Bill and Arlene Miller were a happy couple. But now and then they felt they alone among their circle had been passed by somehow, leaving Bill to attend to his bookkeeping duties and Arlene occupied with secretarial chores. They talked about it sometimes, mostly in comparison with the lives of their neighbors, Harriet and Jim Stone. It seemed to the Millers that the Stones lived a fuller and brighter life. The Stones were always going out for dinner, or entertaining at home, or travelling about the country somewhere in connection with Jim's work.
In Neighbors, Raymond Carver introduced a once happy couple that encounters the potentially negative consequences of social comparison. Clearly, Bill and Arlene feel bad about themselves and feel discouraged and depressed when they compare their own situation with that of the Stones. In fact, they are faced with the inferiority of their own relationship by perceiving their neighbors' relationship to be more fulfilling and satisfying than their own. In this short story, Raymond Carver clearly shows how individuals may compare their own relationship to that of others, and how they may draw conclusions from such comparisons about the quality of their own relationship. Comparing one's own standing on a dimension to the standing of others on that same dimension is the subject of the current thesis.
Every now and then, we all reflect and think about where we stand and how we are doing. For that purpose, one might form an opinion about oneself by using objective information that consists of nonsocial standards. For instance, a professor wishing to evaluate her achievement can count her number of publications, a basketball player can obtain an objective verification of his height in an exact number of centimeters by using a tape measure, and a student can assess her academic performance on the basis of her grades. However, although some properties can be considered in objective terms, much more can be learned when the professor, the basketball player, and the student compare their properties with those of other professors, basketball players, and students. Thus, when nonsocial touchstones are trivial or unavailable, social comparison information may help people to evaluate their own abilities and opinions by relating their standing to the standing of similar individuals around them. For instance, the aforementioned professor may learn that her number of publications does not keep pace with that of the fellow professors in the same department, the basketball player may learn that he stands literally head and shoulders above his team-mates, and the student may discover that her grade F does not match the level A grades of her friends at all.
In the course of years, many social psychologists have acknowledged that comparisons with others may play a significant role in people's self evaluations (see Buunk & Gibbons, 1997; Collins, 1996; Suls & Miller, 1977; Suls & Wills, 1991; Wood, 1989, for reviews). According to the original formulation of social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954a), people utilize social comparison information principally because they are driven by a need for accurate perceptions of their abilities and opinions. People do so, as postulated by Festinger, because they aim to avoid potential disillusionment resulting from inaccurate assessments of these abilities and opinions. However, as will be outlined later on, people not only have a desire to evaluate the accuracy of their abilities and opinions, they also appear to be fundamentally motivated to feel good about themselves and to maintain and develop a positive self-evaluation. Indeed, contemporary social psychologists acknowledge the notion that people in general tend to explain information about themselves in ways that are favoring the self and it is hardly surprising then, that when asked to compare themselves to people in similar situations, most individuals show a predominant disposition to see themselves as superior to others. Moreover, the tendency to look at oneself in a manner that will place oneself in the best possible light seems to promote one's psychological well-being and adjustment to misfortune and negative feedback (see Hoorens, 1993; Taylor & Brown, 1988, 1994, for reviews).
Research efforts over the foregoing decades have mainly addressed the issue of which factors influence individuals' social comparison desires and preferences (cf. Kruglanski & Mayseless, 1990; Wills & Suls, 1991; Wood, 1989). However, in recent years social comparison research has more strongly focused on the effects of social comparison on individuals' self-evaluation and their subjective well-being (see Suls & Miller, 1977; Suls & Wills, 1991; Wood, 1989, for reviews). Furthermore, even though several authors noted the potential importance of social comparison in intimate relationships (Surra & Milardo, 1991; Titus, 1980), only a few studies have explored social comparison processes regarding an intimate relationship in general, and even fewer have examined the consequences of social comparison for the evaluation of the quality of a relationship. Following the central notion in Wills' (1981) downward comparison theory, the present thesis focuses on the effects of engaging in downward social comparison (i.e. comparison with other people who are involved in intimate relationships that appear to fare badly) upon the perceived quality of the relationship. More precisely, this thesis attempts to examine experimentally whether cognitive downward comparison can improve the perceived quality of the relationship. Such cognitive downward comparison is expected to be a particularly beneficial strategy for people who experience discontentment in their relationship with their partner to reevaluate their situation, resulting in an increased level of relationship satisfaction and commitment to the relationship. Additionally, it is explored whether cognitive downward comparison exerts a stronger positive effect on relationship quality for individuals high in social comparison orientation, that is, for those who display a personality disposition to compare their own situation to that of others.
However, the potentially beneficial consequences of downward social comparisons notwithstanding, the reactions to discussing overtly such comparison may be considerably less positive. Usually, when someone else publicly discusses his or her good fortune, such disclosures may lead to a paradoxical situation in which social practices and social structures dictate that we (i.e., as observers of such behaviors) must rejoice at someone else's success whereas privately our feelings may be those of annoyance and envy (cf. Smith, Parrott, Ozer, & Moniz, 1994). It could become even worse when people speak highly of themselves and brag about their own success by suggesting that they are better off than others. Brickman and Bulman (1977) were among the first to suggest that many people find others annoying when they make explicit social comparisons and that could engender an antipathy to someone who engages in explicit downward social comparison activities. Thus, it can be assumed that positive statements made about accomplishments in a way that deprecates others' achievements or characteristics will irritate other people and evoke an antipathy for the individual who makes boastful self-evaluations at the expense of others. More specifically, such overt downward social comparison may be considered as socially inappropriate and undesirable. Indeed, evidence suggests that people made fewer downward, but not fewer upward, social comparisons and reported less positive affective consequences when they considered social comparison as more socially inappropriate (Hemphill & Lehman, 1991). Therefore, in addition to investigating the effects of downward comparison on the perceived quality of the relationship, in this thesis the reactions to someone who engages openly in downward social comparison are also examined to further explore the notion that social comparison in general, and downward comparison in particular, is socially undesirable.
Overall, this line of reasoning suggests that comparison of one's own situation with that of others who are doing worse in the same situation may be a mixed blessing. The present thesis sought to explore both positive consequences of cognitive downward comparison for individuals' well-being on the one hand, and the possible negative reactions to downward comparison activities when they are made in public on the other hand. Prior to discussing the present series of studies in more detail, I would like to first introduce the social comparison literature. Next, the potential significance of downward comparison for the evaluation of relationship quality will be addressed. In addition to these positive consequences for the perceived quality of the relationship, possible negative reactions to those people who openly engage in downward social comparison will also be addressed. Further, the notion of individual differences in social comparison orientation is introduced and the possibility that such individual differences may exert an influence on the consequences of cognitive downward comparison and also on the reactions to overt downward comparisons will be considered. In the final section of this introductory chapter, I will give a brief outline of the present thesis.
As noted previously, the seminal paper "A Theory of Social Comparison Processes" of Festinger (1954a) outlined in particular the information-seeking aims of social comparison. Festinger (1954b) assumed that individuals strive "to hold correct opinions, beliefs and ideas about the world in which [they live]" and are motivated "to know precisely what [their] abilities enable [them] to do in this world" (italics in the original, p. 194). When the accuracy of individuals' opinions and the level of their capabilities could not be appropriately tested against physical or objective standards, it was proposed that comparison with other similar individuals would provide people with useful information to obtain a subjective feeling of accuracy in their self-evaluations. Whereas Festinger emphasized that social comparisons are aimed at making accurate self-evaluations, in the decades following Festinger's pioneering work a growing body of literature revealed other motives for social comparison.
Hakmiller (1966) and Thornton and Arrowood (1966) were the first to suggest that social comparison may also serve the purpose of self-enhancement, the need of "sustaining or reasserting the favorability of the individuals self-regard" (Hakmiller, 1966, p. 37). Subsequently, research on social comparison has acknowledged self-enhancement as a second major reason to engage in social comparison (see Wayment & Taylor, 1995; Wood, 1989, for reviews). This motive has gained increasing attention since Wills' (1981) influential paper on downward comparison theory in which he proposed that specifically when people experience a threat to their psychological well-being, the need for self-enhancement will prevail over that of self-evaluation. In his model of downward social comparison, Wills (1981) reasoned that people can enhance their subjective well-being through downward comparisons, that is, by comparing themselves to others who are doing worse on the same dimension under evaluation. According to this model, contrasting oneself with others worse off will reveal one's own superiority over others, thus enabling individuals to feel better about their own situation. In addition, Wills (1987) discussed several specific cognitive responses that serve the purpose of making people feel comparatively fortunate. Although such downward comparisons may be achieved in various ways, such as taking advantage of encounters with inferior comparison targets, according to Wills (1987), downward comparisons often consist of a process in which individuals cognitively construct downward comparison targets, or derogate others' abilities and personal attributes. Similar cognitive strategies were previously put forward in a selective evaluation model as proposed by Taylor, Wood, and Lichtman (1983). Based on the research on cognitive adaptation of breast cancer patients, Taylor et al. proposed various cognitive strategies which people could use in an attempt to minimize their negative self-images and to reduce the consequent threat to their well-being. Although this model does not provide an exhaustive list of possible responses to stress (cf. Wood & Taylor, 1991), it does provide a worthwhile model to show a general tendency for distressed individuals to evaluate their own situations in such a way that it becomes cognitively more bearable.
Indeed, correlational studies have shown that the perception of doing better than others is a better predictor of overall life satisfaction and positive affect than objective measures (e.g., number of friends, grade point average; Emmons and Diener, 1985). In addition, a number of studies have provided evidence for the relation between cognitive downward comparison and improvements in subjective well-being (see Taylor & Brown, 1988, for a review), or what according to Gibbons and Gerrard (1991) might simply be called general satisfaction (cf. Emmons & Diener, 1985). That is, the realization of one's own superiority over others may lead to improvements in mood states, life satisfaction, self-esteem, and optimism (see Gibbons & Gerrard, 1991; Wills, 1981, 1991a, for reviews). Research has shown that presentation of information about worse-off individuals improves the mood of depressed individuals and those with low self-esteem (Gibbons, 1986; Gibbons & Gerrard, 1989). For instance, in a study by Reis, Gerrard, and Gibbons (1993) among undergraduate women who listened to taped statements of a college woman who related using contraceptive methods, comparison with a downward, more ineffective target resulted in greater self-esteem improvement than comparison with an upward, more effective target, particularly among women with low self-esteem.
The propensity to see the self as better than others also seems to pervade the way people think about themselves as a relationship partner. Research has shown that a majority of people believe that they are above average as a spouse and as a parent (Headey & Wearing, 1988). Given the tendency towards self-enhancement, it is noteworthy that individuals do not only tend to see their relationship partners as more positive than others, but sometimes even tend to see their partner as better than themselves. For instance, Brown (1986, Experiments 2 and 3) demonstrated that people rate their best friends more favorably and less negatively than most other people. Similarly, Sedikides, Campbell, Reeder, and Elliot (1998) found that closely related individuals refrain from self-enhancement. In two experiments, members of relationally distant dyads took more credits for dyadic success than for its failure, whereas close participants did not differ in their attributions for dyadic success or failure. The inclination to appraise close others in a more positive fashion than other people is also displayed when romantic partners evaluate each other. For instance, Hall and Taylor (1976; see also Taylor & Koivumaki, 1976) found that intimate partners tended to idealize each other and to evaluate their partner more positively than they do themselves. Schütz and Tice (1997) demonstrated that both low and high self-esteem individuals used an indirect form of self-enhancement by describing their romantic partners positively. Further, low self-esteem individuals were more strongly inclined to describe their partner more positively than themselves whereas high self-esteem individuals tended to present themselves as superior to their partners. According to Murray and Holmes (1993, 1994, 1997), people adhere to have positive, or even idealized perceptions of their romantic partners, and will minimize information that challenges these positive perceptions. For instance, Murray and Holmes (1993) created experimentally a threat to the relationship by turning a partner's positive qualities into potential faults. After that, participants tended to ignore or discount such apparent shortcomings, for instance through accentuation of their partners' positive qualities and through partner-enhancing attributions that minimized the partner's responsibility for this fault. Especially individuals who are satisfied with their relationship, relative to those in distressed relationships, seem to make partner-enhancing attributions, that is, they are more likely to attribute their intimate partners' positive behaviors to personal qualities, while they tend to see their partners' negative behaviors as situationally caused (e.g., Fincham & Beach, 1988; Fincham, Beach, & Baucom, 1987; Fletcher, Fincham, Cramer, & Heron, 1987; see Bradbury & Fincham, 1990, for a review). Hence people may evaluate their intimate partners as superior to themselves, thus engaging in partner-enhancing rather than in self-enhancing social comparison.
Overall, these studies suggest that in a close relationship people may engage in partner-enhancing social comparisons to achieve and maintain a positive, superior image of their romantic partners. Specifically in areas of low self-relevance, individuals tend to admit being outperformed by their partners (Pilkington, Tesser, & Stephens, 1991). Additionally, the self-evaluation maintenance model (Tesser, 1988; see for an extension to close relationships, Beach & Tesser, 1993, 1995) states that a person's self-evaluation may be bolstered by his or her partner's superiority over oneself, because that person can bask in reflected glory of the partner's success (cf. Cialdini, Borden, Thorne, Walker, Freeman, & Sloanet, 1976; see also Cialdini & Richardson, 1980; Cialdini, & De Nicholas, 1989; Snyder, Lassegard, & Ford, 1989). As such, partner-enhancement can be considered as an indirect means of self-enhancement (cf. Schütz & Tice, 1997; see also Brown, Collins, & Schmidt, 1988; Cialdini, Finch, & De Nicholas, 1989). However, it must be noted that when evaluating characteristics high in self-relevance, the reflection process will be discouraged and a process of comparison will be prompted which might be self-enhancing when the partner is outperformed, but which might threaten one's self-evaluation by outstanding accomplishments of the partner (cf. Tesser, 1988; Feather, 1994). For instance, people show negative emotions when they are outperformed on a dimension in which they want to excel themselves (Tesser & Collins, 1988; Tesser, Millar, & Moore, 1988; Salovey & Rodin, 1984). Feather (1994; see also Smith et al., 1996) showed that comparison with a high achiever on a self-defining dimension might engender feelings of envy, and that individuals may sometimes rejoice at a high achiever's misfortune. Likewise, individuals who are outclassed in an area of high self-relevance by someone whom they are close to, tend to withdraw from an activity with that friend or relative, thus reducing the interpersonal closeness toward that other (Pleban & Tesser, 1981).
In addition, social comparison may play an important role in the way individuals evaluate their close relationships (see Van Yperen & Buunk, 1994, for a review). That is, people in general seem to be inclined to engage in relationship-enhancing social comparison and to see their relationship in superior terms (i.e. perceived relationship superiority). For instance, evidence is accumulating that people tend to appraise the quality of their own relationship (Buunk & Van Yperen, 1989, 1991; Buunk & Van den Eijnden, 1997; Helgeson, 1994; Van Lange & Rusbult, 1995) and the future of their relationship (Baker & Emery, 1993; Buehler, Griffin, & Ross, 1995; Buunk, 1998; Heaton & Albrecht, 1991; Helgeson, 1994; Murray & Holmes, 1997; Schriber, Larwood, & Peterson, 1985; Weinstein, 1980; Wigboldus & Van Lange, 1993) more positively and less negatively than the relationships of others. For instance, Buunk and Van Yperen (1989, 1991) demonstrated that most individuals felt that their marriage was in terms of inputs and outcomes superior to most other marriages, and Helgeson (1994) found that most people tend to perceive their own relationships as more satisfying than that of others. Van Lange and Rusbult (1995) asked participants to list the positive and negative qualities that spontaneously come to mind when thinking about their own and others' relationships, and found that people hold a greater number of positive beliefs and fewer negative beliefs about their own relationships than about other relationships.
In accordance with Taylor and Brown's (1988, 1994) perspective, there is substantial evidence that such perceptions are positively related to perceived relationship quality, that is, perceiving one's relationship as better than the relationship of most others is related to an enhanced satisfaction with, and stability of one's own relationship. For instance, Buunk and Van den Eijnden (1997) demonstrated that most individuals tend to perceive their own relationship as superior to the relationships of most others or the relationship of the average other. In addition, Buunk and Van den Eijnden found that the perception of superiority of the relationship over that of others was more pronounced among individuals who were happy in their relationships. In a similar vein, Martz et al. (1998) found positive relations between the tendency to evaluate one's own relationship more favorably than their best friend's relationship on the one hand, and relationship satisfaction and commitment to the relationship on the other hand.
Although the greater part of these findings were correlational, Rusbult and Buunk (1993; see also Rusbult, Drigotas & Verette, 1994) suggested that comparison of the relationship with other relationships may be employed as a means of relationship evaluation, that is, greater perceived relationship superiority may "feed back" on satisfaction, which in turn may lead to stronger feelings of commitment to the relationship. According to Rusbult (1980, 1983), relationship satisfaction is one of the key factors in predicting commitment to the relationship, which is the "psychological state that globally represents the experience of dependence on the relationship" (Rusbult & Buunk, 1993, p. 180). Highly committed individuals feel attached to their partners and intend to continue their relationship even in times of adversity, and develop a variety of maintenance mechanisms to sustain a healthy long-term relationship. In line with this argument, Buunk, Collins, Taylor, Van Yperen, and Dakof (1990) found that those who experience high levels of marital satisfaction felt better following comparison of their own marital relationships with other marital relationships than those experiencing low levels of marital dissatisfaction.
The above findings suggest that particularly downward social comparison may play an important role in achieving and maintaining a positive image of the romantic partner and the relationship, and in attaining and maintaining commitment to the relationship. However, even though researchers have become increasingly interested in the role of social cognitive processes in relationships (for reviews, see Clark, Helgeson, Mickelson, & Pataki, 1994; Fletcher & Fincham, 1991; Fletcher & Fitness, 1996), experimental studies on the role of social comparison in the development and maintenance of relationship quality are, as far as we know, virtually non-existent, although studies by Buunk (1996, 1998; also Buunk & Van den Eijnden, 1997) are recent exceptions. The present research sought to explore whether cognitive downward comparison is a successful strategy for people who face relationship problems to reevaluate their situation and to make them feel relatively good about their own relationship. More specifically, the current thesis addresses the question whether comparison of their own relationship with other relationships, that are qualitatively inferior, might result in a more positive evaluation of the relationship, and a higher commitment to the relationship among individuals who are discontented with their close relationship, than among those contented with the relationship.
Despite the increasing evidence that social comparison may play a significant role in people's self-evaluations and in the way they may evaluate their close relationship, participants in social comparison research frequently display a reluctance to admit that they actually compare themselves with others. Sometimes, participants may even deny that they consider their own characteristics relative to those of others (see for instance, Helgeson & Taylor, 1993; Schoeneman, 1981; Schulz & Decker, 1985; Taylor, Aspinwall, Giuliano, Dakof, & Reardon, 1993; Wayment & Taylor, 1995; Wood, Taylor, & Lichtman, 1985; Van der Zee, 1996; and Wood, 1996, for a review). Consistent with the logic of the introduction, a possible reason for the aforementioned reluctance is that explicit downward social comparisons may lead to negative responses on the part of those who observe others engaging in social comparison behaviors. For instance, someone who engages in downward social comparison may take advantage of encounters with inferior comparison targets or, according to Wills (1987), may cognitively construct downward comparison targets. This person thus perceives that his or her own situation differs in some respects and is better than that of someone else. Accordingly, when the person openly discusses his or her conclusion of such social comparison with worse-off others (i.e. one perceives oneself as superior), he or she risks disapproval of fellow-discussants. Observers may feel that this person is bragging about his or her own relative success by making explicit mention of less fortunate others. The observers, in turn, may feel bad about themselves as the conclusion of the overt downward comparison may also refer to the observers' situation that is considered as inferior. Thus, overt downward social comparison behavior might cause pleasure for the individual who engages in social comparison but pain in the observer of such behavior when the observer feels that his or her achievements are devalued by the comparisons (cf. Brickman & Bulman, 1977; also Tesser, Millar, & Moore, 1988). Apparently, such a painful and stressful experience may even evoke a desire to avoid social comparison with superior others if possible (cf. Brickman & Bulman, 1977; see also Friend & Gilbert, 1973; Nosanchuk & Erickson, 1985; Smith & Insko, 1987). Thus, downward social comparison may not be appreciated by others who observe it as it shows a lack of appropriate empathic concern for the other in the given circumstances, and as a consequence may sometimes lead to quite uncomfortable situations.
Indeed, as outlined by Wood (1996), several researchers have suggested that downward social comparison is viewed as socially undesirable (e.g., Brickman & Bulman, 1977; Hemphill & Lehman, 1991; Wills, 1981; Wood, 1996). For instance, Brickman and Bulman (1977) suggested that social norms may restrict and prohibit social comparison. Especially when an individual is exhibiting the self in a superior manner, and taking a pleasure in the inferiority of someone else, the impression made will not be favorable. Hence social comparison in general, and downward comparison in particular, will not be considered as socially appropriate. In conformity with this line of reasoning, Van der Zee, Buunk, and Sanderman (1996) found that individuals' tendency to give socially desirable responses was related to a lower need to compare themselves with others (Studies 1 and 2) and to assess how they were doing relative to others (Study 1).
