ABSTRACT
Comparisons are the stuff of social life. Everybody knows this intuitively, and since the days of Leon Festinger (1954), social psychologists have developed a formal knowledge of the operation of social comparisons in human interactions. Following Festinger’s lead, the social comparison researchers investigated how comparisons with other people influence a person’s attitudes and opinions, including the assessment of their own abilities (Goethals, 1986; Suls, 1977).
