generate positive qualities on which they consider themselves, their intimate partners, or their own relationships in noncomparative or comparative terms.

Downward comparison was expected to be a successful strategy particularly for people who experience problems in their relationship to reevaluate their situation and to make them feel relatively more satisfied with their own relationship. Accordingly, we expected that the negative impact of discontent about the relationship with the partner on perceived relationship quality would be buffered by comparison of one's own relationship with other relationships that are qualitatively inferior. Furthermore, we expected that downward comparison would exert a stronger buffering effect for individuals high in social comparison orientation.

The present research thus extended the existing literature by investigating experimentally whether cognitive downward comparison improves the perceived quality of the relationship of individuals who experience a relatively low relationship quality and who display a personality disposition to compare their own situation to those of others. We examined this model in both laboratory and field studies, testing our hypotheses in samples of undergraduates as well as in a non-student sample of individuals who had been in relationships for a relatively longer period of time.

The series of experiments (i.e., Studies 1, 2, and 3) reported in Chapter 2 clearly indicated that downward comparison can have beneficial effects on the development and maintenance of relationship quality (i.e., global, evaluative judgments of the relationship; cf. Fincham & Bradbury, 1987). Study 1 demonstrated that participants who were induced to engage in self- and partner-enhancing cognitive downward comparison experienced more relationship satisfaction and felt more committed to their relationship than participants who were asked to generate noncomparative self- and partner-evaluations.

Consistent with the theoretical model, Study 2 demonstrated that preexperimentally identified levels of relational discontent and individual differences in social comparison orientation moderated the effects of downward comparison: under high relational discontent, partner-enhancing downward comparisons led to more relationship satisfaction and commitment, particularly when individuals were dispositionally strongly inclined to compare their own situations with that of others.

In addition, Study 3 replicated the findings of the fifth study in a sample of undergraduate students. Relational discontent and comparison orientation, as measured approximately four weeks prior to the experimental sessions, moderated the relationship-enhancing effects of downward comparison. Thus, in both Studies 2 and 3, the negative impact of discontent about the relationship with the partner on individuals' relationship quality was buffered by comparison of one's own relationship with other relationships of inferior quality, in particular among individuals who were inclined to compare themselves to others.

Thus, the results presented in Chapter 2 provided considerable support for our basic theoretical predictions in both dating and marital relationships. The findings show that people may alleviate their lot and enhance their relationship-evaluation through a cognitive downward social comparison process especially when they are unhappy about the relationship with their partner. Moreover, the results of these three experiments are consistent with Wills' downward comparison theory (1981, 1987) and selective evaluation theory proposed by Taylor et al. (1983).

On the basis of these models one would predict that when people experience relational discontent, selective evaluation by means of downward comparison may indeed minimize a deterioration of relationship quality. In the current paradigm, participants were induced to actively engage in downward social comparison by asking a question the answering of which requires them to rationalize explicitly why they regard their own relationship as better than that of most others. Inducing individuals to engage in this selective evaluation process (Taylor et al., 1983), seems to have had a positive effect on the evaluation of their intimate relationships.

The present data are in line with the suggestion made by Rusbult and Buunk (1993) in their review of research on the commitment model that downward comparisons can be considered as a mechanism of maintaining commitment in intimate relationships. Research has suggested that commitment, in turn, is an influential factor in the development of intimate relationships. For instance, highly committed individuals are believed to develop a variety of maintenance mechanisms that may be employed as a means to sustain a healthy long-term relationship.

It has been suggested that feelings of commitment promote the willingness to accommodate (Rusbult et al., 1994) or to sacrifice for the sake of a relationship (Van Lange, Agnew, Harinck, & Steemers, 1997; Van Lange, Rusbult, Drigotas, & Arriaga, 1994), and the derogation of attractive and threatening alternative partners (Johnson & Rusbult, 1989; Simpson, Gangestad & Lerma, 1990; for a review, see Rusbult & Buunk, 1993). Thus, greater than satisfaction, commitment is believed to be a powerful predictor of the development and deterioration of relationships.