In view of the fact that normative considerations may play a part in people's social comparison activities, it is noteworthy that little research has addressed the responses to the way other people overtly concede their social comparison activities and publicly claim their superiority over others. Therefore, as the evidence on this issue is limited, the current thesis will explore the reactions to others who display downward social comparison. As noted previously in this thesis, the tendency towards self-enhancement appears to extend well beyond the self to psychologically close others. That is, people in general seem to be inclined to evaluate their own intimate partner as superior to others, sometimes even including themselves, thus engaging in partner-enhancement rather than in self-enhancement (e.g., Bradbury & Fincham, 1990; Hall & Taylor, 1976; Murray & Holmes, 1997; Schütz & Tice, 1997; Taylor & Koivumaki, 1976). Moreover, circumstantial evidence suggests that most people see it as normal and desirable to present their own relationship, and especially their intimate partner, in a positive light (for instance, see Fitness & Fletcher, 1993; Fehr, 1988, 1993; Shaver, Schwartz, Kirson, & O'Connor, 1987; Argyle, Henderson, & Furnham, 1985). It was presumed that a social norm exists that specifies what most people do (i.e. descriptive norm) and what ought to be done (i.e. injunctive norm; see Cialdini, Kallgren, & Reno, 1991; Cialdini, Reno, & Kallgren, 1990). Assuming that people will be motivated to conform to the prevailing social norms by displaying a socially desirable self-image (Baumeister, 1982), it can be anticipated that it will be more acceptable and desirable to publicly describe one's own intimate partner as superior than to describe oneself (as a partner) as above average. Therefore, it was explored whether partner-enhancing downward comparison will be considered as more socially desirable than self-enhancing downward comparison.
Other plausible explanations for the fact that people frequently deny or hesitate to acknowledge their own social comparison activities is that people are possibly oblivious of the fact that they make comparisons (cf. Brickman & Bulman, 1977). Further, this reluctance may result from problems in selectivity, recall, and aggregation (cf. Helgeson & Taylor, 1993; Wood, 1996). Other reasons might be that individuals truly lack an interest in social comparison information or that they seldom do engage in social comparison. Thus, there may be individual differences in the tendency to compare oneself with others. Indeed several researchers have already theorized that people may differ in their disposition to compare themselves with other people (e.g., Brickman and Bulman, 1977; Hemphill & Lehman, 1991; Taylor, Buunk, Collins, & Reed, 1992; Wills, 1981). For instance, Hemphill and Lehman (1991) mentioned "the need for researchers to include measures of social comparison that acknowledge the fact that people may not wish to compare with others to an equal extent" (p. 390). Possibly, when people explain their difficulties with social comparison questionnaires and declare that they never compare themselves to others, this may mean that they truly lack an interest in social comparison information, and thus are indeed not disposed to assess their own situation against that of others.
Recently, Gibbons and Buunk (1999) proposed the concept of social comparison orientation to refer to the personality disposition of individuals who are strongly oriented to social comparison, who have a tendency to relate what happens to others to themselves, who are interested in information about others' thoughts and behaviors in similar circumstances, and who concern themselves with their own standing relative to others. In a series of studies, Gibbons and Buunk (1999) demonstrated that social comparison orientation is related, among others, positively to self-consciousness, neuroticism, an anxious avoidant attachment style, and negatively to self-esteem, but not to social desirability (see also Helgeson & Taylor, 1993). In addition, comparison orientation is characteristic of individuals high in exchange orientation (i.e., a quid-pro-quo attitude) and high in communal orientation (i.e., an inclination to respond to other persons needs, and to expect others to do likewise). According to Gibbons and Buunk, these findings suggest that individuals high in social comparison orientation are characterized by a heightened uncertainty about themselves, accompanied by a relatively strong dependency upon other people. Evidence for the external validity of the scale comes, among others, from a laboratory experiment showing that individuals high in social comparison orientation are more interested in the scores of others after having learned their own score (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999). From research among cancer patients it has been shown that patients high in social comparison orientation, when given the opportunity, were more inclined to attend to and select information about fellow patients' disease-related experiences, and that they respond more strongly to such information (Van der Zee, Oldersma, Buunk & Bos, 1998).
The current research explored the role of social comparison orientation by examining the extent to which the consequences of cognitive downward comparison and the reactions to overt downward comparison behavior are moderated by individuals' orientation toward social comparison. That is, because individuals high in this orientation are more uncertain about themselves and seem to use the standing of others as a basis for evaluating their own characteristics, it was assumed that downward comparison would have a stronger positive effect on individual's evaluation of the relationship and on commitment to the relationship the higher the individuals' orientation to social comparison. More specifically, it was expected that the positive effect of downward comparison would be moderated by social comparison orientation in such a way that cognitive downward comparison will exert a stronger effect upon perceived relationship quality the higher the social comparison orientation. Furthermore, the impact of social comparison orientation on individuals' reactions to others engaging in public downward comparison was explored. That is, it was examined whether downward social comparison would be regarded as more socially inappropriate and undesirable by individuals high rather than low in social comparison orientation.
Firstly, in Chapter 2, three experiments are reported which examined whether cognitive downward social comparison may operate as a relationship-enhancing mechanism. In three studies, a new paradigm was employed that induced participants to actively engage in cognitive downward social comparison. The blessings of cognitive comparison with worse-off others in the domain of close relationships were examined by experimentally examining the beneficial consequences of downward comparison for perceived relationship quality, that is relationship satisfaction and commitment to the relationship. Moreover, it was investigated whether the impact of downward comparison was moderated by discontent with the partner and by social comparison orientation.
Individuals' reactions to others engaging overtly in downward comparison activities are examined in Chapter 3. More precisely, the hypothesis was tested that self-enhancing downward comparison would be considered as more socially inappropriate and undesirable than partner-enhancing downward comparison. Research will be reported that examined the responses to someone else engaging in self- and partner-enhancing downward comparisons. In three experimental studies, participants were presented with a short fragment supposedly derived from a group discussion. They were asked to indicate, among others, the extent to which they considered the verbal statements as social undesirable. In the final study, the possible moderating role of individual differences in social comparison orientation was explored by examining the extent to which reactions to someone engaging in self- and partner-enhancing downward comparison was moderated by participants' orientation toward social comparison.
Chapter 4 summarizes the research and findings of the studies as reported in this thesis. The potential beneficial consequences of cognitive downward comparison as well as the possible negative reactions to downward social comparison are discussed. Furthermore, the implications of these findings for research on social comparison processes as well as for the literature on relationship quality are elaborated in the final chapter.
Bill and Arlene Miller were a happy couple. But now and then they felt they alone among their circle had been passed by somehow, leaving Bill to attend to his bookkeeping duties and Arlene occupied with secretarial chores. They talked about it sometimes, mostly in comparison with the lives of their neighbors, Harriet and Jim Stone. It seemed to the Millers that the Stones lived a fuller and brighter life. The Stones were always going out for dinner, or entertaining at home, or travelling about the country somewhere in connection with Jim's work.
The above statements were provided by a female participant in Study 3 who verbalized her troubles with questions that asked her to evaluate her own relationship with those of others. However, her explication is rather paradoxical because it runs counter to her initially mentioned troubles with social comparison. Not only this participant, but most people in general give evidence for the importance of social comparison when they explain their difficulties in comparing their own situation to that of others. Such explanations usually incorporate explicit references to social comparison such as the fact that their own situation is unique and different from that of others, such as conveyed by the respondent above, or references to the dilemma of possible comparisons with better-off others on the one hand, and comparisons with worse-off others on the other hand. All in all, such considerations must inevitably become apparent by means of social comparison activities. Furthermore, despite her reflections, the respondent's statements conclude with the assessment that her own relationship flourishes and develops in a way that is more positive and less negative than the relationship of others. This conclusion may be a spontaneous expression of the general inclination to evaluate oneself as more positively and less negatively than others (cf. Taylor & Brown, 1988, 1994). Taylor and Brown reviewed a substantial body of literature and concluded that there exists a pervasive tendency for people to perceive themselves as superior to others, and suggested that this desire to self-enhancement has primarily the function of attaining and maintaining a positive mental health.
1. This chapter is based on Oldersma, Buunk, and De Dreu (1998). Preliminary analyses of some of the data in this chapter were reported in two articles, namely Oldersma, De Dreu, and Buunk (1995), and Oldersma & Buunk (1997).
In his influential paper on downward comparison theory, Wills (1981) offers a theoretical analysis of the cognitive mechanisms people may use for coping with stressful events and circumstances, and assumed that the need for self-enhancement would be stronger when people experience some kind of threat to their subjective well-being. Wills (1987) discussed various cognitive mechanisms aimed at achieving downward comparison that mainly overlapped with the cognitive strategies suggested in the selective evaluation model proposed by Taylor et al. (1983). First of all, Wills (1987) proposed strict downward comparison with a target who is obviously worse off than the self as a coping mechanism. According to Wills (1981), this can be a passive process, in which individuals encounter inferior comparison targets with whom they can achieve downward comparisons, for instance through TV shows or magazines. In addition, downward comparison can also be a process of active comparison in which individuals cognitively construct a downward comparison, or derogate others' good abilities and personal attributes. Such cognitive downward comparison processes enable people to obtain a relatively favorable evaluation of themselves and their situation.
Wills (1987) as well as Taylor et al. (1983) advanced various cognitive mechanisms of selective evaluation through which individuals who experience a decrease in subjective well-being may obtain a more favorable evaluation of their situation and though which they may restore their well-being. These strategies of selective evaluation, which people may use in concert, include: (1) making downward comparison with worse-off others (cf. Wills, 1981); (2) selectively focusing on attributes that make them appear advantaged (i.e., dimensional comparison; Taylor et al., 1983); (3) creating hypothetical worse worlds by comparing one's current situation with what could have happened; (4) construing benefit from the victimizing event; and (5) manufacturing normative standards against which victims can compare themselves in such a way that may make their own adjustment appear exceptional. Although the strategies of downward comparisons, dimensional comparisons, and self-evaluation against comparative standards seem to involve social comparison activities, some researchers point out the possibility that these strategies may not necessarily involve truly social comparisons (cf. Buunk & Ybema, 1995; see also Wood, 1996, for more thorough discussions). Nevertheless, such strategies may also reflect the evaluation resulting from a cognitive process of constructing imaginary comparison others and comparison dimensions, aimed at making the perception of one's situation more acceptable.
A number of studies have provided evidence that individuals who experience some type of life stress may employ cognitive downward comparison as a coping strategy in order to improve the perception of their situation. For instance, in an interview study among breast cancer patients, Wood et al. (1985) clearly demonstrated that a majority of patients made downward comparisons, that is, they evaluated that their own adjustment to breast cancer was in some respects better than other women with breast cancer. Jensen and Karoly (1992) found that patients suffering from chronic pain showed a stronger tendency to use downward comparison and consequently experienced lower levels of depression. In a sample of individuals covered by the Disablement Insurance Act, Buunk and Ybema (1995) found that people experiencing stress were more likely to engage in cognitive downward comparison, which positively affected individuals' evaluations of their situation one year later. On the basis of such findings, it can be argued that cognitive downward comparison might be an effective strategy for reducing the aversive consequences of relational discontent, and might thus result in a relatively more favorable evaluation of the relationship.
In research examining the effects of downward comparison, participants are usually provided with social comparison information (cf. Wood, 1989, 1996). Such studies, however, do not assess the active, cognitive downward comparison process that has been emphasized in the previous discussion. Therefore, to examine experimentally whether cognitive downward comparison improves perceived relationship quality, the current research employed a new paradigm that induced participants to actively engage in cognitive downward social comparison.
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.
To install an active, cognitive downward comparison process similar to that described by authors such as Taylor et al. (1983), Wills (1987) and Buunk and Ybema (1995), the current studies employed a manipulation of cognitive downward comparison that is new in social comparison research. Participants were induced to actively engage in cognitive downward social comparison by employing a thought-generating task in which participants were asked to explicitly describe positive qualities of their relationship which they consider to be better than most others (hereafter referred to as the comparison thought-generating task). Thus, participants are deliberately prompted to focus on the superiority of their own relationships over those of others, which, in turn, will supposedly boost individual's perceived quality of the relationship. The present studies also included a control condition to test our assumption that it is specifically downward comparison that enhances the relationship evaluation, and not the fact that our instruction induced an increased salience of the positive features of the relationship. Participants in this control condition were presented with a similar thought-generating task but instead were asked to describe positive qualities of their relationship which they consider as good (hereafter referred to as the no-comparison thought-generating task). In contrast to participants assigned to the comparison thought-generating task, those in the no-comparison thought-generating task were instructed to make relationship-evaluations against an absolute, noncomparative standard. It was expected that in the former --downward comparison - condition individuals would subsequently evaluate their relationship more favorable than those in the latter --no-comparison-- condition.
The experimental paradigm was derived from Salancik (1974, 1976) and Seligman, Fazio and Zanna (1980). They reasoned that people's cognitions, attitudes, and beliefs can be affected by manipulating the recall of specific attributes and behaviors performed in the past, or by making specific dimensions more salient than others. Seligman et al. (1980) asked intimate partners to indicate either the intrinsic reasons or the extrinsic reasons for being in their relationship. The intrinsic reasons emphasized the couple's enjoyment of each other as motivations to maintain the relationship. Extrinsic reasons stressed the external rewards associated with their partner. It was found that the induced salience of extrinsic reasons led participants to express less love than those induced to the intrinsic cognitive set.
In each experiment participants took part in a study that was announced as a study intended to develop a questionnaire for which we needed individuals' thoughts about their intimate relationships. The experimental paradigm was a thought-generating task which asked participants to generate positive qualities on which they considered themselves (self-enhancement, Study 1), their intimate partners (partner-enhancement, Studies 2 and 3), or their own relationships (relationship-enhancement, Study 3) in noncomparative or comparative terms. Study 1 examined the effect of cognitive downward comparison on relationship quality. Studies 2 and 3 tested whether these effects were moderated by participants' relational discontent and their social comparison orientation.
The main purpose of the fourth study was to test whether cognitive downward comparison boosts people's evaluations of their relationship in a positive direction. A second purpose of Study 1 was to explore to what extent self- and partner-enhancing social comparison may have a differential effect on relationship evaluation. It was assumed (see Chapter 3 of the present thesis) that people would consider self-enhancement more socially undesirable than partner-enhancement, which, in turn, may induce them to make public statements about themselves as a partner that are more modest than their statements about their intimate partners. Following this line of reasoning, it was presumed that people will be more reluctant to engage in self-enhancing than in partner-enhancing downward comparison. Thus, it was supposed that the self-enhancement thought-generating task will be experienced as more difficult than the partner-enhancement thought-generating task, and as a consequence, that self-enhancement will exert a weaker impact on the evaluation of the relationship than partner-enhancement (e.g., Schwarz, Bless, Strack, Klumpp, Rittenauer-Schatka, & Simons, 1991; Wänke, Bless, & Biller, 1996).
It should be noted, however, that individual's self-reported evaluations may be biased, because, for instance, individuals may be unaware of their true sentiment (i.e., satisfaction) about the partner or the relationship, or because their answers to self-report items are influenced by the social desirability of response alternatives or by demand characteristics of the experimental situation. Therefore, in addition to dependent self-report measures, we employed a more indirect, unobtrusive measure of attitudes toward the relationship by recording the response latencies to the questions on relationship satisfaction and commitment. Fincham, Garnier, Gano-Phillips, and Osborne (1995) provide an initial example of research incorporating the cognitive accessibility-based approach to attitudes (see Fazio, 1995) in the study of relationships. Fazio (1995) proposed that attitude accessibility reflects the strength of association in memory between a given object (e.g., one's partner or one's relationship with the partner) and a given evaluation (e.g., satisfactory), and that accessibility in memory determines the latencies of response to attitudinal questions. We would like to suggest that cognitive downward comparison will not only enhance relationship satisfaction, but will also make the evaluation of one's relationship cognitively more accessible. Moreover, according to Fazio (1995), attitude extremity is typically related to the attitude's accessibility in memory, that is, to its salience. Assuming that participants would hold a more favorable attitude toward their relationship following the downward comparison thought-generating task than after the no-comparison thought-generating task, participants in the former condition were expected to show shorter response times to the questions of the dependent variables than those in the latter condition.
Participants
Ninety-four undergraduates at University of Groningen (57 women and 37 men) who were currently involved in a relationship participated in the study (78 dating relationships, 16 cohabiting, none were married). They participated in what they thought was a research on "Test Validation." The average duration of their relationship was 2.2 years (ranging from 1 month to 7.1 years). The mean age of the sample was 22.1 years, with a range from 18 to 28 years. All participants were paid 7.5 Dutch guilders (approximately U.S. $4.5) for their participation.
Experimental Design and Procedure
The design was a 2 x 2 factorial with two levels of target (self vs. partner) and two levels of cognitive set (no-comparison versus comparison). Participants were randomly assigned to list as many as possible self- or partner-evaluations in either noncomparative or comparative terms.
The study was presented via Apple MacIntosh computers, connected to a central server. All instructions and questions were presented on the computer screen and questions could be answered by means of a keyboard. Assurance was given that the data would be treated confidentially. Participants were run in groups ranging from 2 to 8. On arrival at the laboratory, the experimenter explained that the purpose of the research was the construction and validation of a variety of relationship questionnaires with a computer-administered experiment. The participants were told that they could start the computer-administered procedure by hitting a key and that they could proceed at their own pace through the computer program. Each individual was then led to an individual booth and seated in front of a microcomputer.
Participants answered first a number of questions about their gender, age, duration of their relationship, and other relevant characteristics to familiarize them with the computerized test procedure. Next, the experimental task was introduced.
Manipulation of cognitive downward comparison
Participants were told that one purpose of the study concerned the "development of the Groningen Relationship Evaluation Test, for which we need many evaluations of intimate relationships." Hereafter, participants were assigned randomly to one of the following conditions. Participants in the self no-comparison condition (n = 23) were asked to generate as many as possible reasons why they are good partners. Participants in the self comparison condition (n = 23) were asked why they considered themselves as better partners than most others. Participants in the partner no-comparison condition (n = 23) and in the partner comparison condition (n = 25) were instructed to describe why their boy/girl friends were respectively good partners or better partners than most others. All participants were instructed to write down as many reasons of the specified type as they could think of --but at least five - on a piece of paper. Once they had finished, they were instructed to press "Return", at which point the computer screen cleared and displayed the instruction to enter the five reasons which they considered to be most important into the computer.
Hereafter, participants completed computer-administered measures of satisfaction and commitment. Next, participants were orally debriefed and asked not to discuss the study with others. After being paid for their participation, participants were thanked and dismissed.
Dependent Measures
The measures of relationship satisfaction and commitment were modeled on questionnaires used by Rusbult (e.g., Rusbult, 1980, 1983), and were, following Fincham and Bradbury's (1987) recommendation, global, evaluative questions rather than domain-specific questions. Satisfaction was measured by four items: "In general, how satisfying is your relationship?" (1 = not at all and 9 = extremely), "How much happiness and enjoyment do you get out of your relationship?" (1 = very little and 9 = very much), "How does your relationship compare to your ideal?" (1 = far from ideal and 9 = it is ideal), and "All things considered, how negative or positive do you stand on your relationship?," (1 = very negative and 9 = very positive). Commitment was measured by eight items, such as "For what length of time would you like your relationship to last?" (1 = a month or less and 9 = ten years or more), "To what extent do you feel committed to your relationship, even when you are less satisfied with your partner?" (1 = not at all and 9 = extremely), and "How likely is it that you will end your relationship in the near future?" (1 = not at all likely to end and 9 = extremely likely to end; recoded). Single averaged measures of satisfaction (Cronbach's alpha = .82) and commitment (Cronbach's alpha = .93) were formed.
The questions on satisfaction and commitment were answered by pressing one of the numerical keys (1 through 9) on the keyboard of the computer, after which the next question was presented on the computer screen. The latencies of response (from question onset to response) were recorded to the nearest millisecond by a software clock. Also, to control for individual differences in latencies, baseline response times were assessed by recording the latencies of response to the biographical questions. By doing so, the general speed of responding can serve as a covariate, thus reducing error variance due to individual differences in speed of responding that are unrelated to accessibility, and enhancing statistical power (cf. Fazio, 1990).
Analyses of the dependent variables relationship satisfaction and commitment.
Participant's average satisfaction and commitment ratings were subjected to a two-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) with target (self versus partner) and cognitive set (no-comparison versus downward comparison) as the independent variables2. Our primary prediction on these measures was that participants would perceive higher relationship quality following the downward comparison thought-generating task rather than following the no-comparison thought-generating task. The ANOVA revealed indeed that participants in the downward comparison condition reported more satisfaction (M = 7.67) than participants in the no-comparison condition (M = 6.79), F(1, 90) = 8.95, p < .01. There was no difference between participants who generated their thoughts about the self and the partner. Cognitive set did not interact significantly with target, F < 1.0, ns.
