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Social Comparison Theory - Coggle Diagram

- - - - (...) the impact of the comparison on self-evaluation depends on the closeness of the relationship and the relevance of the comparison domain.
  - - - Social Identity: "The 'we' aspect of our self-concept; the part of our answer to 'Who am I?' that comes from our group memberships."
      - TURNER, John (1981, 2000), HOGG, Michael (1992, 2010,2014)
        
        "(...) we (...) define ourselves by our groups.
        
        Self-concept—our sense of who we are—contains not just a personal identity (our sense of our personal attributes and attitudes) but also a social identity (Chen et al., 2006; Haslam, 2014).
        
        :pushpin: "We carry such social identities like playing cards, playing them when appropriate. Prime American Students to think of themselves as 'Americans,' and they will display heightened anger and disrespect toward Muslims; prime their "student" identity, and they will instead display heightened anger toward police (Ray et al., 2008)."
        
        :frame_with_picture: Personal identity and social identity together feed self-esteem
        
        John Turner (1947-2011) and Henri Tajfel proposed social identity theory
        
        "We categorize: We find it useful to put people, ourselves included, into categories. To label someone as a Hindu, a Scot, or a bus driver is a shorthand way of saying some other things about the person."
        
        "We identify: We associate ourselves with certain groups (our ingroups) and gain self-esteem by doing so."
        
        "Ingroup: 'Us'—a group of people who share a sense of belonging, a feeling of common identity."
        
        "Having a sense of 'we-ness' strengthens our self-concepts. It feels good. We seek not only respect for ourselves but also pride in our groups (Sani et al., 2012; Smith & Tyler, 1997)."
        
        "Moreover, seeing our groups as superior helps us feel even better. It's as if we all think, 'I am an X [name your group]. X is good. Therefore, I am good."
        
        "Much as dissonance motivates its [self-esteem's] reduction and insecurity feeds authoritarianism, so also uncertainty motivates people's seeking social identity. Their uncertainty subsides as they perceive who "we" and "they" are. Especially in a chaotic or an uncertain world, being part of a zealous, tightly knit group feels good; it validates who one is (Hogg, 2014). And that explains part of the appeal of extreme, radical groups in today's world."
        
        :pushpin: "When people's personal and social identities become fused—when the boundary between self and group blurs—they become more willing to fight or die for their group (Gómez et al., 2011; Swann et al., 2012, 2014a, b). Many patriotic individuals, for example, define themselves by their national identities (Staub, 1997a, 2005a). And many people at loose ends find identity in their associations with new religious movements, self-help groups, or fraternal clubs."
        
        "The more important our social identity and the more strongly attached we feel to a group, the more we react prejudicially to threats from another group (Crocker & Luhtanen, 1990; Hinkle et al., 1992)."
        
        "We compare: We contrast our group with other groups (outgroups), with a favorable bias toward our own group."
        
        "Outgroup: 'Them'—a group that people perceive as distinctively different from or apart from their ingroup."
        
        Ingroup Bias: The tendency to favor one's own group.
        
        "The group definition of who you are—your gender, race, religion, marital status, academic major—implies a definition of who of you are not."
        
        "The mere experience of being formed into groups may promote ingroup bias. Ask children, 'Which are better, the children in your school or the children at [another school nearby]?' Virtually all will say their own school has the better children."
        
        INGROUP BIAS EXPRESSES AND SUPPORTS A POSITIVE SELF-CONCEPT
        
        "'We won'/'They lost': When our group has been successful, we can make ourselves feel better by identifying more strongly with it."
        
        "Basking in the reflected glory of a successful ingroup is strongest among those who have just experienced an ego blow, such as learning they did poorly on a 'creativity test' (Cialdini et al., 1976). We can also bask in the reflected glory of a friend's achievement—except when the friend outperforms us on something pertinent to our identity (Tesser et al., 1988)."
        
        INGROUP BIAS FEEDS FAVORITISM
        
        "We are so group conscious that, given any excuse to think of ourselves as a group, we will do so—and we will exhibit ingroup bias. Even forming conspicuous groups on no logical bias—for instance, merely by composing groups X and Y with the flip of a coin—will produce some ingroup bias (Billig & Tajfel, 1973; Brewer & Silver, 1978; Locksley et al., 1980)."
        
        "In Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slapstick, computers gave everyone a new middle name; all 'Daffodil-11s' then felt unity with one another and distance from 'Raspberry-13s'."
        
        "In experiments, Tajfel and Michael Billig (1974; Tajfel, 1970, 1981, 1982) further explored how little it takes to provoke favoritism toward us and unfairness toward them. In one study, Tajfel and Billig had individual British teenagers evaluate modern abstract paintings and then told them that they and some other teens had favored the art of Paul Klee over that of Wassily Kandinsky, while others favored Kandinsky. Finally, without ever meeting the other members of their Klee-favoring group, each teen divided some money among members of the Klee- and Kandinsky-favoring groups. In this and other experiments, defining groups even in this trivial way produced ingroup favoritism."
        
