ABSTRACT
Social psychologists have long recognized the importance of social comparison for human adaptation and survival. In his theory of social comparison processes, Festinger (1954) argued that individuals prefer to evaluate themselves employing objective and nonsocial standards, but when such objective information is unavailable, individuals will compare themselves with others to evaluate their own characteristics. As pointed out by Mettee and Smith (1977), social comparison theory is a general theory about “our quest to know ourselves, about the search for self-relevant information and how people gain self-knowledge and discover reality about themselves” (pp. 69–70). Festinger (1954) not only discussed this process of self-evaluation, but also emphasized the interpersonal consequences of social comparison by suggesting, for example, that people will seek out the company of others similar to themselves and will try to persuade others to become more like themselves. Although it was Festinger (1954) who used the term social comparison for the first time, social comparison processes were already highlighted earlier in the classic work of Hyman (1942), who argued that the assessment of one’s own status on such dimensions as financial position, intellectual capabilities, and physical attractiveness is dependent on the group with whom one compares oneself.