The ANOVA on the commitment measure indicated that participants who were induced to engage in enhancing self- and partner-evaluations felt more strongly committed (M = 7.51) to their relationship than participants who were instructed to make noncomparative evaluations (M = 6.83), F(1, 90) = 5.92, p < .02. There was again no significant difference between evaluations of self and partner on commitment, F = 2.9, ns. The interaction between both independent variables was not significant, F < 1.0, ns.
Response Latencies. As is typically the case with response times (cf. Fazio, 1990), the average response latencies were positively skewed. Therefore, as recommended by Fazio, the response times were subjected to reciprocal transformations. Also, to reduce the possible impact of outlier response latencies on the analyses, those over 3 standard deviations from the mean were excluded. We then computed for each participant the latency indexes by averaging the recorded response times for each question of the dependent variable in separate indexes. Likewise, for each participant, a baseline response time was computed averaging the response times from presenting the biographical questions to entering the responses in one index. All data analyses were performed on the transformed scores, but for the sake of clarity, we report the retransformed latencies.
Subsequently, the transformed response latencies to the questionnaires of satisfaction and commitment were submitted to two-way (Target X Cognitive Set) analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs), with the baseline index for response time as a covariate3. In line with the above reported effects, cognitive set had significant effects on the latency indexes of satisfaction, F(1, 89) = 4.96, p < .03, and commitment, F(1, 89) = 5.13, p < .03. That is, as predicted, the average response latencies on both indexes were lower in the comparison condition than in the no-comparison condition. The adjusted means, following a retransformation back to the original metric of seconds, were 9.63 and 11.02 on the satisfaction index, respectively, and 11.29 and 12.60 on the commitment index, respectively. Thus, cognitive downward comparison seems indeed to increases the accessibility of the attitude toward one's relationship.
Supplemental analyses
A number of supplemental analyses were done to control for a number of alternative interpretations of the data. In the first place, it would seem possible that those in the comparison condition generated more qualities of the self and the partner than in the no-comparison condition. Thus, the effects of cognitive downward comparison may have been primarily due to the greater number of qualities generated in the social comparison condition relative to the no-comparison condition. We had available the number of qualities generated in the various conditions before the five most important ones were typed into the computer. There was no effect of cognitive set, F(1, 90) = 2.53, ns, upon the number of reasons generated. To determine whether the number of qualities did account for the effects on satisfaction and commitment, two 2 (Target) by 2 (Cognitive Set) analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were performed, with the number of qualities included as a covariate. Both analyses revealed that the main effects of cognitive set on satisfaction and commitment remained statistically significant F(1, 89) = 7.33, p < .01, and F(1, 89) = 4.51, p < .05, respectively.
A second reason that those in the comparison condition reported more satisfaction and stronger feelings of commitment may be that the responses of participants were affected by the positivity of the qualities they had generated. That is, participants in the comparison condition may have generated qualities of the self or the partner that were more positive than participants in the no-comparison condition. It might thus be possible that the beneficial effects of cognitive downward comparison on perceived relationship quality are not due to the fact that individuals actively compared their relationship with that of others, but rather to the likely greater positivity of the qualities generated in the social comparison condition relative to the no-comparison condition.
This issue was dealt with by replicating all of the major analyses by controlling for the positivity of the generated qualities. First, participants were asked to rate the valence of the self-generated qualities. At the end of the experimental procedure, each quality that had been entered into the computer by the respondent (i.e., the thought-listing task asked them to enter the five reasons which they considered as most important into the computer) was presented on the computer screen again. Participants were asked to rate each quality on 4-point scales ranging from not positive at all to very positive. The positivity ratings were subjected to two-way analyses of variance (ANOVA) with target and cognitive set as the independent variables. The analyses yielded no effects whatsoever, Fs < 1.06, ns. Further, to determine whether participants' positivity ratings did account for the effects on satisfaction and commitment, two 2 (Target) by 2 (Cognitive Set) analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) were performed after adding positivity as a covariate4. Both analyses revealed that the main effects of cognitive set on satisfaction and commitment remained statistical reliable, F(1, 89) = 7.93, p < .01, and F(1, 89) = 5.34, p < .03, respectively.
In addition, we had two independent judges rate the qualities on 5-point scales ranging from very negative to very positive. The judges were blind to the hypothesis and experimental conditions, and the Cohen's Kappa for interrater agreement was .88. The analyses of variance on the positivity of the qualities was repeated, and again, no effects reached statistical significance, F < 1.40, ns. Thus, the two judges did not rate the qualities in the no-comparison condition differently from those generated in the comparison condition. The foregoing analyses of covariance was repeated treating the positivity ratings of the judges as covariate. Again, the main effects of cognitive set on satisfaction and commitment remained, F(1, 89) = 7.93, p < .01, and F(1, 89) = 5.34, p < .03, respectively. In sum, the results of these analyses suggested that our findings were not artifacts of the positivity of the qualities but that they were due to the effects of cognitive downward comparison.
2 Gender did not qualify any of the reported effects in the studies reported in this chapter and thus will not be further considered in the analyses.
3 Before performing the analyses of covariance, preliminary analyses confirmed that the assumption of homogeneity of regression slopes within both conditions was upheld.
4 Before performing the analyses of covariance, preliminary analyses confirmed that the assumption of homogeneity of regression slopes was upheld.
Consistent with our predictions, Study 1 provided evidence that perceived relationship quality, i.e. satisfaction and commitment, can be influenced by asking people to engage in a cognitive downward comparison process, and to evaluate themselves or their intimate partner in comparative terms. That is, following the downward comparison thought-generating task, participants displayed more relationship satisfaction and stronger feelings of commitment to the relationship than participants assigned to the no-comparison thought-generating task. Moreover, the effects of the downward comparison manipulation on the unobtrusive measures of response latencies underscore the strength of these findings, as participants in the downward comparison conditions not only evaluated their relationship more positively than those in the no-comparison conditions, but also needed shorter response times to answer the questionnaires on relationship satisfaction and commitment to the relationship.
Also, additional analyses were performed to rule out two potential confounds, i.e. the possibility that the number of qualities generated differed between the comparison and no-comparison conditions, and that the qualities generated in both conditions differed in valence, and as a consequence, that the differential number or valence of the listed qualities would account for the demonstrated effects of cognitive downward comparison on the perceived quality of the relationship. The analyses provided convincing evidence that these explanations could not account for the results. The number of the qualities generated did not differ between both conditions, and controlling for the number of qualities left the effects virtually unchanged. Moreover, the positivity of the qualities did not differ between the two conditions according to the participants and independent judges, and the effects stayed the same when controlling for the positivity of the qualities. These analyses contribute to the validity of the experimental manipulation.
The manipulation of target (self versus partner) did not have differential effects on satisfaction and commitment to the relationship. This may reflect the fact that participants in the current studies are in an interdependent relationship in which their outcomes are strongly related, which may link their recollections about themselves and their partners with each other. Indeed, Aron and their colleagues (cf. Aron & Aron, 1996; Aron, Aron, & Smolan, 1992; Aron, Aron, Tudor & Nelson, 1991; see also Agnew, Van Lange, Rusbult & Langston, 1998) demonstrated that among close partners the cognitive representations of the self and the partner are closely interconnected, and are even perceived as overlapping.
Although the findings of Study 1 have both theoretical and methodological strengths, it is limited in that it examined the short-term involvements of undergraduates. Therefore, to ensure external validity and applied value of our findings, a major purpose of the second study was to replicate the findings from Study 1 in a non-student sample of individuals who had been in relationships for a long period of time. In this study, the self-enhancing conditions were omitted and the manipulation of cognitive downward comparison consisted of a thought-generating task in which participants were asked to evaluate their intimate partner in comparative or noncomparative terms. This was undertaken for three reasons. First, Study 1 did not yield differential effects for self- and partner-enhancement; secondly, despite the absence of differential effects on relationship quality, it was assumed (see Chapter 3 of the present thesis) that self-enhancement was considered more socially undesirable than partner-enhancement, thus raising the possibility that participants may experience difficulties with questions that ask them to evaluate themselves against other persons. Thirdly, we assume that people remain in their relationships because of the qualities of the partner rather than because of their own qualities as a partner.
Another goal of Study 2 was to determine whether the effect of cognitive downward comparison on the perceived quality of the relationship specifically occurred for those discontented about the relationship with their partner. On the basis of Wills' (1981) postulate that downward comparisons may enhance the subjective well-being in people who experience some kind of threat to their well-being, it was expected that the partner-enhancing downward comparison thought-generating task would more positively affect perceived relationship quality than the no-comparison thought-generating task, particularly when individuals were more discontent with their partner. Finding such a two-way interaction between cognitive set and discontent would confirm Wills' (1981) postulate that downward comparisons enhance subjective well-being especially among people who experience some kind of threat to their well-being. Put differently, cognitive downward comparison might buffer the impact of pretest relational discontent upon posttest relational satisfaction and commitment. Furthermore, we assumed that the effect of cognitive downward comparison would be moderated by social comparison orientation, in such a way that downward comparison would exert a stronger effect upon relationship quality for individuals high in social comparison orientation. More specifically, we expected a three-way interaction indicating that the predicted two-way interaction between cognitive set and discontent would be stronger for individuals having a stronger orientation toward social comparison.
Procedure and Participants
One hundred and sixteen participants who were at the time of the study involved in a relationship (74 married, 24 cohabiting, 18 dating exclusively) participated in the study. The sample included 61 women, and 55 men. The average duration of their relationship was 15.9 years (range 5 months to 52.0 years). Participants were 41.3 years old on average (range 18 to 78 years). All participants received a box of chocolates for their participation.
To obtain a wide range of participants, we recruited a sample of train travellers. As soon as the intercity train left the railway station, a researcher approached potential participants and requested their cooperation in a study on intimate relationships. The cover story was essentially the same as in the fourth study. Participants were asked if they were currently involved in an intimate relationship, and, if so, they were asked to participate in the research. Participants were provided with a booklet containing all measures and the experimental thought-listing task. They were randomly assigned to conditions in which positive qualities of the partner were generated in either noncomparative or in comparative terms.
Premeasures of moderating variables
After providing general demographic information about gender, age, and duration of the relationship, participants answered questions on social comparison orientation and discontent with their partner.
Social Comparison Orientation was measured by the Iowa Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure (INCOM). This 11-item scale was developed by Gibbons and Buunk (1999) on the basis of a larger item pool, and was tested in more than 25 studies. In Chapter 1 evidence for the predictive validity of the scale was presented, and the most important correlates of the scale were described. In addition, evidence for the construct validity of the scale is provided by the high correlation (r = .66) between this scale and the Attention to Social Comparison Information Scale (Bearden & Rose, 1990). The INCOM does not correlate with social desirability, has in general a reliability > .80, and has a test-retest reliability over eight months of .72.
In an attempt to overcome participant's reluctance in reporting their interest in social comparison information, as outlined above, the instructions for these items in this scale read:
Most people compare themselves from time to time with others. For example, they may compare the way they feel, their opinions, their abilities, and/or their situation with those of other people. There is nothing "good" or "bad" about this type of comparison, and some people do it more than others. We would like to find out how often you compare yourself with other people. To do that, we would like to ask you to indicate how much you agree with each statement.
The measure consists of statements reflecting individual's social comparison activities and interests. Sample items are: "I often compare myself with others with respect to what I have achieved in life", "If I want to learn more about something, I try to find out what others think about it", "I always pay a lot of attention to how I do things compared with how others do things", and "I am not the type of person who compares often with others" (recoded). The items were measured using 5-point scales, ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). All ratings were averaged to form a single index, resulting in a INCOM-score with the higher score indicating stronger social comparison orientation (Cronbach's alpha = .77).
Next, participants were asked to consider their feelings of discontentment about the relationship with their partner and to ignore their sexual dissatisfaction. More precisely, participants were asked "Does your life with your partner bring you contentment (putting aside the sexual side)?" Participants were asked to rate the extent to which they were discontent with the relationship with their partner on a 9-point scale (1 = completely content and 9 = totally discontent). Higher scores thus indicated higher levels of discontent.
Manipulation of cognitive downward comparison
Next, the experimental part of the booklet consisted of the manipulation of cognitive downward comparison. Most aspects of the procedure were similar to the fourth study. Half of the participants were asked to list all the reasons they could think of why they had good partners (no-comparison condition, n = 60), and half were presented with the question to describe why they had better partners than most others (downward comparison condition, n = 56). All participants were instructed to generate at least five reasons of the specified type they could think of. The rest of the page was left blank except for the lines on which they were asked to write down each new reason. As Study 1 was not a computer-administered experiment, participants could not be instructed to enter the five most important reasons into the computer. Therefore, the next page of the booklet contained the instruction to arrange the listed reasons according to importance, by adding a number to each reason (a 1 for the most important reason, and so on). Participants were instructed to write each number down the left margin.
Dependent Measures
Subsequently, participants responded to questionnaires that tapped the dependent variables. The measures of satisfaction (Cronbach's alpha = .93) and commitment (Cronbach's alpha = .75) were identical to those used in Study 1. Upon completion of the questionnaire, participants were thanked for their time. Instead of debriefing immediately, participants were provided with a postage free response card to request further information regarding the research. On receipt of a response card, a summary of the research findings was forwarded.
Data Analytic Procedure
For descriptive purposes, we examined the mean scores of the study variables in the experimental conditions, as well as the correlations between all study variables. Next, hierarchical moderated regression analyses were conducted to test the hypotheses concerning the extent to which cognitive set predicted participant's levels of relationship satisfaction and commitment, the two-way interactions between cognitive set and discontent with the partner on the one hand, and cognitive set and social comparison orientation on the other hand, and the three-way interaction between cognitive set and the two moderator variables. In Step 1, cognitive set (0 = no-comparison thought-generating task and 1 = downward comparison thought-generating task), discontent with the partner, and social comparison orientation were entered simultaneously. In Step 2, the three two way interaction terms (Cognitive Set X Discontent, Cognitive Set X Comparison Orientation, Discontent X Comparison Orientation) were added to the regression equation. Finally, in Step 3, the three way interaction term (Cognitive Set X Discontent X Comparison Orientation) was entered. To test and interpret these interactions, procedures outlined by Aiken and West (1991) were followed to calculate regression slopes and plots. Following Aiken and West, before the interaction terms were calculated, the criterion variables and all continuous predictor variables (i.e., discontent and comparison orientation) were standardized to reduce possible multicollinearity among the independent and interaction terms as well as to facilitate interpretation of the interaction effects. Furthermore, for each continuous predictor, participants with scores one standard deviation above the mean were labelled high social comparison orientation or high discontent with the partner, and those with scores one standard deviation below the mean were labeled low social comparison orientation or low discontent (following Cohen & Cohen, 1983). Where appropriate, significance values concern one tailed tests; two-tailed tests are reported if the direction of the slopes were contrary to the predictions or if no specific predictions were made.
Preliminary Descriptive Analyses
Table 1 presents, separately for participants in the no-comparison and the downward comparison conditions, the means and standard deviations for the variables used in Study 2. Preliminary one-way analyses of variance with cognitive set (no-comparison versus downward comparison) as independent variable indicated that neither the moderator nor the dependent variables were related to cognitive set, Fs < 1, ns. As can be seen from Table 1, the variables measuring relationship quality were significantly correlated. Not surprisingly, especially relationship satisfaction and the moderator variable relational discontent were highly correlated. Furthermore, comparison orientation showed small, but statistically significant relations with the relationship variables.
Regression Analyses
Relationship satisfaction. The main effects of cognitive set, discontent, and social comparison orientation accounted for a significant amount of variance in relationship satisfaction, 
R² = .52, F(3, 112) = 40.37, p < .0001. In contrast to our prediction, the dummy coded term representing cognitive set did not yield a significant effect (B = .03, t(112) = .21, ns). Social comparison orientation (B = .15, t(112) = 2.32, p < .03) and discontent with the partner (B = -.68, t(112) = -10.30, p < .0001) were significantly related to relationship satisfaction, with those high in social comparison orientation and high in discontent experiencing less satisfaction.
TABLE 1
Pearson correlations among variables and means as a function of cognitive set in study 2
| Variable | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | |
| 1. | Satisfaction | -- | ||||
| 2. | Commitment | .63** | -- | |||
| 3. | Discontent | -.70** | -.46** | -- | ||
| 4. | Comparison orientation | -.25* | -.17* | .15 | -- | |
| 5. | Cognitive set | -.03 | .05 | .06 | .03 | -- |
| No-comparison a | 7.64 | 7.48 | 2.35 | 2.96 | -- | |
| (1.39) | (1.24) | (1.35) | (.64) | -- | ||
| Comparison b | 7.56 | 7.60 | 2.52 | 2.99 | -- | |
| (1.14) | (1.07) | (1.45) | (.55) | -- | ||
* p < .05; ** p < .001, one-tailed. Parenthetical values are standard deviations. a N = 56; b N = 60
The two-way interactions entered at the second step yielded a significant incremental amount of explained variance, R² = .07, Fchange(3, 109) = 6.44, p < .001. Neither the predicted Cognitive Set X Comparison Orientation interaction (B = .03, t(109) = .03, ns) nor the Discontent X Comparison Orientation interaction (B = -.04, t(109) = -.03, ns) reached statistical significance, whereas the predicted Cognitive Set X Discontent interaction emerged (B = .53, t(109) = 4.24, p < .0001). Inspection of this interaction revealed that the downward comparison thought-generating task moderated the impact of discontent with the partner than the task in which noncomparative thoughts about the partner were generated: Discontent was less strongly negatively related to relationship satisfaction in the downward comparison condition (B = .43, t(109) = 4.82, p < .001) than in the no-comparison condition (B = -.97, t(109) = 10.80, p < .0001).
However, this interaction was qualified by the expected three-way interaction that accounted for an additional amount of explained variance in relationship satisfaction (B = .35), R² = .02, Fchange(1, 108) = 6.85, p < .02. To clarify the nature of this interaction, the direction of the Cognitive Set X Discontent interactions were calculated in additional regression analyses at low and high levels (1 SD above and below the mean) of social comparison orientation, after which the interaction was plotted following standard procedures (Aiken & West, 1991). As shown in Figure 1, and in line with the predictions, at low levels of social comparison orientation the Cognitive Set X Discontent interaction was not significant (B = .09, t(109) = .44, ns), whereas a significant interaction term was found at high levels of social comparison orientation (B = .78, t(109) = 5.04, p < .0001). The slopes of the standardized form of the equation, and their significance levels were as follows: Among participants low in social comparison orientation, discontent was an equally important predictor of satisfaction in the downward comparison condition (B = -.77, t(108) = 4.53, p < .0001) as well as in the no-comparison condition (B = .86, t(108) = 7.16, p < .0001). In contrast, for those high in social comparison orientation, discontent was less strongly related to satisfaction in the downward comparison condition (B = .27, t(108) = 2.53, p < .02) than in the no-comparison condition (B = -1.05, t(108) = 9.31, p < .0001).
FIGURE 1. Study 2: Regression of relationship satisfaction on discontent about the partner as measured prior to the experimental task within the no-comparison and downward comparison conditions. Relationship satisfaction was regressed on discontent at low (1 SD below the mean) and high (1 SD above the mean) levels of social comparison orientation (INCOM; M = 2.97, SD = .59).
Thus, in line with our prediction, the Cognitive Set X Discontent interaction appeared to be stronger for participants high in social comparison orientation, indicating that cognitive downward comparison led to a relatively better relationship quality among individuals high in discontent only when they were high in social comparison orientation.
Commitment to the relationship. The main effects of cognitive set, discontent, and social comparison orientation accounted for a significant amount of variance in commitment, R² = .23, F(3, 112) = 10.99, p < .0001. The dummy coded term representing cognitive set did not yield a significant effect (B = .16, t(112) = .95, ns). Discontent with the partner was a strongly significant predictor of commitment to the relationship (B = -.45, t(112) = -5.35, p < .0001), indicating that those who were discontent with the relationship with their partner felt less strongly committed to their relationship. Social comparison orientation was not significantly related to commitment (B = -.10, t(112) = -1.21, ns).
The entry of the two-way interactions at the second step did not account for further incremental variance in commitment, R² = .04, Fchange(3, 109) = 2.05, ns. The Discontent X Comparison Orientation interaction (B = -.02, t(109) = -.28, ns) and the predicted Cognitive Set X Comparison Orientation interaction did not approach statistical significance (B = .14, t(109) = .84, ns). However, in line with our prediction, a Cognitive Set X Discontent interaction (B = .37, t(109) = 2.20, p < .02) indicated that downward comparison thought-generating was a more effective moderator of the negative effect of discontent on commitment than the task in which noncomparative thoughts about the partner were generated. Inspection of the two-way interaction revealed that discontent was less strongly negatively related to commitment in the downward comparison condition (B = .27, t(109) = 2.23, p < .02) than in the no-comparison condition (B = -.64, t(109) = 5.34, p < .0001).