        "We are more prone to ingroup bias when our group is small and differs in status relative to the outgroup (Ellemers et al., 1997; Moscatelli et al., 2014)."
        
        "When our ingroup is the majority, we think less about it. To be a foreign student, to be gay or lesbian, or to be of a minority race or gender is to feel one's social identity more keenly and to react accordingly."
        
        :pushpin: MUST INGROUP LIKING FOSTER OUTGROUP DISLIKING?
        
        "Experiments support both liking for the ingroup and dislike for the outgroup."
        
        "We also ascribe uniquely human emotions (love, hope, contempt, resentment) to ingroup members, and are more reluctant to see such human emotions in outgroup members (Demoulin et al., 2008; Leyens et al., 2003, 2007). There is a long history of denying human attributes to outgroups—a process called 'infrahumanization'."
        
        "Yet ingroup bias and discrimination result less from outgroup hostility than from ingroup favoritism (Balliet et al., 2014; Greenwald & Pettigrew, 2014). Bias is less a matter of dislike toward those who are different than of networking and mutual support among those in one's group. Even when there is no 'them' (imagine yourself bonding with a handful of fellow survivors on a deserted island), one can come to love 'us' (Gaertner et al., 2006). So it seems that positive feelings for our own groups need not be mirrored by equally strong negative feelings for outgroups."
        
        Need for status, self-regard, and belonging
        
        :pushpin: "Status is relative: To perceive ourselves as having status, we need people below us. Thus, one psychological benefit of prejudice, or of any status system, is a feeling of superiority."
        
        "In Europe and North America, prejudice is often greater among those low or slipping on the socioeconomic ladder and among those whose positive self-image is threatened (Lemyre & Smith, 1985; Pettigrew et al., 1998; Thompson & Crocker, 1985). In one study, members of lower-status sororities were more disparaging of competing sororities than were members of higher-status sororities (Crocker et al., 1987). If our status is secure—if we feel 'authentic pride' that's rooted in accomplishment, not just self-aggrandizement—we have less need to feel superior, and we express less prejudice (Ashton-James & Tracy, 2012)."
        
        :pushpin: "In study after study, thinking about your own mortality—by writing an essay on dying and the emotions aroused by thinking about death—provokes enough insecurity to intensify ingroup favoritism and outgroup prejudice (Greenberg et al., 1990, 2013; Schimel et al. 1999). One study found that among Whites, thinking about death can even promote liking for racists who argue for their group's superiority (Greenberg et al., 2001, 2008). With death on their minds people exhibit terror management. They shield themselves from the threat of their own death by derogating those whose challenges to their worldviews further arouse their anxiety. When people are already feeling vulnerable about their mortality, prejudice helps bolster a threatened belief system."
        
        "Terror management: According to 'terror management theory', people's self-protective emotional and cognitive responses [are heightened?] (including adhering more strongly to their cultural worldviews and prejudices) when confronted with reminders of their mortality."
        
        "Thinking about death can also heighten communal feelings, such as ingroup identification, togetherness, and altruism (McGregor et al., 2001; Sani et al., 2009)."
        
        "Reminding people of their death can also affect support for important public policies. Before the 2004 presidential election, giving people cues related to death—including asking them to recall their emotions related to the 9/11 attack, or subliminally exposing them to 9/11 related pictures—increased support for President George W. Bush and his antiterrorism policies (Landau et al., 2004). In Iran, reminders of death increased college students' support for suicide attacks against the United States (Pyszczynski et al., 2006)."
        
        Self-image and prejudice: "(...) when Washington State University men viewed young women's videotaped job interviews, men with low self-acceptance disliked strong, non-traditional women. Men with high self-acceptance preferred them (Grube et al., 1982). Experiments confirm the connection between self-image and prejudice: Affirm people and they will evaluate an outgroup more positively; threaten their self-esteem and they will restore it by denigrating an outgroup (Fein & Spencer, 1997; Spencer et al., 1998)."
        
        "Despising outgroups strengthens the ingroup. School spirit is seldom so strong as when the game is with the archrival. The sense of comradeship among workers is often highest when they all feel a common antagonism toward management. To solidify the Nazi hold over the Germany people, Hitler threatened them with the 'Jewish menace.'"
        
        "When the need to belong is met, people become more accepting of outgroups, report Mario Mikulincer and Philip Shaver (2001). They subliminally primed some Israeli students with words that fostered a sense of belonging (love, support, hug) and primed others with neutral words. The students then read an essay that was supposedly written by a fellow Jewish student and another by an Arab student. When primed with neutral words, the Israeli students evaluated the supposed Israeli student's essay as superior to the supposed Arab student's essay. When the participants were primed with a sense of belonging, that bias disappeared."