The present findings appear particularly convincing because a number of alternative interpretations of the data could be excluded. A first potential confound could be that the number of qualities generated in the comparison condition would be larger, and would thus be responsible for the effects. However, in all three studies, cognitive set did not affect the number of qualities generated, and controlling for the number of qualities left the effects virtually unchanged.

A second potential confound concerns the possibility that the positive qualities generated in the comparison and no-comparison conditions differed in valence, and as a consequence, that this differential valence of the listed qualities would account for the demonstrated effects of cognitive downward comparison on the perceived quality of the relationship. We obtained considerable evidence that this explanation could not account for the results. In Study 1, the positivity of the qualities did not differ between the two conditions according to the participants and independent judges, and the effects remained the same when controlling for the positivity of the qualities.

In Study 3, although the qualities in the comparison were rated by independent judges as slightly more positive than in the no-comparison condition, the effects stayed virtually the same when controlling for the positivity of the qualities generated. By excluding this alternative interpretation, the present findings contribute to the validity of the experimental manipulations, and increase the confidence that it is indeed the comparative nature of the comparison task that is responsible for the results.

Given the self-report nature of most of the dependent measures reported in Chapter 2, a third alternative interpretation of the differential effects of the thought-generating tasks is possible. It is conceivable that the positive consequences of downward comparison result from demand characteristics and that the effects do not represent any real improvements in perceived quality of the relationship. Studies 1 and 3 examined this alternative explanation by measuring the perceived quality of the relationship not only by self-report measures, but also by unobtrusively assessing the response latencies. It was found that downward comparison also resulted in shorter response latencies to the dependent variables. Hence, as the unobtrusive measures of response latencies are not vulnerable to possible demand characteristics, the impact of the downward comparison thought-generating task on the response latencies contributes to the strength of our findings.

The present research may have methodological implications for the social comparison literature. Downward comparison was manipulated via the use of a thought-generating paradigm that to the best of our knowledge is new to social comparison literature. That is, participants were not presented with social comparison information from an outside source, but an active, cognitive downward comparison process was induced. More specifically, the thought-generating task asked participants to think about their own relationship in a comparative, superior manner as compared to a noncomparative manner.

Through this procedure, the salience of a subset of positive relationship qualities was made salient in both conditions in such a way that in the former condition the salience of superior qualities of participant's own relationships was enhanced, whereas in the latter condition the salience of good qualities of one's own relationship was heightened. In this way, we could show that relationship quality is to a greater extent influenced by feeling better than others rather than by simply feeling good. This thought-generating paradigm can also be applied to dimensions other than relationship evaluation to study how evaluations are influenced by a cognitive process of comparing one's situation with those of others worse off. Moreover, the paradigm extended previous social comparison research in three ways.

First, the current research required participants to engage actively in cognitive downward social comparison, whereas the greater part of previous research on social comparison imposed an passive role of the participants by providing them with information about other people (cf. Wood, 1989, 1996). Second, the current research extended the existing literature by demonstrating that downward comparison is a cognitive mechanism that helps restore or enhance people's well-being (i.e., in the present research, individuals' perceived quality of their relationship) in the way suggested by selective evaluation theory Taylor et al. (1983; see also Wills, 1981, 1987). Finally, the results support the view that individual differences in social comparison orientation moderate the effects of downward comparison (cf. Gibbons & Buunk, 1999).

To conclude, it is important to emphasize that the research presented in Chapter 2 is one of the first to show that a way to sustain a satisfying and committed relationship is through contrasting one's own relationship to that of badly functioning and less happy relationships. As suggested by Rusbult and Buunk (1993), such downward comparisons may enhance the evaluation of one's relationship when facing relational discontent. Moreover, by illuminating the impact of cognitive downward comparisons, and by demonstrating that such comparisons work especially for individuals with a dispositional inclination to compare themselves with others, and by developing a paradigm to study these processes, the present research may not only contribute to the relationship literature, but also to social comparison literature in general.