As expected, this two-way interaction was qualified by the three-way interaction that accounted for a just significant portion of explained variance in commitment (B = .35), R² = .03, Fchange(1, 108) = 3.83, p =.05. Additional regression analyses were performed to clarify the nature of this interaction in which the direction of the Cognitive Set X Discontent interactions were calculated at low and high levels of social comparison orientation. At low levels of social comparison orientation, the Cognitive Set X Discontent interaction was not significant (B = .077, t(109) = -.27, ns), whereas a significant interaction term was found at high levels of social comparison orientation (B = .62, t(109) = 2.96, p < .005). The slopes of the standardized form of the equation, and their significance levels were calculated to clarify these two-way interactions. As shown in Figure 2, for participants low in social comparison orientation, discontent significantly predicted commitment in both the downward comparison condition (B = -.56, t(108) = 2.43, p < .02), and within the no-comparison condition (B = -.48, t(108) = 2.96, p < .005). In contrast, for those high in social comparison orientation, discontent was not at all associated with commitment in the downward comparison condition (B = -.15, t(108) = 1.05, ns), whereas in the no-comparison condition there was a highly significant association between both variables (B = -.78, t(108) = 5.06, p < .0001). Thus, especially for participants who were strongly inclined to engage in social comparison, cognitive downward comparison contributed to a relatively higher commitment among those experiencing a high discontent with the relationship.
FIGURE 2. Study 2: Regression of commitment to the relationship on discontent about the partner as measured prior to the experimental task within the no-comparison and downward comparison conditions. Commitment was regressed on discontent at low (1 SD below the mean) and high (1 SD above the mean) levels of social comparison orientation (INCOM; M = 2.97, SD = .59).
Supplemental analyses
As in study 1, it was examined again if the number of the qualities generated in both conditions could account for the results. There was no effect of cognitive set, F(1, 114) = .01, ns, upon the number of qualities generated. To determine whether the number of qualities did account for the effects on satisfaction, commitment and perceived relationship quality, the hierarchical moderated regression analyses were repeated after adding the number of the qualities in the first step. In these analyses, all of the major findings were replicated.
The goal of Study 2 was to obtain additional evidence for the hypothesis that cognitive downward comparison may positively affect the perceived quality of the relationship. Moreover, we examined the extent to which the positive effect of downward comparison would occur in particular among individuals who were discontent with the partner and were strongly oriented to engage in social comparison. To examine the generalizability of the findings obtained in Study 1, Study 2 was conducted in a convenience sample of adults who had on average a relationship for more than 15 years.
To summarize, although there was no evidence that cognitive downward comparison exercised a main effect on relationship satisfaction and feelings of commitment to the relationship, a pattern of significant interactions demonstrated that the impact of downward comparison was moderated by discontent with the partner and by social comparison orientation. As we expected, cognitive downward comparisons improved the perceived quality of the relationship especially among people who were discontent with the relationship with their partner. Moreover, this buffering effect of cognitive downward comparison was moderated by social comparison orientation in such a way that only among those high in social comparison orientation was the negative impact of discontent on the perceived quality of the relationship reduced as a result of the downward comparison thought-generating task. Also in accordance with the findings of Study 1, the number of the qualities generated did not differ between both conditions, thus suggesting that our findings were not artifacts of the number of qualities but that they were due to the effects of downward comparison. As a whole, the present findings suggest that even among individuals who had on average a relationship that had lasted over 15 years, cognitive downward comparison may help in maintaining a relative positive evaluation of one's relationship when experiencing relational discontent.
Nonetheless, it should be noted that one possible limitation of the results of Study 2 is that the main effect of cognitive set on perceived relationship quality was not replicated. The absence of an improvement in perceived quality of the relationship may be due to the fact that the pretest measures (i.e., social comparison orientation and discontent with the partner) and the dependent variables were assessed in the same session. The pretest measures may thus have influenced the subsequent dependent measures that were administered, known as "carryover" effects (see, for instance, Nunnally & Bernstein, 1994). Additional limitations of Study 2 are that there was little control of the experimental situation, and that discontent was measured by only one item asking participants to indicate the degree to which they were discontent with the relationship with their partner. Therefore, a laboratory experiment was conducted to address these limitations and to further corroborate the findings of Studies 1 and 2.
In general, Study 3 was highly similar to Studies 1 and 2, except for a few modifications. First, in an effort to reduce possible carryover effects the pretest of relational discontent and comparison orientation were administered approximately four weeks prior to the experimental part of the research and the measurement of the dependent variables. Second, the pretest measure of discontent was expanded to include some additional items measuring discontent with the relationship. Third, as the two previous studies could not test the assumption that cognitive downward comparisons enhanced perceived relationship quality, Study 3 examined if satisfaction and commitment did indeed increase due to cognitive downward comparison by including pretest measures of satisfaction and commitment. Fourth, in addition to the measures of general relationship satisfaction and commitment to the relationship, an additional dependent variable was employed that asked participants to evaluate the overall quality of their relationship by placing a mark on a graphic line. We assumed this to be a more sensitive measure of perceived relationship quality than the general measures of relationship satisfaction and commitment. Fifth, as in Study 1, response latencies as an unobtrusive measure of relational satisfaction were also assessed. Sixth, because we wanted to examine the effects of cognitive downward comparison on the global evaluation of the relationship, we examined the effect of relationship-enhancement instead of partner-enhancement on perceived relationship quality. The thought-generating task thus manipulated relationship-enhancing downward comparisons by asking participants to generate reasons why they considered their own relationship to be a good relationship or a better relationship than that of most others. In conclusion, the predictions were identical to those in Study 2.
Procedure and Participants
Approximately 2 months before scheduling the experimental sessions in the laboratory, participants were recruited via electronic mail, which asked for undergraduates to participate in a study about relationships. The cover story was essentially the same as in the fourth study. It was mentioned that interested participants were eligible to participate in the study if they were involved in an intimate relationship for at least the previous 3 months.
Two hundred and eight potential participants responded via electronic mail. Potential participants were sent questionnaires by mail, together with a postage-paid return envelope and a cover letter that thanked them for participation in the research. They were asked to complete the questionnaire individually and to answer all questions sequentially. A reminder letter was sent to those participants who did not return the questionnaires within two weeks. Following this procedure, 166 participants returned completed questionnaires, yielding a response rate of 78%. They were asked to supply their names and telephone numbers so that they could be contacted at a later date. A financial incentive of 5 Dutch Guilders (approximately U.S. $3) was offered if they completed and returned the questionnaire.
Approximately 3 to 5 weeks after returning the questionnaires, one hundred and eighteen participants could be contacted by telephone and a time was arranged for them to come to the laboratory. One hundred and twelve participants showed up for their scheduled follow-up session in the laboratory. Two participants reported that they were no longer involved in relationships with their original partners and were dropped from the sample. Therefore, the final sample consisted of 110 University of Groningen undergraduates (74 women, and 36 men). Ninety-four were involved in dating relationships, 14 participants were cohabiting, and 2 were married. The average duration of their relationship was 2.0 years, with a range of 3 months to 8.4 years. Participants were 21.8 years old on average (range 18 to 29 years). All participants were paid 7.5 Dutch guilders (approximately U.S. $4.5) for their participation in the laboratory research.
Premeasures of moderating variables and criteria variables
The questionnaire was designed to assess social comparison orientation, initial levels of relational discontent, and prior levels of relationship satisfaction and commitment to the relationship. The INCOM (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999) was used to measure social comparison orientation (Cronbach's alpha = .83). Subsequently, a 7-item self-report scale was constructed to assess relational discontent. The items were found to load on a single factor and the reliability of the composite was high (Cronbach's alpha = .82). Participants indicated, on 9-point scales, the extent to which they were discontent with their relationship, as well as the extent to which they had been bothered or distressed by the course of events in their relationships during the past two months. The scale included, among others, the single item used in Study 2 to assess discontent with their partner (1 = completely content and 9 = totally discontent). In addition, the scale included items such as "Have you or your partner seriously discussed the idea of ending the relationship during the past weeks?" (1 = not at all and 9 = very frequently), "Do you feel that your relationship is under a lot of pressure due to unresolved differences of opinion between you and your partner?" (1 = no pressure at all and 9 = a lot of pressure), and "Do you feel that you don't know were you stand in your relationship with your partner?" (1 = completely disagree and 9 = completely agree).
In addition, prior levels of the dependent variables were assessed. Thus participants completed measures of satisfaction (Cronbach's alpha = .92) and commitment (Cronbach's alpha = .85) that were identical to those used in Studies 1 and 2, and were asked to evaluate the overall quality of their relationship by placing a mark on a 100-millimeters line, anchored at zero with "extremely low quality," and at 100 with "extremely high quality." The distance measured in millimeters from the left end of the line was assessed to measure perceived quality of the relationship, resulting in a nearly continuous measure.
Laboratory protocol
In the laboratory, the procedure was identical to Study 1, with the exception that, instead of manipulating self- and partner-enhancing downward comparison, participants in this experiment were instructed to focus on the qualities of their relationship which they considered as good or as superior to other relationships. The experimenters were unaware of participants' relational discontent levels and comparison orientation throughout the experimental procedure, and assignment to the no-comparison (n = 55) versus downward comparison condition (n = 55) was randomly determined.
On each table, the experimenter had placed an envelope. The participants were told that the envelope contained test materials and that they had to start with the computer-administered procedure by pressing a key, following the instructions. They were asked to work their way through the program at their own pace and to refer to the envelope when they were requested, to complete the questionnaire it contained. Each individual was then led to an individual booth and seated in front of a microcomputer.
Dependent Measures
After completing the thought-generating task, participants were presented with the dependent measures, that is the measures of satisfaction and commitment that were the same as in the pretest (Cronbach's alphas = .95 and .87, respectively), including the 100-millimeters measure of perceived quality of the relationship that was administered as a paper-and-pencil question. The questions of satisfaction and commitment were answered by pressing a numerical key (1 through 9) on the keyboard of the computer. Next, participants were instructed to open the envelope and complete the paper-and-pencil question. The response latencies to the questionnaires of satisfaction and commitment, as well as baseline response times, were recorded following the same procedure as in Study 1.
Data Analytic Procedure
Analytical procedures were identical to those employed in Study 2. We first examined the mean scores of the study variables in the experimental conditions, as well as the correlations between all study variables. Next, the dependent variables at Time 2 were included in hierarchical moderated regression analyses.
Preliminary Descriptive Analyses
Means and standard deviations of all study variables are displayed in Table 2. One-way analyses of variance with cognitive set (no-comparison versus downward comparison) as independent variable indicated no initial differences between both conditions on the criteria variables, Fs < 1.47, ns, although participants in the downward comparison condition reported marginally less discontent at Time 1 than those in the no-comparison condition, F(1, 108) = 3.48, p = .07.5 No difference was found in social comparison orientation, F < 1, ns. However, in accordance with our prediction, cognitive set significantly or marginally significantly influenced the dependent variables at Time 2. As the means in Table 2 indicate, participants in the comparison condition reported more satisfaction, F(1, 108) = 3.59, p = .06, commitment, F(1, 108) = 4.17, p < .05, and a higher quality of the relationship, F(1, 108) = 3.73, p = .06, than participants assigned to the no-comparison condition.
TABLE 2
Means for study variables as a function of cognitive set in study 3
| No-Comparisona | No-Comparisonb | |||
| Variable | M | SD | M | SD |
| Preexperimental (Time 1) | ||||
| Discontent | 2.97 | 1.27 | 2.51 | 1.29 |
| Comparison orientation | 3.37 | .64 | 3.44 | .65 |
| Satisfaction | 7.43 | 1.15 | 7.54 | 1.05 |
| Commitment | 7.03 | 1.48 | 7.35 | 1.28 |
| Relationship Quality | 77.35 | 13.74 | 79.44 | 14.4 |
| Postexperimental (Time 2) | ||||
| Satisfaction | 7.25 | 1.39 | 7.68 | 1.00 |
| Commitment | 6.97 | 1.50 | 7.50 | 1.22 |
| Relationship Quality | 76.33 | 15.41 | 81.47 | 12.37 |
a N = 55
b N = 55
Furthermore, the dependent variables were submitted to two-way ANOVAs with Cognitive Set as a between-subjects variable, and Time (Time 1 versus Time 2) as a repeated-measure variable to test the prediction that the downward comparison thought-generating task would exert a more positive influence on perceived relationship quality than the no-comparison thought-generating task. The ANOVAs revealed a significant interaction between cognitive set and time on satisfaction, F(1, 108) = 5.25, p < .03, and marginally significant interactions on commitment, F(1, 108) = 2.57, p = .11, and relationship quality, F(1, 108) = 2.75, p = .10. Next, t-tests (one-tailed) were performed to test the differences between Time 1 and Time 2 levels of the dependent variables. Relative to prior levels of satisfaction, participants in the no-comparison thought-generating task displayed significantly less satisfaction, t(54) = -1.80, p < .04, whereas participants displayed marginally more satisfaction following the downward comparison thought-generating task, t(54) = 1.43, p < .08. In addition, whereas prior levels of commitment and relationship quality did not differ from levels reported following the no-comparison task, ts(54) = -.55 and -.71, ns, participants reported significantly more commitment and higher relationship quality in the downward comparison condition, ts(54) = 1.98 and 1.76, ps < .03 and .04. In sum, whereas the two previous experiments could not test the assumption that cognitive downward comparisons enhanced perceived relationship quality, these findings offer evidence that the downward comparison thought-generating task resulted in an increase in relationship quality whereas the no-comparison thought-generating task did not affect relationship quality.
Finally, as can be seen in Table 3, the variables measuring relationship quality were significantly correlated. Not surprisingly, relational discontent was highly correlated with the measures of relationship quality. Comparison orientation showed small, but mostly statistically significant relations with the relationship variables.
Regression Analyses
Relationship satisfaction. The main effects of cognitive set, relational discontent, and social comparison orientation accounted for a significant amount of variance in satisfaction, R² = .59, F(3, 106) = 51.44, p < .0001. The dummy coded term representing cognitive set did not yield a significant effect (B = .08, t(106) = .67, ns). Relational discontent (B = -.77, t(106) = -11.70, p < .0001) was negatively and significantly related to satisfaction, whereas social comparison orientation did not yield a significant predictor (B = .03, t(106) = .43, ns). The two-way interactions entered at the second step yielded a nonsignificant incremental amount of explained variance, R² = .02, Fchange(3, 103) = 1.97, ns. Neither the Cognitive Set X Comparison Orientation interaction (B = -.04, t(103) = .33, ns), nor the predicted Relational Discontent X Comparison Orientation interaction (B = .06, t(103) = .81, ns) reached statistical significance. However, the predicted Cognitive Set X Relational Discontent interaction emerged (B = .27, t(103) = 2.06, p < .05). Inspection of this interaction revealed that comparative thought-generating was a more effective buffer against relational discontent than the task in which noncomparative thoughts about the partner were generated: Relational Discontent was less strongly predictive of satisfaction in the downward comparison condition (B = .66, t(103) = 6.81, p < .0001) than in the no-comparison condition (B = -.93, t(103) = 9.81, p < .0001).
TABLE 3
Pearson correlations among variables in study 3
| Variable | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 |
| 1. Cognitive Set | -- | ||||||||
| 2. Discontent | -.18* | -- | |||||||
| 3. Comparison Orientation | .06 | .27** | -- | ||||||
| 4. Satisfaction-T1 | .05 | -.77** | -.13 | -- | |||||
| 5. Commitment-T1 | .12 | -.62** | -.15 | .71** | -- | ||||
| 6. Relationship Quality-T1 | .07 | -.69** | -.22* | .72** | .61** | -- | |||
| 7. Satisfaction_T2 | .18* | -.77** | -.18* | .79** | .78** | .73** | -- | ||
| 8. Commitment-T2 | .19* | -.61** | -.23** | .65** | .87** | .67** | .84** | -- | |
| 9. Relationship Quality-T2 | .18** | -.68** | -.27** | .67** | .73** | .76** | .81** | .78** | -- |
* p < .05; ** p < .001, one-tailed.
However, this interaction was subsumed by the expected three-way interaction that accounted for an additional amount of variance in relationship satisfaction (B = .30), R² = .02, Fchange(1, 102) = 4.71, p < .04. To clarify the nature of the three-way interaction, the direction of the Cognitive Set X Relational Discontent interactions were calculated in additional regression analyses at low and high levels of social comparison orientation. The Cognitive Set X Relational Discontent interaction was significant at high (B = .47, t(102) = 2.96, p < .01), but not at low levels of social comparison orientation (B = -.13, t(102) = -.56, ns). As shown in Figure 3, the three-way interaction is similar to that found in Study 2. Inspection of the slopes of the standardized form of the equation revealed that the relation between discontent and satisfaction was significant and negative in all conditions. For those low in social comparison orientation, discontent and satisfaction were significant related following the downward comparison thought-generating task (B = -.96, t(102) = 5.40, p < .0001), and following the no comparison task (B = .83, t(102) = 5.92, p < .0001). Among participants high in social comparison orientation, however, this negative association was more pronounced in the no-comparison condition (B = -1.00, t(102) = 8.02, p < .0001) than in the downward comparison condition (B = -.52, t(102) = 5.24, p < .0001). Thus, in line with our prediction, the Cognitive Set X Relational Discontent interaction appeared to be stronger as participants were to a greater extent oriented toward social comparison.
FIGURE 3. Study 3: Regression of relationship satisfaction on relational discontent as measured prior to the experimental task within the no-comparison and downward comparison conditions. Relationship satisfaction was regressed on discontent at low (1 SD below the mean) and high (1 SD above the mean) levels of social comparison orientation (INCOM; M = 3.41, SD = .64).
Commitment to the relationship. The main effects of cognitive set, relational discontent, and social comparison orientation accounted for a significant amount of variance in commitment, R² = .38, F(3, 106) = 10.99, p < .0001. This main effect resulted mainly from relational discontent which significantly predicted feelings of commitment (B = -.77, t(106) = -11.70, p < .0001). The dummy coded term representing cognitive set did not yield a significant effect (B = .19, t(106) = 1.24, ns). Likewise, social comparison orientation was not significantly related to commitment (B = -.10, t(112) = -1.21, p < .23).
Entering the two-way interactions at the second step did not account for further incremental variance in commitment, R² = .02, Fchange(3, 103) = 1.0, ns. Neither the predicted Relational Discontent X Comparison Orientation interaction (B = .14, t(103) = 1.59, ns), nor the Cognitive Set X Comparison Orientation interaction was statistically significant (B = .09, t(106) = .45, ns). However, as predicted, a Cognitive Set X Relational Discontent interaction emerged (B = .37, t(109) = 2.20, p < .02). Inspection of this interaction revealed that downward comparison thought-generating was a more effective buffer against the negative effect of relational discontent on commitment than the task in which noncomparative thoughts about the partner were generated: Discontent was less strongly negatively related to commitment in the downward comparison condition (B = .27, t(109) = 2.23, p < .02) than in the no-comparison condition (B = -.64, t(109) = 5.34, p < .0001).
As for satisfaction, this two-way interaction was qualified by the predicted three-way interaction that accounted for a significant portion of explained variance in commitment (B = .50), R² = .05, Fchange(1, 102) = 8.64, p < .01. Additional regression analyses revealed that social comparison orientation moderated the Cognitive Set X Relational Discontent interaction, indicating that the two-way interaction at high levels of comparison orientation (B = .42, t(102) = 2.16, p < .04) was opposite to the interaction at low levels of comparison orientation (B = .57, t(102) = -2.06, p < .05). To further clarify these interactions, the slopes of the standardized form of the equation were calculated. As shown in Figure 4, at low levels of social comparison orientation, discontent was a stronger predictor of commitment in the downward comparison condition (B = -1.11, t(102) = 5.14, p < .0001) than within the no-comparison condition (B = -.54, t(102) = 3.16, p < .01). In contrast, at high levels of social comparison orientation, commitment was less strongly predicted by discontent for participants within the downward comparison condition (B = -.30, t(102) = 2.49, p < .02) than in the no-comparison condition (B = -.73, t(102) = 4.77, p < .0001). Thus, as expected, cognitive downward comparison improved the commitment of participants faced with relational discontent particularly among those strongly oriented toward social comparison. Conversely, at low levels of social comparison orientation, the interaction appeared to be in the opposite direction, so that discontent was more strongly negatively related to commitment in the downward comparison than in the no-comparison condition.
FIGURE 4. Study 3: Regression of commitment to the relationship on relational discontent as measured prior to the experimental task within the no-comparison and downward comparison conditions. Commitment was regressed on discontent at low (1 SD below the mean) and high (1 SD above the mean) levels of social comparison orientation (INCOM; M = 3.41, SD = .64).
Perceived relationship quality. The main effects of cognitive set, relational discontent, and social comparison orientation accounted for a significant amount of variance in perceived quality of the relationship, R² = .47, F(3, 106) = 31.42, p < .0001. Relational discontent appeared to be the most powerful predictor of relationship quality (B = -.64, t(106) = -8.50, p < .0001). The dummy coded term representing cognitive set did not yield a significant effect (B = .15, t(106) = 1.05, ns), nor did social comparison orientation (B = -.10, t(106) = -1.34, ns). The two-way interactions entered at the second step yielded a nonsignificant incremental amount of explained variance, R² = .01, Fchange(3, 103) = .54, ns. Neither the Cognitive Set X Comparison Orientation interaction (B = .05, t(103) = .32, ns), nor the predicted Relational Discontent X Comparison Orientation interaction (B = .02, t(103) = .27, ns) and the predicted Cognitive Set X Relational Discontent interaction reached statistical significance (B = .16, t(103) = 1.00, ns).
However, the three-way interaction accounted for an additional proportion of explained variance in perceived quality of the relationship (B = .68), R² = .09, Fchange(1, 102) = 20.52, p < .0001. In additional regression analyses at low and high levels of social comparison orientation, the nature of the three-way interaction was examined. As shown in Figure 5, the Cognitive Set X Relational Discontent interaction at high levels of comparison orientation (B = .61, t(102) = 3.49, p < .001) was opposite to the interaction at low levels of comparison orientation (B = .75, t(102) = -3.07, p < .01). The slopes of the standardized form of the equation, and their significance levels were calculated to clarify these two-way interactions. As shown in Figure 5, relational discontent was negatively related to relationship quality. Among participants low in social comparison orientation, discontent was a more powerful predictor of perceived relationship quality in the downward comparison condition (B = -1.15, t(102) = 5.95, p < .0001) than in the no-comparison condition (B = -.39, t(102) = 2.57, p < .02). In contrast, for those high in social comparison orientation, relationship quality was less strongly predicted by relational discontent following the downward comparison thought-generating task (B = -.37, t(102) = 3.43, p < .001) than following the no-comparison task (B = .98, t(102) = 7.24, p < .0001). Thus, in line with our prediction, the Cognitive Set X Relational Discontent interaction appeared to be stronger as participants were to a greater extent oriented toward social comparison. Put differently, for those high in social comparison orientation, engaging in cognitive social comparison when faced with relational discontent made one relatively less dissatisfied with the relationship.
FIGURE 5. Study 3: Regression of perceived quality of the relationship on relational discontent as measured prior to the experimental task within the no-comparison and downward comparison conditions. Perceived relationship quality was regressed on discontent at low (1 SD below the mean) and high (1 SD above the mean) levels of social comparison orientation (INCOM; M = 3.41, SD = .64).
Analyses of the Response Latencies
To assess the effects of cognitive set on the response times we followed the same analytical strategy as in Study 1. Although the analyses were performed on the transformed latencies, for clarity we present the retransformed scores. The transformed response latencies were submitted to one-way analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs), with the baseline index for response time as a covariate.&sup6; In line with the reported effects in Study 1, a main effect emerged of cognitive set on the latency index of satisfaction. Participants in the comparison condition responded faster to the scales of relationships satisfaction, F(1, 89) = 4.96, p < .03, than participants assigned to the no-comparison thought-generating task. As predicted, the mean latencies (adjusted for individual differences in response latencies) in the comparison condition and in the no-comparison condition were 7.94 versus 8.74. Although the mean latencies to the commitment index were shorter in the comparison condition (9.06) than in the no-comparison condition (9.31), the difference in response latencies did not reach conventional levels of significance, F < 1, ns. Furthermore, to explore the interaction effects of cognitive set, relational discontent, and comparison orientation on the latency indexes, we followed the same regression analytical strategy as for the self-report measures of relationship quality. The hierarchical moderated regression analyses did not qualify the reported main effect on the satisfaction latency index, nor did any interaction effects on the commitment latency index approach statistical significance. To summarize briefly, the main effect on the satisfaction latency index due to type of cognitive set replicated the results of Study 1, suggesting that cognitive downward comparison increases especially the accessibility of the attitude toward relationship satisfaction.
Supplemental analyses
As noted in the previous studies, possible alternative explanations of the obtained findings required additional analyses. First, it was examined if the number of qualities generated in both conditions could account for the results. There was no effect of cognitive set, F(1, 108) = .55, ns, upon the number of qualities generated. When controlling for the number of qualities, all of the major analyses were replicated.
Unlike in Study 1, in Study 3 the participants did not rate the positivity of the qualities they generated. However, the qualities listed in the comparison and in the no-comparison condition were rated by two independent judges on 5-point scales ranging from very negative to very positive. The judges were blind to hypothesis and experimental conditions, and the interrater agreement was high, as indicated by a Cohen's Kappa of .96.
First, an analysis of variance revealed that the two judges did rate the qualities in the comparison condition a little more positively (M = 4.16) than those generated in the no-comparison condition (M = 4.10), but the difference between both conditions was not statistically reliable, F (1, 109) = 3.37, p = .07. Secondly, regression analyses failed to find any effects of relational discontent (B = .14, ns) and social comparison orientation (B = -.09, ns) on the positivity of the generated qualities. Further, the hierarchical moderated regression analyses were repeated after adding the positivity ratings of the qualities in the first step. Again, after controlling for the positivity of the generated qualities, all of the major analyses were replicated. Thus, these regression analyses do not support the alternative account that the findings are due to the greater positivity of the qualities listed in the comparison condition relative to the qualities that were generated by the participants in the no-comparison condition.
5. In the hierarchical moderated regression analyses prior levels of discontent was entered simultaneously with cognitive set and social comparison orientation in Step 1 so that the regression statistics explain prediction of T2 criteria by the predictor variables and their product terms independent of prior relational distress. Therefore, the marginally significant difference of discontent between the downward and the no-comparison conditions at Time 1 is not discussed further.
6. Before performing the analyses of covariance, preliminary analyses confirmed that the assumption of homogeneity of regression slopes within both conditions was upheld.
Study 3 replicated the findings of the first study that cognitive downward comparison positively affects the self-report measures of satisfaction and commitment. In line with this main effect of cognitive set, downward comparison also led to an improvement in the additional measure of perceived quality of the relationship. Moreover, controlling for positivity of qualities listed in the thought-listing task failed to eliminate the findings, thus ruling out the possible alternative line of reasoning that the differential valence of the qualities listed in both experimental conditions might account for the obtained effects. Additionally, participants in the downward comparison condition also showed lower response latencies to the satisfaction questionnaire than those in the no-comparison conditions, thus reflecting a more accessible and favorable evaluation of the relationship in the former condition.
Somewhat unexpectedly, whereas in Study 1 type of cognitive set yielded effects on the response latencies of both indexes of satisfaction and commitment, the experimental manipulations in this third study did not influence the accessibility of the feelings of commitment to the relationship. Notwithstanding this observation, Study 3 provides evidence that cognitive downward comparison positively affects both the self-report measures of perceived relationship quality and led to lower response latencies on the index of satisfaction, thus underlining the higher level of satisfaction in the downward comparison condition as compared to the no-downward comparison condition.
Moreover, the results of Study 3 replicate and extend the findings of Study 2 to a sample of undergraduate students. In both studies, actively engaging in cognitive downward comparison positively affected indices of relationship quality especially when participants reported discontent about their relationship, and this effect of downward comparison was more pronounced for individuals high in social comparison orientation.
While social comparison research has traditionally focussed particularly upon factors affecting individuals' comparison desires and choice of a comparison target, in the past decade the attention has shifted to the consequences of social comparison for mood, well-being and satisfaction. A number of studies have provided evidence for the relation between downward comparison and general well-being, and it has been clearly demonstrated that feeling better off than others on a specific dimension is related to satisfaction with one's standing on that dimension (for reviews, see Buunk, 1994; Taylor & Brown, 1988; Wills, 1981). Although many studies on this issue have been correlational, thus impeding causal conclusions, in an increasing number of laboratory experiments the effects of social comparison information have been examined (e.g., Gibbons & Gerrard, 1991; Klein, 1997; Pelham & Wachsmuth, 1995). The usual paradigm in this area, however, consists of a procedure in which researchers provide participants with social comparison information after which the impact of this information is assessed (for reviews, see Wood, 1989, 1996). Characteristic of this type of paradigm is that participants are passive recipients of social comparison information.
Hence, to examine experimentally whether cognitive downward comparison improves perceived relationship quality, the current research extended the existing literature by applying a new paradigm that induced participants to actively engage in cognitive downward social comparison. Furthermore, since the effects of social comparison have scarcely been studied in the domain of intimate relationships, we sought to extend previous research on social comparison in intimate relationships, and to provide insight into the effects of cognitive downward social comparison on relationship satisfaction.
The experimental paradigm was a thought-generating task which asked participants to generate positive qualities in which they consider themselves, their intimate partners, or their own relationships in noncomparative or comparative terms. This 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; Klein, 1997). Cognitive downward comparison was expected to be a particularly successful strategy for people who experience problems in their relationship to reevaluate their situation and to make them feel relatively more satisfied with their relationship. Furthermore, we expected that downward comparison would exert a stronger buffering effect for individuals high in social comparison orientation. 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 current series of studies clearly indicated that cognitive 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 cognitive downward comparison: under high relational discontent, partner-enhancing downward comparisons lead to more satisfaction and commitment, particularly when individuals were dispositionally strongly inclined to compare their own circumstances with those of others. In addition, Study 3 replicated the findings of Study 2 in a sample of undergraduate students. Relational discontent and comparison orientation as measured approximately four weeks prior to the experimental sessions in the laboratory moderated the relationship-enhancing effects of cognitive downward comparison. In both Studies 2 and 3, the negative impact of discontent regarding the relationship with the partner on individuals' relationship quality was buffered by comparison of one's own relationship with other relationships of inferior quality, particularly among those who were high in social comparison orientation.
At least two alternative interpretations of the differential effects of the thought-generating tasks are possible. First, a potential limitation of the current research concerns the self-reporting nature of most of the measures. Therefore, it is conceivable that the beneficial effect of the downward comparison thought-generating task is simply a result of demand characteristics and that the effects do not represent any real improvements in perceived quality of the relationship. That is, participants might have concluded from the thought-generating task that they were supposed to think "good" or "exceptional", and that they should continue in the same manner in answering the subsequent questions (cf. Bless, Strack, & Schwarz, 1993; Schwarz, 1994). Of course, the problem with this interpretation is that it cannot explain why only generating qualities in which one's relationship was superior, and not generating qualities in which one's relationship was good resulted under certain conditions in increased satisfaction. Nevertheless, to rule out the possibility of demand characteristics, in Studies 1 and 3 we measured perceived quality of the relationship by both self-report measures and unobtrusive response latencies measures of which the participants were unaware. In these studies, as we hypothesized, cognitive downward comparison influenced the unobtrusive measures of response latencies (although the response latencies to the commitment index in Study 3 did not reveal acceptable levels of significance, they followed the predicted pattern). That is, the heightened salience of superior relationship qualities seemed to have resulted in increased levels of relationship satisfaction which, consequently, led to increased accessibility of the attitude toward the relationship. This effect of the downward comparison thought-generating task on the response latencies of the dependent variables underlines the strengths of our findings.
A second plausible artifactual explanation is the possibility that the comparison thought-listing task induced participants to list qualities that were more positive than the qualities generated in the no-comparison thought-listing task. That is, the obtained effects might not be due to the fact that participants actively engaged in downward social comparison but to the fact that they generated qualities in the comparison condition that differed in valence from those in the no-comparison condition. However, controlling for positivity of the qualities did not eliminate the effects of the experimental manipulation of cognitive downward comparison. These supplemental analyses speak to the validity of the experimental manipulation and suggest that it is cognitive downward comparison that accounts for the obtained effects in the current series of studies.
Considered as a whole, the present findings indicate that people may enhance their well-being through a downward social comparison process when they are unhappy about the relationship with their partner. The results of these three studies are consistent with Wills' downward comparison theory (1981, 1987) and selective evaluation theory proposed by Taylor et al. (1983) that would predict that when people experience relational discontent, selective evaluation through downward comparison may make individuals feel relatively better about their relationship.
Also, the present research may have methodological implications for the social comparison literature. The use of a thought-generating paradigm to induce active cognitive downward comparison is to the best of our knowledge new to the 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. As such, the thought-listing task which asked participants to list positive qualities in noncomparative or comparative terms may offer a useful paradigm to examine experimentally the possible beneficial consequences of cognitive downward social comparisons for individuals' psychological well-being.
In addition to these methodological implications, the present research also has a number of potentially important theoretical implications for social comparison research. Not only does the present research clarify how cognitive downward comparisons may affect the way individuals evaluate their situation, the present research is also one of the first to provide direct evidence that there are meaningful individual differences in social comparison orientation. Although various authors have suggested that individuals differ in their tendency to compare themselves with others (e.g., Brickman & Bulman, 1977), there is virtually no research that has addressed this issue, and shown that individual differences in this regard lead to different responses to social comparison. The orientation assessed by the scale developed by Gibbons and Buunk (1999) indeed appears directly relevant with respect to the impact of social comparison. Studies 2 and 3 clearly showed that cognitive downward comparison buffered the effect of discontent with the relationship upon relationship evaluation only for individuals high in social comparison orientation. These findings seem to qualify our knowledge about the beneficial consequences of downward comparison as such consequences are only found concerning individuals who are dispositionally strongly inclined to compare themselves with others. Apparently, the buffering role of downward comparison as proposed by Wills (1981), may not be as general a phenomenon as sometimes supposed.
To the best of our knowledge, although theorists have speculated for decades about the impact of social comparisons upon relationship satisfaction (e.g., Thibaut & Kelley, 1959), there exists scarcely any prior research demonstrating that the perceived quality of an intimate relationship can be influenced experimentally by social comparison, thus impeding the development of causal models involving relationship quality. Therefore, the current work may contribute to a better understanding of the maintenance and enhancement of relationship quality by demonstrating the beneficial effects of cognitive downward comparison on the perceived quality of the relationship, especially for those who experience discontent with the relationship with their partners and consequently suffer a decline in the quality of their relationship. The fact that downward comparison has more effect among individuals who have a dispositional tendency to engage in social comparison suggests that for individuals with a low social comparison orientation other processes are more important for relationship satisfaction.
In the previous chapter it was examined whether intimate partners' evaluation of their relationship quality was affected by inducing them to actively engage in cognitive downward social comparison. The findings of these studies as reported in the previous chapter suggest that this induced cognitive downward comparison process resulted in higher perceived quality of the relationship, particularly for individuals who display more relational discontent and a stronger orientation toward social comparison. However, the question that arose in the introductory chapter was how observers would react when they observed someone else engaging overtly in downward social comparison activities. To address this question, the present chapter focuses on reactions to other people who openly display downward comparison behavior. More specifically, in a series of experimental studies, participants were presented with a short fragment supposedly derived from a group discussion. In this fragment, in which one of the discussants publicly evaluated his or her close relationship, the disclosures were systematically manipulated so that participants were provided with either enhancing versus deprecating, or enhancing versus absolute (i.e. noncomparative) fragments. It was explored whether self-enhancing downward comparisons were considered as more socially undesirable and would elicit more negative evaluations of the discloser.
7. This chapter is based on Oldersma, Buunk, and De Dreu (1999). Preliminary analyses of some of the data in this chapter were presented at the Seventh International Conference on Personal Relationships, Groningen, July 1994; Oldersma, De Dreu, and Buunk (1994).
Occasionally, we may encounter other people who openly embellish their success by contrasting others bad fortune to their own accomplishments. This may confront us with a situation wherein we are expected to enjoy the good fortune of the other, although we might privately be embarrassed by the fact that someone else in public elaborates on his or her success by turning others' misfortune to their advantage. In a similar vein, romantic partners may encounter someone else who calls attention to his or her intimate relationship that appears to be more enjoyable in comparison to the relationship of similar others. Although we might be pleased by the good fortune of others, we might privately be annoyed by the swanker who appears to take advantage of others' bad luck. Consequently, publicly drawing attention to one's own good fortune with explicit references to social comparison with unfortunate others may have a major drawback. That is, as Wills and Suls (1991) noted, when people notice someone else who overtly, and without much hesitation, engages in downward social comparison, they may feel that this swanker is aiming his or her comparisons at themselves which may make further social interaction troublesome. Namely, observers may conclude from the overtly displayed downward comparisons that their own standing is considered less favorably, or indeed, inferior to that of the discloser. In conclusion, it can be assumed that people may consider others' overt downward comparison behaviors as socially undesirable because those comparisons are seen as socially inappropriate grounds for obtaining satisfaction within one's own situation.
It was Wills (1981) who noted the conflict between the potential benefits for those who engage in downward comparison on the one hand, and the pain in those who are depicted as the worse off others on the other hand. In his influential paper about downward comparison theory, Wills (1981) postulated the ambivalence principle. According to this principle, "people do not regard comparison with less fortunate others as wholly admirable" (p. 246). Put in other words, downward comparison "goes against normative prescriptions and empathic tendencies of concern with other people" (Wills, 1991b, p. 378). People are ambivalent about engaging in downward social comparison because they might experience both the advantages (i.e., self-enhancement) and disadvantages (i.e., self-enhancement at the expense of others) of doing so. Therefore, as Wills (1981) reasoned, when people engage in downward comparison, they do so in a private and implicit way to avoid the possible disapproval and the negative responses of the observers of such downward social comparison behaviors.
However, relatively few studies have provided evidence for this notion. An exception is a study by Hemphill and Lehman (1991) who found evidence for the social undesirability of downward comparison. These authors demonstrated that multiple sclerosis patients made fewer downward comparisons --but not fewer upward comparisons-- and reported less positive affective consequences of comparisons with worse off others when they considered social comparison as more inappropriate. This chapter is intended to explore the implications of the aforementioned ambivalence principle of downward social comparison and directs attention towards the responses to others engaging in overt downward social comparison activities, an area that, in spite of its relevance, and in contrast to the evidence on Wills' (1981) principle of downward comparison, has been scarcely examined in recent research. More precisely, three experimental studies examined individuals' reactions to someone who publicly engages in downward comparison and boasts about his or her superior standing. Individuals' perceptions of the social desirability and appropriateness of engaging in such downward comparison are examined, as well as their feelings about explicit and publicly displayed downward social comparisons.
The studies in the current chapter examined individuals' reactions to others who overtly display self- and partner-enhancing downward comparisons. Participants were told that they would be required to read a brief scenario, which was a fragment that ostensibly was derived from a group discussion. Each scenario depicted someone who publicly evaluated his or her intimate relationship (the gender of the evaluator was not specified). The evaluator's statements were made about either the self (as a relationship partner) or the relationship partner. Moreover, in Studies 4 and 5, the evaluations were made in an enhancing or in a deprecating fashion, whereas in Study 6 the scenarios contained either comparative or noncomparative evaluations about the self or the partner.
In each study, having read the scenario, participants were asked in part to indicate the extent to which they considered the verbal statements as socially desirable, the extent of sympathy felt for the discussant, whether they felt annoyed whilst reading the statements, and the attributions they made for the discussant's statements. Study 5 was carried out to replicate the findings in Study 4. In addition to examining participants' reactions to someone else's self- or partner-evaluations, it was examined as to what extent participants themselves were able to generate evaluations of the self or the partner in either an enhancing or in a deprecating way. As the former studies did not examine the differential effects of comparative (i.e. with explicit references to social comparison) and noncomparative evaluations (i.e. without references to social comparison), Study 6 was conducted to confirm and extend the results of Studies 4 and 5 under the same carefully designed experimental conditions. In Study 6, the comparative nature of self- and partner-enhancing evaluations was manipulated systematically. Furthermore, in Study 6, the possibly moderating role of individual differences in social comparison orientation was explored by examining the extent to which reactions to someone else engaging in self- and partner-enhancing downward comparison were moderated by social comparison orientation (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999).
In this first study, participants were provided with a short fragment, supposedly derived from a group discussion, in which someone publicly characterized the self or the intimate partner in enhancing or deprecating terms. It was predicted that it would be seen as more socially appropriate and desirable to describe one's own intimate partner in an enhancing fashion than to describe oneself (as a relationship partner) as positive and as superior to others. Accordingly, it was assumed that a partner-deprecating evaluation will be rated as more socially inappropriate and undesirable than a self-denigrating evaluation.
Since there has been very little research on how people actually respond to enhancing self-presentations, as Schlenker and Leary (1982) have already indicated, the current study explored recipients' attributions for the discussant's statements about the self or the intimate partner. It was assumed that one can make at least two attributions when a person discloses enhancing or deprecating characterizations of the self or the intimate partner. Firstly, self-enhancement attributions will be made when the evaluation is seen as the result of the discussant's motivation to feel good about the self (e.g., Taylor amp;& Brown, 1988, 1994) and the discussant's concern to manage the impression that she or he makes on others and embellishing the self in order to receive social approval and acceptance (e.g., Baumeister, 1982). Secondly, compliance attribution will be made when individuals believe that the discussant is induced to advocate publicly an opinion that conforms to the present social norms (e.g., Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959). Not surprisingly, it was anticipated that enhancing evaluations would be attributed to a greater degree of self-enhancing and self-presentational motives than deprecating evaluations, and that this difference would be more pronounced when the discussant considered the self instead of the intimate partner. In contrast with the self-enhancing and the self-presentational motives, the compliance attribution would be more pronounced when the discussant described the intimate partner instead of the self, in such a way that describing the partner in an enhancing manner would be attributed to a greater degree of compliance than when the self is considered in an enhancing manner. Self-evaluations would lead to a less pronounced difference in compliance attribution.
Sample and participants
Participants were individuals from a representative sample of households recruited by the Telepanel Foundation in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Each of these households is equipped with a microcomputer that is connected to the central computer of the Telepanel Foundation. Regularly, members of the households answer computerized questionnaires presented via the computer. All instructions and questions are presented on the computer screen and questions can be answered by means of a keyboard. The computer administers all answers and, upon completion of the questionnaire, the responses are sent to the computer of the Telepanel Foundation.
The final sample of 722 individuals who participated in the study were currently involved in relationships. They participated in what they thought was a study on "Partner and Relationship." This vague description was chosen in order to avoid specific expectations about the objectives of the study. Their ages ranged from 17 to 56, with an average of 37.1 years. Unfortunately, demographic information regarding marital status and the duration of the relationship was only available from 370 participants (187 women, and 183 men). Of this subsample, 301 participants were married, 51 were cohabitating, and 18 were dating exclusively. Their relationships had an average length of 16.0 years (ranging from 1 month to 35.5 years).
Design and procedure
A 2 x 2 factorial design was used in this study. Two levels of Direction of Comparison (enhancing versus deprecating) and two levels of Target under Evaluation (self vs. partner) constituted between-participants factors. The dependent variable involved the extent to which the verbal statements were considered as socially desirable. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions.
The study was introduced to participants as a study dealing with their opinions and their reactions to other people's public evaluation of their intimate relationship and their intimate partner. Of principal interest here is a set of four scenarios that were developed to serve as the basis for varying the direction of comparison and the target under evaluation. All scenarios described a prior research in which participants discussed their relationship. Participants in each experimental condition were informed that they would be given a short fragment to read from one of the group discussions. They were requested to read very carefully the verbatim fragment that was allegedly derived from a group discussion. The instructions to the participants were worded as follows:
Last year, we conducted a study about Students and Their Relationships. Over 300 individuals participated in this study. During group sessions, participants discussed their experiences in intimate relationships. Below, you can read a short fragment from such a session, wherein one of the individuals evaluates the relationship. Please read the fragment carefully before answering the subsequent questions.
The statements in this fragment conveyed that one of the discussants evaluates the self (as a partner) or the intimate partner as positive and above average, or as negative and below average. The statements in the self-enhancing condition read:
I'm proud of myself as a partner (.....) Hm, well, I am just better looking than others (.....) and I believe that as a partner, I am doing better than others.
To compare the responses to a self-enhancing evaluation with an evaluation in which the partner was described as positive and in a superior fashion, a partner-enhancing evaluation version was used:
I'm proud of my partner (.....) Hm, well, my partner is just better looking than others (.....) and I believe that my partner is doing better than others.
In addition, two discussion fragments were created that involved self- and partner-deprecating evaluations. The following illustrates the self-deprecating condition:
I'm not proud of myself as a partner (.....) Hm, well, I am just not better looking than others (.....) and I believe that as a partner, I am doing worse than others.
In the partner-deprecating condition the scenario stated:
I'm not proud of my partner (.....) Hm, well, my partner is just not better looking than others (.....) and I believe that my partner is doing worse than others.
After reading the scenario, participants were asked to answer a set of questions. Each question was displayed on the computer screen simultaneously with the discussion fragment. They could proceed at their own pace through the computer program.
Dependent variables
Social desirability of the verbal statements was measured with two questions. Following Cialdini et al. (1990, 1991), two items were used that required participants to indicate the extent to which they expected most people would do (i.e. the descriptive norm) and what they believed ought to be done in the same situation (i.e. the injunctive norm). Hence, participants were asked "Do you consider the statements as normal?" and, respectively, "Do you consider the statements as reprehensible?" (reverse scored) on 5-point scales ranging from I disagree strongly to I agree strongly. The two questions obtained a correlation of .66 and were averaged to form one variable, so that higher scores indicated higher social desirability.
Feelings of sympathy for the discussant's statements were assessed by asking participants on a 5-point scale whether they felt sympathy for the discussant. The scale ranged from Not at all to Very much.
Participants then responded to two attribution measures designed to assess self-enhancement attribution and compliance attribution. Self-enhancement attribution was measured by asking whether participants believed that the discussant made his statements (a) to enhance self-esteem, (b) to feel good about the self (c) to make a good impression on others, and (d) to receive full appreciation of others. The four items were closely associated with one another, as indicated by a Cronbach's coefficient alpha of .82. Secondly, compliance attribution was measured by asking participants whether they believed that the discussant made his statements (a) because the discussant did not wish to put forward a different view, and (b) to avoid others' disapproval. The two items obtained a correlation of .44 and were averaged to form one variable. The items were answered on 5-point scales ranging from Not at all to Very much.
Social desirability, sympathy, and attribution ratings were submitted to two-way (Target under Evaluation X Direction of Comparison) analyses of variance (ANOVAs). Means and standard deviations in all conditions are displayed in Table 4.
The ANOVA revealed a marginally significant main effect of target under evaluation, F(1, 718) = 3.59, p < .06, and a significant main effect of direction of comparison, F(1, 718) = 37.85, p < .001, upon social desirability. Participants considered verbal statements about the self as somewhat more undesirable (M = 2.64) than statements about the partner (M = 2.55), and public evaluations in an enhancing manner were seen as less undesirable (M = 2.79) than deprecating evaluations (M = 2.39). As expected, however, these main effects were qualified by a significant two-way interaction, F(1, 718) = 162.05, p < .001. This reliable effect reflects the fact that enhancing statements about the partner were rated as less socially undesirable than deprecating statements, whereas the reverse appeared when the statements concerned statements about the self (see Table 4).
TABLE 4
Means and standard deviations of social desirability, sympathy,
and attributions as a function of direction and target in study 4
| Enhancing | Deprecating | |||||||
| Self | partner | Self | Partner | |||||
| Dependent Variables | M | SD | M | SD | M | SD | M | SD |
| Social Desirability | 2.38a | .85 | 2.85b | .93 | 3.09b | .98 | 1.89c | .72 |
| Sympathy | 1.87a | .79 | 2.60b | .89 | 2.67b | .94 | 1.72a | .72 |
| Self-Enhancement | 3.56a | .77 | 3.11b | .76 | 2.66c | .76 | 2.93b | .73 |
| Compliance | 2.74 | .84 | 2.81 | .72 | 2.75 | .73 | 2.70 | .78 |
Note. Values could range from 1 to 5; higher scores indicate higher social desirability, more sympathy, and stronger attributions. Cell means within a row not sharing a superscript differ significantly at p < .05 by Duncan's multiple range tests.
N = 722, n ranged from 156 to 207 per cell.
Next, the effects of target and direction of comparison on sympathy ratings were examined in a two-way ANOVA. Participants reported more sympathy for a discussant who publicly evaluated his or her intimate relationship in an enhancing fashion (M = 2.33) than with a discussant who made deprecating evaluations (M = 2.17), F(1, 718) = 6.29, p < .02. Target under evaluation did not yield a significant effect, F < 1, ns, but interacted significantly with direction of comparison, F(1, 718) = 175.41, p < .001. As shown in Table 4, partner-enhancing statements evoked more feelings of sympathy than partner-deprecating statements, whereas self-enhancement elicited less sympathy than self-deprecation.
The ANOVA's performed on the attribution ratings yielded, not surprisingly, a significant main effect of direction of comparison on self-enhancement attributions, F(1, 718) = 85.68, p < .001. The means showed that relative to the deprecating evaluation condition, enhancing evaluations were attributed more strongly to a desire of self-enhancement (Ms = 2.79 vs. 3.30). Finally, the predicted interaction of target under evaluation and direction of comparison was significant only for attributions to self-enhancement, F(1, 718) = 39.55, p < .001. As revealed in Table 4, self-enhancement was more strongly attributed to a motive to enhance the self than partner-enhancement, whereas the reverse was true in the deprecation conditions. No other main effects or interaction effects approached significance.
Supplemental analyses
One of the reasons that people may consider self-enhancing evaluations and partner-deprecating evaluations as more socially undesirable than partner-enhancing and self-deprecating evaluations, respectively, is that they felt an antipathy to the discussant in the former conditions. Put in other words, participants's ratings of sympathy for the discussant could conceivably explain why people consider both former evaluations as more socially undesirable than the both latter evaluations. Also, the reverse may be true, namely that participants's feelings of sympathy could have been influenced by their social desirability ratings. Social desirability, in fact, was highly correlated with the sympathy ratings, r(722) = .72, p < .001.
To determine whether participants' social desirability ratings did account for the effects on sympathy, a 2 (Target under Evaluation) by 2 (Direction of Comparison) analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) was performed with including sympathy as a covariate. Also, to investigate the reverse possibility, the foregoing ANCOVA was repeated treating social desirability as a covariate.8 Both analyses revealed that the main effects of direction of comparison and the interactive effects of target under evaluation and direction of comparison remained significant.
8. Before performing the analyses of covariance, preliminary analyses confirmed that the assumption of homogeneity of regression slopes was upheld.
The results of Study 4 support the prediction regarding the appropriateness of self-enhancing social comparison. Participants considered partner-enhancing comparisons as less socially inappropriate and such comparisons elicited less negative evaluations of the discussant than self-enhancing comparisons. In a similar vein, partner-deprecating was seen as more socially inappropriate than self-deprecating, and evaluating the partner in a denigrating fashion thus seems to elicit more disapproving reactions than self-deprecation. Indeed, the results of this study indicate that partner-deprecation and self-enhancement are negatively sanctioned because the person communicating such evaluations installs an antipathy in the observer. Also, additional analyses were performed to examine the alternative explanation that the effects on social appropriateness were due to antipathetic feelings for the discussant rather than to the experimental manipulations, and vice versa. However, no evidence for this was found. Finally, enhancing evaluations appeared to be attributed to a greater degree of self-enhancement motives than deprecating evaluations, and more so when the discussant evaluated the self instead of the intimate partner.
It should be noted, however, that one possible limitation of the results of Study 4 is that the computerized questionnaire as used by the Telepanel Foundation imposed certain restrictions on the length of the verbatim scenario and the limited number of items that assessed social desirability, which may not be sufficiently reliable to capture the hypothesized effects. Therefore, a second study was conducted to further corroborate and extend the findings of Study 4 and to meet the aforementioned limitations.
In Study 5 the set of scenarios was further developed and extended to again serve as the basis for varying the direction of comparison and the target under evaluation. Moreover, the measure of social desirability was expanded to include additional items. In addition, a measure of identification was added to the present study. It was anticipated that participants would identify more with an discussant who reveals partner-enhancing evaluations than with a self-enhancing discussant, whereas this pattern would be reversed if the discussant communicates self- and partner-deprecating characterizations.
Finally, in accordance with the paradigm that was employed in Chapter 2, namely a thought-listing task that induced participants to actively engage in cognitive downward social comparison, participants in the current study were likewise asked to actively evaluate the self or the partner in the same manner as the discussant whose statements are reproduced in an accompanying scenario. Where self-enhancing evaluations, relative to enhancing evaluations of the partner, are generally considered as more socially inappropriate, and where such evaluations seem to evoke more negative emotions on the side of recipients who find themselves in an unfavorable position, people asked to provide such self- or partner-evaluations might themselves experience a greater reticence to describe themselves than to describe the partner in an enhancing manner. Hence, it was expected that people would be able to generate more extensive partner-enhancing descriptions than self-enhancing evaluations. On the other hand, in view of the fact that partner-deprecating evaluations are generally appraised more negatively than deprecating self-evaluations, it was anticipated that people would be able to generate more extensive self-deprecating descriptions than partner-deprecating evaluations. To test the assumption, a thought-listing task invited participants to portray the self or partner in either an enhancing or deprecating manner (according to the experimental conditions).
Sample and participants
Participants were 64 undergraduates attending the University of Groningen (39 women, and 25 men). They were recruited for a study regarding "Partner and Relationship". The mean age of the sample was 20.0 years, with a range from 17 to 25 years (19.9 years for women, 20.2 years for men). Twenty-nine (45%) participants were, at the time of the study, involved in relationships (29 dating relationships, 5 cohabitating, none married). The average duration of relationships was 1.7 years (ranging from 2 months to 6.3 years; 2.1 years for women, .9 years for men). Participants were randomly assigned to one of the four experimental conditions and they were given a prospect of winning one of six 50-guilder gift coupons (approximately $30) for their participation.
Design and procedure
A 2 x 2 factorial design was used in this study. Two levels of Direction of Comparison (enhancing versus deprecating) and two levels of Target under Evaluation (self vs. partner) constituted between-participants factors. The dependent variables were the extent to which the verbal statements were considered as socially desirable, the extent to which participants felt sympathy for the discussant, the degree of identification with the discussant, and the attributions made for the discussant's communicative behavior.
Participants participated in what they thought was a study dealing with their opinions and their reactions to other people's public evaluation of their intimate relationship and their intimate partner. They completed the study privately and anonymously. The instructions to the participants were identical to those used in Study 4. All participants were informed that they would receive a brief fragment supposedly derived from a group discussion. They were asked to read the verbatim fragment very carefully as follows:
Last year, we conducted a study about Students and Their Relationships. Over 300 students from various branches of science participated in this study. During group sessions, participants discussed their experiences in intimate relationships. Below, you can read a short fragment from such a session, wherein one of the students evaluates the relationship. Please read the fragment carefully before answering the subsequent questions.
Next, on the same page, the scenario was presented. The following is the self-enhancing version of the fragment supposedly derived from a group discussion:
...in our relationship, I'm doing a lot of positive things (.....) I am really proud of myself as a partner (.....) Hm, when I look around, I'm very attractive (.....) compared to others, I believe that as a partner, I am doing better than others.
The scenario of the partner-enhancing fragment read:
...in our relationship, my partner is doing a lot of positive things (.....) I am really proud of my partner (.....) Hm, when I look around, my partner is very attractive (.....) compared to others, I believe that my partner is doing better than others.
In the deprecating conditions, the self-deprecating scenario was as follows:
...in our relationship, I'm doing a lot of negative things (.....) I am not really proud of myself as a partner (.....) Hm, when I look around, I'm not attractive (.....) compared to others, I believe that as a partner, I am doing worse than others.
Finally, the scenario of the partner-deprecating fragment read:
...in our relationship, my partner is doing a lot of negative things (.....) I am not really proud of my partner (.....) Hm, when I look around, my partner is not attractive (.....) compared to others, I believe that my partner is doing worse than others.
Next, participants completed the measures of social desirability, sympathy, identification and the two attribution scales. Finally, participants who were at the time of the study involved in an ongoing relationship were asked to answer an additional question. They were asked to imitate the discussant and act accordingly, by writing down an relationship-evaluation in the same manner as the discussant did in the scenario. Finally, participants were debriefed, thanked for their participation, and dismissed.
Dependent variables
Social desirability of the verbal statements was measured by six items (including the two items used in Study 4) that required participants to indicate the extent to which they expected most people would do and what they believed what ought to be done in the same situation. Hence, participants were asked on 5-point scales "Do you consider the statements as...," completed with the following adjectives: normal, usual, appropriate, desirable, reprehensible, and remarkable, with the last two adjectives reverse scored. The scales ranged from I disagree strongly to I agree strongly. The items were found to load on a single factor and all ratings were thus averaged to a single index of social desirability, with the higher score indicating higher social desirability. The internal consistency of the composite score, as measured by Cronbach's coefficient alpha, was calculated to be .85.
The measure of sympathy was identical to that used in Study 4. Identification was measured by asking participants the following two questions: "Do you recognize yourself in the discussant?" and "Do you resemble the discussant?," both scores on 5-point scales ranging from ranging from Not at all to Very much. The two items obtained a correlation of .70 and were averaged to form one variable, so that higher scores indicated more identification with the discussant.
Each attribution measure was expanded to include some additional items measuring the attributions that were made for the enhancing or deprecating self- and partner-evaluations. The measures included, among others, the items used in Study 4. The measure of self-enhancement attribution was extended to a 6-items measure by the addition of two items (Cronbach's alpha = .88). The additional items asked whether participants believed that the discussant made his statements (a) to allow the self to appear in the best possible light, and (b) to boast about the self. The compliance attribution was expanded by adding two items asking participants whether they believed that the discussant made his statements (a) to comply with the group norm, and (b) because the discussant expected others to do the same (Cronbach's alpha = .83). The items were answered on 5-point scales ranging from Not at all to Very much.
Finally, having completed the list of questions, participants who at the time of the study were involved in an ongoing relationship, were asked to answer an additional question. They were told that the experimenter wanted them to imitate the discussant by portraying themselves (as a partner) or their partner in a similar way. Thus, in accordance with the experimental condition to which participants were assigned they were asked to generate as many as possible enhancing or deprecating qualities of themself or their intimate partner. Participants who were not dating anyone at the time of the study were not presented with this question.
The ratings of social desirability, sympathy, identification, and the two forms of attributions were submitted to two-way (Target under Evaluation X Direction of Comparison) analyses of variance (ANOVAs). Means and standard deviations in all conditions are displayed in Table 5.
The ANOVA on the social desirability ratings yielded a significant main effect of direction of comparison such that public evaluations in a enhancing manner were seen as less undesirable (M = 3.00) than deprecating evaluation (M = 2.11), F(1, 60) = 40.21, p < .001. Furthermore, the ANOVA revealed a marginal tendency to consider statements about the partner as less undesirable (M = 2.68) than statements about the self (M = 2.43), F(1, 60) = 3.04, p < .09. However, as in Study 4, these main effects were qualified again by the predicted target under evaluation x direction of comparison interaction, F(1, 60) = 9.93, p < .01. As is evident in Table 5, the interaction arose because participants evaluated enhancing statements as less undesirable than deprecating statements, but particularly so when the target of evaluation was the partner.
TABLE 5
Means and standard deviations of social desirability, sympathy,
identification, attributions, and number of qualities
as a function of direction and target in study 5
| Enhancing | Deprecating | |||||||
| Self | Partner | Self | Partner | |||||
| Dependent Variables | M | SD | M | SD | M | SD | M | SD |
| Social Desirability | 2.66a | .67 | 3.34b | .58 | 2.21c | .47 | 2.01c | .51 |
| Sympathy | 2.31a | .79 | 2.88b | .72 | 3.31b | .60 | 2.31a | .70 |
| Identification | 2.34ab | .65 | 2.63b | .87 | 1.97ac | .64 | 1.56c | .60 |
| Self-Enhancement | 3.38a | .68 | 3.09a | .79 | 2.17b | .33 | 2.49b | .57 |
| Compliance | 2.50 | .66 | 2.70 | .77 | 2.33 | .69 | 2.30 | .55 |
| Number of Qualities | 6.38a | 3.02 | 10.00b | 4.05 | 5.25a | 1.67 | 3.29a | 2.87 |
Note. Values could range from 1 to 5 (except for number of qualities); higher scores indicate higher social desirability, more sympathy and identification, and stronger attributions. Cell means within a row not sharing a superscript differ significantly at p < .05 by Duncan's multiple range tests.
N = 64 participants, n is 16 per cell, except for the latter variable, N = 29, n ranged from 6 to 8 per cell.
Further, ANOVA on the sympathy ratings yielded neither a significant main effect of direction of comparison, nor a main effect of target under evaluation did not yield significant effects on sympathy, F < 1.53, ns. However, a significant interaction effect was found, F(1, 60) = 19.49, p < .001. Inspection of Table 5 reveals that self-enhancing statements evoked less sympathy than partner-enhancement, whereas the reverse was true for self- and partner-deprecation.
Subsequently, ANOVA on the identification levels revealed a marginally significant main effect of direction of comparison, F(1, 60) = 3.87, p < .06, indicating that participants identified more with an enhancing than with a deprecating discussant (Ms = 2.48 vs. 1.77). Target under evaluation did not yield significant effects on identification, F < 1, ns. However, a marginally significant interactive effect was found on identification, F(1, 60) = 3.87, p = .05. As can be seen from the data in Table 5, the identification levels showed a similar, though somewhat weaker, pattern of results as was observed with participants sympathy ratings. That is, participants identified less with a self-enhancing discussant than with a partner-enhancing discussant, whereas the reverse was true for self- and partner-deprecating discussants.
The ANOVA's performed on both attribution ratings yielded again a significant main effect of direction of comparison on self-enhancement attributions, F(1, 60) = 34.37, p < .001, and a marginally significant effect on the compliance attribution, F(1, 60) = 2.96, p < .10. Condition means showed that relative to the deprecating evaluation condition, enhancing evaluations were attributed more strongly to self-enhancement (Ms = 2.33 vs. 3.23) and to compliance (Ms = 2.31 vs. 2.60). Finally, the predicted interaction of target under evaluation and direction of comparison was marginally significant for the self-enhancement attributions, F(1, 60) = 3.82, p < .06. As can be seen from Table 5, self-enhancement was more strongly attributed to a motive to enhance than partner-enhancement, whereas the reverse was true in the deprecation conditions. No other main effects or interaction effects approached statistical significance.
An ANOVA of the number of qualities revealed a main effect of direction of comparison, F(1, 25) = 11.04, p < .01, whereas no significant effect was found of target under evaluation, F < 1, ns. Thus, regardless of whether the participants evaluated themself or their intimate partner, those in the enhancing conditions generated a greater number of qualities (M = 7.93) than those in the deprecating conditions (M = 4.33). This main effect was modified by a significant interaction between direction of comparison and target under evaluation, F(1, 25) = 6.50, p < .02. As Table 5 shows, Duncan's multiple range tests indicated that participants generated more extensive descriptions when they described their partner in an enhancing manner than when they provided self-enhancing descriptions. In contrast with the expectation, there were no significant differences between the number of qualities in the self- and partner-deprecating conditions, and neither did the number of qualities in the self-enhancing condition differ from both deprecating conditions.
Supplemental analyses
As noted earlier, participants's ratings of social desirability could have been influenced by their levels of sympathy or identification, and vice versa. That is, if the effects of target under evaluation and type of evaluation on the social desirability ratings are mediated by participants' feelings of sympathy for the discussant or identification with the discussant, the effects on social desirability should remain reliable even when the effects of their ratings of sympathy and identification are statistically removed from the ratings of social desirability, and vice versa. Both ratings were related with social desirability, r(64) = .33, p < .01, and r(64) = .70, p < .001, respectively.
To explore whether the effects on social desirability were mediated by sympathy or identification, 2 (Target under Evaluation) by 2 (Direction of Comparison) ANCOVAs were performed after adding sympathy or identification as a covariate.9 First, controlling for sympathy did eliminate the interactive effect, F(1, 59) = 1.18, ns, whereas the main effect of direction of comparison on social desirability remained significant, F(1, 59) = 59.74, p < .001. The absence of a significant interaction, the marginally significant main effect of direction of comparison on sympathy notwithstanding, suggests that the effects of the experimental manipulations on the social desirability ratings were mediated by feelings of sympathy for the discussant. Secondly, the ANCOVA on social desirability was repeated after adding identification as a covariate (see footnote 3) revealed a somewhat different pattern. Both the main effect of direction of comparison on social desirability remained, F(1, 59) = 16.01, p < .001, as did the two-way interaction, F(1, 59) = 5.62, p < .03.
Also, ANCOVAs on the sympathy and identification ratings were conducted treating desirability as a covariate (see footnote 3) to investigate the reverse possibility, namely that the effects on sympathy and identification are mediated by participants' perceptions of social desirability of the verbal statements. The interactive effect of direction of comparison and target under evaluation remained statistical significant after partialling out the desirability variable, F(1, 59) = 9.41, p < .01. In contrast, an ANCOVA on participants' identification ratings with desirability as a covariate failed to find any effect, Fs < 1, ns. In short, these findings suggest that the interactive effect between direction of comparison and target under evaluation on social desirability was mediated by feelings of sympathy.
9. Before performing the analyses of covariance, preliminary analyses confirmed that the assumption of homogeneity of regression slopes was upheld.
The pattern of findings obtained in Study 5 thus supported the results of Study 4. That is, Study 5 replicated and supplemented the measures as used in Study 4 with measures that were expanded with additional items along with the addition of a measure of identification with the discussant. As in Study 4, an interaction of direction of comparison and target under evaluation was found: Consistent with the main findings of Study 4, it was seen as less socially inappropriate and undesirable to describe one's own intimate partner in an enhancing fashion than to describe oneself (as a partner) as positive and superior to others, whereas a partner-deprecating evaluation was rated as more socially inappropriate and undesirable than a self-denigrating evaluation.
In addition, Study 5 revealed that the differences in social desirability ratings were mediated by the degree of sympathy that people felt for the discussant. This finding suggests that perceptions of social desirability are driven by participants' feelings of sympathy for the discussant. Consequently, in response to the discussant's descriptions of the self or the partner individuals experience greater or lesser feelings of sympathy for the discussant which, in turn, will affect perceptions of social desirability of the self- and partner-evaluations. This was not the case for identification; the effects on identification appeared to be mediated by perceptions of social desirability, thus indicating that the effects on feelings of identification were mediated by individuals' perceptions of social desirability of the verbal statements.
Furthermore, participants in Study 5 were induced to evaluate the self or the partner in either an enhancing or in a deprecating way. As predicted, 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 a like manner. This finding makes sense, if, as suggested earlier, partner-enhancement is considered as more socially acceptable than self-enhancement and people act accordingly. Assuming that this is the case, people may anticipate possible negative reactions and may feel a greater reluctance to evaluate themselves in an enhancing fashion than to engage in partner-enhancing evaluations. An alternative explanation for the fact that people were better able to engage in partner- rather than in self-enhancing evaluations may be a differential cognitive availability of information about the self or the partner. Individuals who are involved in an ongoing close relationship probably have available to them more extensive positive mental models of their partner than of themselves (as a partner). Thus, it seems likely that this differential availability can affect the evaluation process of the partner or the self.
The first two studies were therefore successful in showing individuals' reactions to others' self- and partner-evaluations in either enhancing or deprecating terms. However, these studies did not investigate whether it was explicit social comparison that accounted for the effects on social desirability and recipients' feelings or the fact that the discussant made boastful statements regardless of whether or not he or she engaged in social comparison. That is, the former studies did not examine the differential effects of comparative (i.e. with explicit references to social comparison) and noncomparative evaluations (i.e. without references to social comparison), a limitation that will be remedied in the next study. Study 6 was designed to confirm and extend the results of Studies 4 and 5 under the same carefully designed experimental conditions, manipulating systematically the comparative nature of self- and partner-enhancing evaluations and looking at a wider variety of possible responses in order to obtain further evidence for the predicted reactions to such downward social comparisons.
Armed with evidence for the validity of the assumptions regarding the appropriateness of self-enhancement and partner-enhancement, a third study was designed to explore the responses to downward social comparison of the self and the close partner with others. Specifically, Study 6 addressed the question of how recipients respond to comparative and noncomparative evaluations. The major question was whether comparative and noncomparative evaluations of the self and the partner would influence individuals' social desirability ratings of such evaluations and their feelings about the discussant. Further, it was examined whether participants felt annoyed whilst reading statements containing explicit reference to social comparison (cf. Brickman & Bulman, 1977). It was expected that people would consider comparative statements as more socially undesirable than noncomparative statements, and that this difference would be more pronounced when the evaluations concerned the self rather than the partner. Accordingly, comparative evaluations would evoke fewer positive feelings (i.e., sympathy) and more negative feelings (i.e., annoyance) than noncomparative evaluations, and more so when it concerned self-evaluations rather than the partner-evaluations.
Furthermore, it was examined whether participants would suppose the discussant to be more satisfied with his or her relationship when the statements included evaluations of positive qualities in a comparative (i.e., self- or partner-enhancing social comparison) rather than in a noncomparative manner. In line with the findings presented in Chapter 2, it was expected that someone who overtly evaluates the self or the partner in an enhancing fashion would be expected to experience more relationship satisfaction than someone who exhibits evaluations in a noncomparative manner. Furthermore, in view of the fact that partner-enhancement is considered as more desirable and elicits more positive feelings for the discussant than self-enhancement, it was anticipated that this effect would be more pronounced where it concerned partner-enhancing rather than self-enhancing evaluations.
Finally, Study 6 explored whether the reactions to comparative evaluations would be moderated by individual differences in recipients' orientation toward social comparison (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999). As outlined earlier in the current thesis, the concept of social comparison referred to the personality disposition of individuals who are strongly oriented to social comparison, who are quite attentive to their own status relative to others, and who are interested in information regarding others' thoughts and behaviors in similar circumstances. Although social comparison was not related to social desirability, various studies have showed that social comparison orientation was positively related to the selection and the attention to comparison information, as well as to the affective consequences of such comparisons (Van der Zee et al., 1998; see also Gibbons & Buunk, 1999). Thus, it seems likely that an individual who observes someone else engaging in explicit and overt social comparison, and who is high in social comparison orientation may be particularly attentive to comparison activities, because the observer might reason that he or she is involved in the comparison as one of the comparison targets. Moreover, such an observation may in turn even prompt the observer to also engage in social comparison. Thus, relative to observers low in social comparison orientation, those high in social comparison orientation may regard explicit references to social comparison as more socially undesirable and may respond more negatively when someone openly contrasts, for instance, the self as a partner or the intimate partner, with others worse off. Therefore, it was predicted 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, in particular when the statements refer to the self rather than to the intimate partner.
Sample and participants
Participants were 166 undergraduates attending the University of Groningen (118 women, and 48 men). The mean age of the sample was 19.8 years, with a range from 18 to 25 years (19.6 years for women, 20.1 years for men). Seventy-eight (47%) participants at the time of the study were involved in relationships (69 dating relationships, 9 cohabitating, none married). The average duration of relationships was 1.8 years (ranging from 1 month to 7.2 years; 2.1 years for women, 11 months for men). All participants were paid 5 Dutch guilders (approximately $3 in U.S. currency) for their participation in the study.
Design and procedure
A 2 x 2 factorial design was used in this study. Two levels of Target under Evaluation (self vs. partner) and two levels of Type of Evaluation (comparative versus noncomparative) constituted between-participants factors. Likewise, the experimental procedure was similar to that used in Study 5, with the following exceptions. A new set of four scenarios were developed to serve as the basis for varying the target under evaluation and the type of evaluation. In the comparative self-evaluation condition, the participants read the following fragment:
I'm proud of myself as a partner (.....) Hm, well, when I look around, I feel that I'm doing many things better than most others. I listen to my partner much better and not only dare to talk to my partner about everything, but am also more honest with my partner than others are with their partners (.....) compared to others, I have less difficulty accepting my partner and give the other sufficient room to go one's own way (.....) also, I share many interests with my partner and have the same sense of humor (.....) So, yes, I believe that as a partner, I am doing better than others.
In the comparative partner-evaluation condition, references to the self were replaced by references to the partner. The participants read the following statements:
I'm proud of my partner (.....) Hm, well, when I look around, I feel that my partner is doing many things better than most others. My partner listens to me much better and not only dares to talk to me about everything, but is also more honest with me than others are with their partners (.....) compared to others, my partner has less difficulty accepting me and gives me sufficient room to go my own way (.....) also, my partner shares many interests with me and has the same sense of humor (.....) So, yes, I believe that my partner is doing better than others.
In the noncomparative conditions, by contrast, references to social comparison were omitted. Thus, in the noncomparative self-evaluation condition participants read the following fragment:
I'm proud of myself as a partner (.....) Hm, well, when I think about it, I feel that I'm doing many things well. I listen to my partner very well and not only dare to talk to my partner about everything, but am also very honest with my partner (.....) I have no difficulty accepting my partner and give the other sufficient room to go one's own way (.....) also, I share many interests with my partner and have the same sense of humor (.....) So, yes, I believe that as a partner, I am doing good.
In the noncomparative partner-evaluation condition, reference to the self were changed to be referencing to the partner. In this manner, the scenario in this condition stated:
I'm proud of my partner (.....) Hm, well, when I think about it, I feel that my partner is doing many things well. My partner listens to me my very well and not only dares to talk to me about everything, but is also very honest with me (.....) my partner has no difficulty accepting me and gives me sufficient room to go my own way (.....) also, my partner shares many interests with me and has the same sense of humor (.....) So, yes, I believe that my partner is doing good.
As in Study 5, the participants were informed that after carefully reading the statements as reproduced in the verbatim fragment they were to continue with the questions regarding the social desirability of the statements. In Study 6, participants were asked to answer additional questions that were designed to assess how they felt after reading the statements and to assess the supposed extent of relationship satisfaction that the discussant may experience.
Social comparison orientation10 was measured by the INCOM, an 11-item scale that was developed by Gibbons and Buunk (1999; see also Study 2 of the current dissertation for a more thorough discussion). The items were measured using 5-point scales, ranging from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5). All ratings were averaged to form a single index, resulting in a INCOM-score with the higher score indicating stronger social comparison orientation (Cronbach's alpha = .80).
Finally, when all the data were collected, participants were thoroughly informed about the purpose of the study, and after being paid they were thanked for their assistance and dismissed.
Dependent Variables
The items on the social desirability measure were taken from the questionnaire used in Study 5 (Cronbach's alpha = .84). Also, the assessment of sympathy was identical to that used in Studies 4 and 5. In addition, participants were asked on a 5-point scale whether they experienced feelings of annoyance about the discussant's statements. The scale ranged from Not at all to Very much.
Furthermore, participants were asked to indicate the extent to which the discussant would be satisfied with his or her relationship. They did have the opportunity to evaluate the presumed relationship satisfaction on a 10-point scale ranging from 1 (extremely unsatisfied) to 10 (extremely satisfied).
10. It can be supposed that participants might suspect the true purpose of the study and would be less candid if they first answered questions about social comparison than if the social comparison items are answered after the assessment of the dependent variables. To test this possibility, an order manipulation was employed. Half of the participants first completed the INCOM scale followed by the scenario and the successive items of the dependent variables, whereas for the remaining half of the participants the order was reversed. Analyses revealed that order did not qualify any of the reported effects in the current study, and will thus not be further considered in the analyses. Put in other words, the assessment of individuals' orientation toward social comparison did not affect their reactions to someone else's social comparison activities.
First, it was explored whether social comparison orientation moderated any of the expected effects of target under evaluation and evaluation. To do this, hierarchical moderated regression analyses were conducted to test the extent to which orientation toward social comparison interacted with the dummy coded experimental variables. Social comparison orientation did not yield significant main effects, neither did it qualify any of the reported effects in the current study. Thus, individual differences in orientation toward social comparison was not included in further analyses.
Next, the dependent variables were submitted to a two-way (Target under Evaluation X Type of Evaluation) analyses of variance (ANOVAs). Means and standard deviations for all measures are presented in Table 6. First, the ANOVA on social desirability revealed a significant main effect for target under evaluation and a significant main effect for type of evaluation. Participants judged statements about the partner less undesirable (M = 3.60) than statements about the self (M = 3.07), F(1, 162) = 26.78, p < .001. As expected, noncomparative evaluations were seen as less undesirable (M = 3.59) than comparative evaluations (M = 3.05), F(1, 162) = 29.10, p < .001. These main effects were qualified by the predicted Target x Evaluation interaction, F(1, 162) = 5.64, p < .02. As can be seen in Table 6, the interaction arose because participants evaluated comparative statements as less desirable than absolute statements, and more so when the statements focused on superior qualities of the self.
The ANOVA on feelings of sympathy indicated that partner-evaluations evoked more sympathy (M = 3.47) than self-evaluations (M = 2.67), F(1, 162) = 24.32, p < .001. Type of evaluation by the discussant also significantly affected participants' sympathy for the discussant, F(1, 162) = 15.51, p < .001, with participants who had read noncomparative evaluations felt more sympathy for the discussant (M = 3.38) than participants who had read comparative evaluations (M = 2.73). There was a significant interaction between target and evaluation, F(1, 162) = 10.74, p < .001. As can be seen in Table 6, participants expressed the least sympathy for the discussant who provided statements that emphasized the superiority of the self. Duncan's multiple range tests between the remaining three condition revealed no significant differences, indicating that someone who describes the partner in comparative or in noncomparative terms, and someone who engages in noncomparative self-evaluations can expect the same amount of sympathy for his or her evaluations.
As expected, a reverse pattern of results was found for feelings of annoyance. A main effect of target of evaluation was observed, F(1, 162) = 17.47, p < .001, indicating that partner-evaluations evoked less annoyance (M = 1.89) than self-evaluations (M = 2.56). Also, the main effect of type of evaluation was significant, F(1, 162) = 10.34, p < .01, revealing that participants who read noncomparative evaluations felt less annoyed about the statements (M = 1.98) than those who read comparative evaluations (M = 2.51). Although the Duncan's multiple range tests on the levels of sympathy and annoyance revealed an identical pattern of results (see Table 6), the analysis of variance failed to support the interaction effect between target and evaluation, F(1, 162) = 2.34, p = .13. Notwithstanding the absence of a significant interaction effect on the annoyance ratings, the overall pattern of results suggests that especially self-enhancing evaluations of the self as a partner elicited the least positive feelings for the discussant, whereas the remaining types of evaluations yielded similar levels of sympathy and annoyance.
TABLE 6
Means and standard deviations of social desirability,
sympathy, annoyance, and relationship satisfaction
as a function of evaluation and target in study 6
| Noncomparitive | Comparitive | |||||||
| Self | Partner | Self | Partner | |||||
| Dependent Variables | M | SD | M | SD | M | SD | M | SD |
| Social Desirability | 3.45a | .64 | 3.73c | .62 | 2.70b | .65 | 3.44a | .60 |
| Sympathy | 3.24a | .93 | 3.51a | 1.20 | 2.11b | .88 | 3.41a | 1.00 |
| Annoyance | 2.19a | .89 | 1.77a | 1.04 | 2.93b | 1.08 | 2.03a | 1.02 |
| Satisfaction | 8.01a | 1.12 | 7.34bc | 1.35 | 7.35b | 1.48 | 7.95ac | 1.49 |
Note. Values could range from 1 to 5 for social desirability and sympathy levels, and for relationship satisfaction from 1 to 10; higher scores indicate higher social desirability, more sympathy, and greater satisfaction. Cell means within a row not sharing a superscript differ significantly at p < .05 by Duncan's multiple range tests.
N = 166 participants, n ranged from 38 to 43 per cell.
Further, an ANOVA on the level of presumed relationship satisfaction yielded a significant interaction between target and evaluation, F(1, 60) = 3.82, p < .06. As Table 6 reveals, this interaction largely derives from participants' tendency to rate the relationship of someone evaluating the self (as a partner) in comparative terms as less satisfying than the relationship of a person who provides self-evaluations in a noncomparative manner, whereas the reverse is true when someone evaluates the partner. Thus, the effects of social comparison on the perceived quality of the relationship are believed to be most beneficial when someone perceives his or her intimate partner as better the others, whereas self-enhancing social comparison is to a lesser extent associated relationship satisfaction. No other effects approached statistical significance.
Supplemental analyses
As in Studies 4 and 5, it was examined whether the obtained effects on social desirability were mediated by participants' sympathy for the discussant or by their feelings of annoyance about the discussant's statements, and vice versa. Participants social desirability ratings were highly correlated with their levels of sympathy and annoyance, rs = .67, and -.71, respectively, both ps < .001. Accordingly, four 2 (Target under Evaluation) by 2 (Type of Evaluation) ANCOVAs were conducted to determine whether the effects remained significant when the variance explained by the sympathy and annoyance ratings was partialled out.
The first analysis covaried participants' scores on the sympathy index out of the scores on the social desirability index.11 When the effects of sympathy were statistically removed, the main effects of target under evaluation and type of evaluation still emerged, F(1, 161) = 7.40, p < .01, and F(1, 161) = 13.37, p < .001, respectively. However, the interactive effect was no longer reliable, F < 1, ns. The second ANCOVA covaried participants' scores on the social desirability index out of their scores on the sympathy index (see footnote 5). In contrast with the main effect of evaluation, the main effects of target under evaluation remained, F(1, 161) = 5.39, p < .03, as did the interaction, F(1, 161) = 5.31, p < .03. As was the case in Study 5, these findings also suggest it were feelings of sympathy that mediated the interactive effect on social desirability.
We next examined whether feelings of annoyance did account for the effects on social desirability by conducting an analysis after adding annoyance scores as a covariate (see footnote 5). Reliable effects for target under evaluation and type of evaluation still emerged, F(1, 161) = 9.36, p < .01, and F(1, 161) = 17.49, p < .001, respectively. In this analysis, the interactive effect was marginally significant, F < 3.25, p = .07. In a fourth ANCOVA, participants' scores on the social desirability index were covaried with their scores on the annoyance index (see footnote 5). In contrast to the aforementioned ANOVA on the annoyance scores, no significant effect effects emerged, Fs < 1, ns. Hence, perceptions of social appropriateness and desirability appeared to mediate the effects of target and evaluation on feelings of annoyance.
11. Before performing the analyses of covariance, preliminary analyses confirmed that the assumption of homogeneity of regression slopes was upheld.
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.
12. Presumed relationship satisfaction correlated significantly with the sympathy ratings, r(166) = .33, p < .001. A 2 (Target under Evaluation) by 2 (Type of Evaluation) ANCOVA was conducted to determine whether the effects on presumed relationship satisfaction remained significant when the variance explained by the sympathy rating was partialled out. The interactive effect of target under evaluation and type of evaluation was marginally significant, F(1, 161) = 3.88, p = .51.
Although some researchers (e.g., Brickman & Bulman, 1977; Hemphill & Lehman, 1991; Wills, 1981, 1991b) have suggested the potential existence of normative sanctions against engaging in social comparison, past social comparison research has devoted little attention to the reactions to publicly conveyed social comparisons. In an attempt to approach this void, three studies were reported in the current chapter that presented participants with a short fragment supposedly derived from a group discussion wherein someone publicly evaluated his or her close relationship in either an enhancing and a deprecating (Studies 4 and 5), or in a comparative and a noncomparative (Study 6) manner. The three studies document the reactions to others engaging in downward social comparison by demonstrating that, relative to self-enhancement, people seem to consider others' partner-enhancement more socially desirable. Furthermore, someone who publicly evaluates his or her partner in a partner-enhancing fashion evoked in the observers of such downward comparison activities more positive and less negative feelings than someone displaying self-enhancing downward comparisons. In contrast, people expressed less appreciation for others' partner-deprecating evaluations than for others evaluating the self as a partner in a denigrating manner.
Even though the data in Studies 5 and 6 are correlational and cannot be used to establish causal relations between the dependent variables, the pattern of results suggests that the differences may be mediated by feelings of sympathy for the discussant. That is, the data suggest that when people read the statements, they are for instance, confronted with someone who publicly boasts that his or her own relationship is superior to that of others, which may imply an inferior standing of the relationship of others. In response to these boastful statements, observers of such statements may feel criticized and feel antipathy for the discussant. This is in line with Brickman and Bulman's (1977; see also Smith, 1994; Tesser et al., 1988) line of reasoning, namely that people might suffer by comparison when someone else is claiming his or her own superiority over other people, thereby implying that those others are regarded as less fortunate due to their inferior status. Further, the person of inferior status may feel bad about him- or herself, and may develop negative feelings for the superior person. Hence, Brickman and Bulman (1977, p. 153) suggested that "norms grow up that restrict or prohibit social comparison, even at the cost of depriving people of interesting and potentially valuable information," and that little sympathy will be felt for someone who violates this norm, which is typically the case when somebody publicly engages in self-enhancing social comparison.
The findings of the current studies may help us understand more clearly why some individuals state that they do not engage in social comparison. As noted previously, participants in social comparison research frequently display a resistance to questions that ask them to evaluate themselves in comparison to other persons. The current series of studies suggest that one possible reason for this resistance may be that people anticipate potential disapproval of their social comparison activities by those others who are involved in the process of comparison, especially when the social comparison implies that those others are worse off. Another line of reasoning assumes that people admit their social comparison activities with reserve due to individual differences in orientation toward social comparison. In an extensive research program on the personality disposition to engage in social comparison, Gibbons and Buunk (1999) demonstrated that this disposition was associated with a variety of social comparison behaviors. However, in Study 6, individuals' reactions to someone else engaging in social comparison were not moderated by individual differences in recipients' orientation toward social comparison. Apparently, individuals' orientation toward social comparison do not affect their response to social comparison activities of other people. In Chapter 2, a series of studies is reported which examined whether the consequences of cognitive downward comparison was moderated by social comparison orientation. In two studies, participants were not passive recipients of social comparison information, but were induced to actively engage in social comparison themselves.
In conclusion, the findings reported here suggest that presenting one's partner in a favorable manner may prove a relatively acceptable and effective way to enhance and maintain a positive image of the self, the partner, and the relationship. That is, people's public image is better off when they state that they engage in partner, rather than in self-enhancement, especially when they take the opportunity to make social comparisons to worse-off others. As researchers continue to examine the ways in which people engage in social comparison, future research will need to explore the ways in which research on social comparison is impeded by individuals' reluctance to provide accounts of their social comparison activities.
The research effort in the present thesis has focused on tracing the possibly mixed blessing of downward social comparison in the domain of close relationships. The goal of the current research was twofold: It was examined whether cognitive downward comparison might have positive consequences for the perceived quality of the relationship on the one hand, and on the other hand whether individuals respond negatively to someone who overly engages in downward social comparison.
The six experimental studies reported in this thesis sought to explore the impact of cognitive downward comparison on individuals' psychological well-being as well as individuals' responses to others who overtly display downward comparison behavior. More specifically, it was examined whether a higher perceived relationship quality will result from inducing individuals to engage in cognitive downward social comparison on the one hand, whereas observers of downward comparison activities might respond negatively when someone else exhibits such comparisons publicly. Furthermore, the current research explored the extent to which relational discontent moderated the positive consequences of cognitive downward social comparison for the evaluation of the quality of one's relationship. In addition, the role of individual differences in social comparison orientation was explored by examining the extent to which the positive impact of cognitive downward social comparison and the negative responses to overt downward comparison were affected by individuals' tendency to compare themselves in general to others.
As noted previously, individuals may feel better about their own situation and their subjective well being may be enhanced through comparisons of themselves with other people who are less fortunate than themselves. Wills (1987; see also Taylor et al., 1983) discussed several cognitive mechanisms that serve the purpose of making people feel comparatively fortunate. Although such downward comparisons may be achieved in various ways, downward comparisons often consist of a cognitive process in which individuals construct downward comparison targets, or derogate others' good abilities and personal attributes (cf. Wills, 1987). Yet, the effects of cognitive downward comparison on individuals' well-being have scarcely been studied in the domain of close relationships (see for recent exceptions, Buunk, 1996, 1998; Buunk & Van den Eijnden, 1997). Therefore, the present thesis has attempted to clarify the consequences of relationship-enhancing downward comparisons for individuals' perceived quality of the relationship. It was assumed that those engaging in cognitive downward comparison may count their blessings in that such comparisons might positively affect the evaluation of their own relationship.
This is not to say that downward comparison will necessarily be a blessing, however. Concurrent with the possibly positive consequences of cognitive downward comparison for individuals' psychological well-being, individuals engaging with little reluctance in overt downward social comparison activities may evoke a negative reaction on the part of the individuals who observe such social comparison behavior. Therefore, individuals may even arrange matters so that their comparisons are made in a private (i.e. cognitive) and implicit way to avoid violating "a fundamental rule of adult social life by making explicit comparison" (Wills, 1981, p. 265). These observations have led several theorists to propose that social comparison in general, and downward social comparison in particular, is viewed as socially undesirable, although this claim has as yet, little evidence to support it. The impact of other causes for the reluctance to acknowledge social comparisons, such as a lack of awareness or problems in selectivity, recall, and aggregation, have been suggested by other theorists (cf. Wood, 1996). All in all, it seems likely that a hesitancy to report on downward social comparison behavior might hamper adequate research on social comparison. If this proves to be the case, it seems important to examine whether downward social comparisons are considered as socially undesirable and whether such comparisons evoke negative responses on the part of those who observe such comparison behavior. Hence, the present work intended to shed more light on the reluctance issue by examining the possible negative reactions that may be provoked by someone else who openly engages in downward social comparison.
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.
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).
All in all, the experimental studies presented in the present thesis support the argument that the consequences of downward comparison amount to a mixed blessing. On the one hand, when someone engages in downward comparison, he or she may feel better about his or her own situation. In particular when a relationship partner is subject to relational discontent, downward comparison appears to alleviate his or her condition if that individual also possesses a strong personality disposition to engage in social comparison. However, the other side of the coin is that such an evaluation is made at the expense of other people who are worse-off. In other words, the evaluator profits by the social comparison activities because it may provide him or her with a superior status of someone who lives a relatively successful life, whereas the inferior comparison targets are in fact considered as individuals whose lives are less enjoyable and less successful. Self-enhancers especially, who engage in overt downward social comparison behavior seem to run a risk of offending others which, in turn, may turn the tide against the self-enhancers as those others develop an antipathy for the evaluator through which future social interaction could be frustrated.
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Dit proefschrift beoogt een bijdrage te leveren aan het onderzoek naar sociale vergelijking in intieme relaties. In het eerste, inleidende hoofdstuk worden de theoretische achtergronden van sociale vergelijking in het algemeen, en neerwaartse sociale vergelijking in het bijzonder beschreven. Uit deze inleiding komt naar voren dat neerwaartse sociale vergelijking niet onder alle omstandigheden een "zegen" lijkt te zijn en dat dergelijke vergelijkingen naast positieve ook negatieve consequenties kunnen hebben. In Hoofdstuk 1 worden enkele onderzoeksvragen geformuleerd die in de Hoofdstukken 2 en 3 nader worden uitgewerkt en empirisch worden getoetst. Hoofdstuk 2 doet verslag van drie experimentele onderzoeken waarin is onderzocht in hoeverre vergelijking van de eigen relatie met de relatie van anderen een positief effect kan hebben op de waargenomen kwaliteit van de eigen relatie. De keerzijde van de medaille wordt onderzocht in Hoofdstuk 3. In dit hoofdstuk worden drie experimentele onderzoeken gerapporteerd naar de mogelijke negatieve reacties van anderen die publiekelijk uitspraken doen over hun eigen neerwaartse vergelijkingsactiviteiten. In Hoofdstuk 4 worden de onderzoeksresultaten samengevat en wordt hun onderlinge samenhang besproken.
Een belangrijk uitgangspunt in dit proefschrift is Wills' (1981) neerwaartse vergelijkingstheorie waarin wordt verondersteld dat mensen een bedreiging van hun welbevinden tegen kunnen gaan door zich te vergelijken met anderen die er slechter aan toe zijn dan zijzelf. Dit kan een passief proces zijn waarin mensen informatie krijgen aangeboden, bijvoorbeeld door berichten in de media over anderen die in slechtere situaties verkeren dan zijzelf, of doordat zij anderen ontmoeten die minder goed af zijn dan zijzelf. Neerwaartse sociale vergelijking kan daarentegen ook bestaan uit een actief proces waarin mensen bijvoorbeeld cognitief een neerwaartse vergelijkingsander construeren of afbreuk doen aan de prestaties of het niveau van capaciteiten van anderen.
Ook binnen het domein van intieme relaties lijkt neerwaartse sociale vergelijking een belangrijke rol te spelen. Zo zijn mensen in het algemeen geneigd hun intieme partner als gunstiger te beoordelen dan anderen, en wordt de partner soms zelfs als nog positiever beoordeeld dan de eigen persoon. Daarnaast is men geneigd de eigen relatie gunstiger te beoordelen dan de relatie van anderen en beschouwt men over het algemeen de opbrengsten van het eigen huwelijk als beter dan die van vergelijkbare anderen. Doorgaans blijkt er een positief verband te bestaan tussen relatietevredenheid en de perceptie dat de eigen intieme relatie over het algemeen beter is dan die van anderen, hoewel het hier voornamelijk correlationele evidentie betreft en er betrekkelijk weinig bekend is over de effecten van sociale vergelijking op de evaluatie van de eigen relatie.
In Hoofdstuk 2 is nagegaan in hoeverre cognitieve neerwaartse vergelijking een gunstig effect kan hebben op de waargenomen kwaliteit van de relatie en in hoeverre het positieve effect wordt gemodereerd door ontevredenheid over de relatie (cf. relatiestress) en individuele verschillen in de geneigdheid tot sociale vergelijking. Hierbij is gebruik gemaakt van een door Gibbons en Buunk (1999) ontwikkelde individuele verschilmaat om sociale vergelijkingsoriëntatie vast te stellen, dat wil zeggen de mate waarin iemand geneigd is zich met anderen te vergelijken en de mate waarin iemand is geïnteresseerd in sociale vergelijkingsinformatie. Een nieuw experimenteel paradigma werd ontwikkeld waarmee cognitieve neerwaartse vergelijking werd gemanipuleerd door respondenten te vragen een beschrijving van de relatie te geven in vergelijkende ("beter dan anderen") of absolute, niet-vergelijkende ("goed") termen. In tegenstelling tot veel onderzoek naar sociale vergelijking, waarin respondenten veelal passieve ontvangers van sociale vergelijkingsinformatie zijn, is in dit proefschrift dus een onderzoeksmethode gehanteerd waarmee een cognitief neerwaarts vergelijkingsproces werd geïnduceerd waarbij respondenten zelf een actieve rol speelden. Waargenomen kwaliteit van de relatie is vastgesteld met behulp van een globale, evaluatieve beoordeling van de relatie, met een maat voor het geheel van positieve en negatieve gevoelens die men over de relatie ervaart (i.e. relatietevredenheid), en met een maat voor gevoelens van gebondenheid aan de relatie. Gebondenheid omvat zowel gevoelens van psychologische gehechtheid aan de intieme partner, alsmede een gedragsintentie om de relatie in voor- en tegenspoed in stand te houden.
In drie onderzoeken werden de effecten van cognitieve neerwaartse vergelijking op de waargenomen kwaliteit van de relatie onderzocht. Studie 1 betrof een laboratoriumexperiment onder een groep van 94 studenten. Zoals verwacht bleek cognitieve neerwaartse vergelijking een positief effect te hebben op de waargenomen kwaliteit van de relatie; in de verheffende beschrijvingsconditie bleken respondenten een hogere waargenomen kwaliteit van de relatie te rapporteren dan in de controleconditie waarin niet-vergelijkende, absolute beschrijvingen werden gegenereerd. Er trad geen differentieel effect op van zelf- en partnerverheffende beschrijvingen.
Studie 2 was een experimenteel veldonderzoek (onder 116 respondenten die tijdens een treinreis een vragenlijst beantwoordden) waarbij in een voormeting de mate van relatie-ontevredenheid en sociale vergelijkingsoriëntatie werden vastgesteld. Er werd slechts beperkte steun gevonden voor de verwachting dat het effect van cognitieve neerwaartse vergelijking op de waargenomen kwaliteit van de relatie wordt versterkt naarmate mensen meer relatiestress ervaren en sterker geneigd zijn zich met anderen te vergelijken. Daarentegen werd wel aangetoond dat neerwaartse sociale vergelijking vooral in stressvolle situaties een gunstig effect heeft op het welbevinden bij mensen met een dispositionele neiging tot sociale vergelijking.
Aangezien geen (hoofd)effect werd gevonden van neerwaartse vergelijking op de waargenomen kwaliteit van de relatie, is een derde studie uitgevoerd waarin werd gepoogd de resultaten van Studie 2 te repliceren in een steekproef van 110 studenten. In deze studie werd relatiestress en sociale vergelijkingsoriëntatie ongeveer 4 weken voor de laboratoriumsessie middels een vragenlijst vastgesteld. In de laboratoriumsessie werd de waargenomen kwaliteit van de relatie vastgesteld nadat cognitieve neerwaartse vergelijking was gemanipuleerd. De resultaten kwamen in grote lijnen overeen met de onderzoeksresultaten van Studies 1 en 2.
Het onderzoek in Hoofdstuk 2 laat zien dat cognitieve neerwaartse vergelijking een positief effect kan hebben op de waargenomen kwaliteit van de eigen relatie, vooral in stressvolle situaties, en met name voor mensen met een dispositionele neiging tot sociale vergelijking. Hieruit blijkt tevens dat de door Gibbons en Buunk (1999) ontwikkelde individuele verschilmaat om sociale vergelijkingsoriëntatie vast te stellen een goed instrument is om te bepalen of mensen daadwerkelijk geneigd zijn zich met anderen te vergelijken en om voorspellingen te doen over de effecten van sociale vergelijking.
In Hoofdstuk 3 wordt verslag gedaan van onderzoek naar de reacties op anderen die openlijk uitlatingen doen waarin blijk wordt gegeven van neerwaartse sociale vergelijkingsactiviteiten. Uitgangspunt hierbij vormt de vaststelling dat vergelijking met anderen, en vooral neerwaartse vergelijking, als sociaal onwenselijk wordt beschouwd en dat iemand die zichzelf publiekelijk beschrijft als "beter dan anderen" door omstanders mogelijk niet erg wordt geapprecieerd, aangezien de persoon daarmee zou kunnen suggereren dat anderen (en daarmee ook de omstanders die getuige zijn van de uitspraken) inferieure kenmerken bezitten. Er bestaat echter weinig onderzoek waarin deze veronderstelling is getoetst. In Hoofdstuk 3 is daarom onderzocht in hoeverre openlijke uitspraken over neerwaartse sociale vergelijkings-activiteiten als sociaal onwenselijk worden beschouwd, welke affectieve reacties door dergelijke activiteiten worden opgeroepen, en welke attributies worden gemaakt voor het geobserveerde publiekelijke sociale vergelijkingsgedrag.
Verwacht werd echter dat partnerverheffende neerwaartse vergelijking minder negatieve reacties zou oproepen dan zelfverheffende neerwaartse vergelijking. Dit werd onderzocht door respondenten een kort scenario aan te bieden dat een gefingeerd fragment weergaf uit een groepsdiscussie waarin iemand openlijk uitspraken doet over neerwaartse sociale vergelijking. Deze scenario's werden systematisch gemanipuleerd zodat de fragmenten zelf- of partnerverheffende uitspraken bevatten met publiekelijke verwijzingen naar neerwaartse vergelijkingsactiviteiten. De respondenten werd gevraagd de fragmenten aandachtig te lezen. Vervolgens werden vragen gesteld over de sociale wenselijkheid van dergelijke uitspraken en werd hen gevraagd naar de affectieve reacties op de uitspraken van de discussiant en naar de attributies voor diens gedrag. Uit Studie 4 (onder 722 respondenten die thuis via een computer deelnamen aan het onderzoek) en Studie 5 (een vragenlijstonderzoek onder 64 studenten) bleek dat zelfverheffende uitspraken meer negatieve reacties opriepen dan partnerverheffende uitspraken, terwijl geringschattende uitspraken over de eigen persoon minder negatieve reacties opleverden dan geringschattende uitlatingen over de intieme partner. Uit Studie 5 bleek bovendien dat naarmate de uitspraken met verwijzingen naar neerwaartse vergelijking minder sympathie (en wellicht zelfs antipathieke gevoelens) teweegbrachten, de uitspraken in sterkere mate als sociaal onwenselijk werden bestempeld.
Aangezien in Studies 4 en 5 niet de reacties op expliciete neerwaartse sociale vergelijking werden onderzocht, is een laboratoriumexperiment (Studie 6) onder 166 studenten uitgevoerd waarin verwijzing naar neerwaartse vergelijking is gemanipuleerd. In dit onderzoek werd een scenario aangeboden waarin een student tijdens een groepsdiscussie met medestudenten uitspraken doet over de positieve kenmerken van zichzelf (als partner) of van de partner in vergelijkende ("beter dan anderen") of absolute, niet-vergelijkende ("goed") termen. Uit Studie 6 blijkt dat uitspraken waarin sprake is van expliciete neerwaartse sociale vergelijking als sociaal onwenselijker worden beschouwd dan uitspraken zonder verwijzingen naar vergelijkingsactiviteiten, en dit verschil was groter wanneer iemand uitspraken over zichzelf deed dan over de intieme partner. Met name zelfverheffende neerwaartse sociale vergelijking roept dus negatieve reacties op, maar de reacties werden ook in Studie 6 gemedieerd door gevoelens van sympathie voor de discussiant. Sociale vergelijkingsoriëntatie beïnvloedde de reacties op uitspraken over neerwaartse vergelijking niet.
Hoofdstuk 3 biedt meer inzicht in de vraag waarom sommige mensen beweren dat zij zich niet met anderen vergelijken. Naast individuele verschillen in de geneigdheid tot sociale vergelijking kunnen ook overwegingen van sociale onwenselijkheid en mogelijke negatieve reacties van anderen ertoe leiden dat mensen terughoudend zijn om te erkennen dat zij zich vergelijken met anderen. Dit kan van invloed zijn op onderzoek naar sociale vergelijking, aangezien de sociale onwenselijkheid van sociale vergelijking ertoe kan leiden dat respondenten met terughoudendheid en schroom hun eigen sociale vergelijkingsactiviteiten zullen rapporteren.
In het afsluitende hoofdstuk worden de bevindingen van de studies in dit proefschrift kort samengevat. Er wordt ingegaan op mogelijke consequenties van de bevindingen voor onderzoek naar (neerwaartse) sociale vergelijking in het algemeen, en voor onderzoek naar sociale vergelijking in intieme relaties in het bijzonder.
1. Cognitieve neerwaartse vergelijking heeft vooral in stressvolle situaties een gunstig effect op de waargenomen kwaliteit van de relatie bij mensen met een dispositionele neiging tot sociale vergelijking.
2. Publieke uitspraken over zelfverheffende neerwaartse sociale vergelijking roepen bij omstanders meer negatieve reacties op en worden door omstanders in sterkere mate beschouwd als sociaal onwenselijk gedrag dan partnerverheffende neerwaartse vergelijking.
3. Aangezien publiekelijke uitingen van neerwaartse sociale vergelijking tot negatieve reacties van anderen kunnen leiden en over het algemeen worden beschouwd als sociaal onwenselijk gedrag, dient in onderzoek naar sociale vergelijking rekening te worden gehouden met de mogelijkheid dat respondenten met terughoudendheid en schroom hun eigen sociale vergelijkingsactiviteiten rapporteren.
4. Geliefden voelen zich niet tot elkaar aangetrokken door wat de ander is, maar door wat zij van de ander denken. (Naar Godfried Bomans)
5. Volgens de principes van de neerwaartse vergelijkingstheorie hebben ongelukkige mensen meer reden tot lachen en een groter gevoel voor humor dan gelukkige mensen.
6. Evenals in troebel water is het ook in troebel onderzoek goed vissen.
7. Arbeidspsychologen zien anderen graag het werk doen.
8. Als alternatieve straf had men de psycholoog René Diekstra ook duizendmaal overschrijven van de volgende tekst uit zijn eigen boeken kunnen opleggen: "Niets uit deze uitgave mag worden openbaar gemaakt en/of verveelvoudigd door middel van druk (...) of op welke andere wijze dan ook zonder voorafgaande schriftelijke toestemming van de uitgever".
9. De grootste collegialiteit treft men aan bij mensen die het belang van hun eigen werk het beste kunnen relativeren.
10. De betiteling "fileprobleem" verlegt het probleem ten onrechte van de mens naar de file.
11. De typisch Groningse uitspraak "Het kon minder" en de slogan "Er gaat niets boven Groningen" illustreren dat neerwaartse sociale vergelijking ook op provinciaal niveau superioriteitsgevoelens in de hand werkt.