Abraham P. Buunk

Health, coping, and wellbeing: Perspectives from social comparison theory

Contents: B.P. Buunk, F.X. Gibbons, M. Reis-Bergan, Social Comparison in Health and Illness: An Overview. W.M. Klein, N.D. Weinstein, Social Comparison and Unrealistic Optimism About Personal Risk. F.X. Gibbons, M. Gerrard, Health Images and Their Effects on Health Behavior. S.J. Misovich, J.D. Fisher, W.A. Fisher, Social Comparison Processes and AIDS Risk and AIDS Preventive Behavior. L.G. Aspinwall, Future-Oriented Aspects of Social Comparisons: A Framework for Studying Health-Related Comparison Activity. T.A. Wills, Modes and Families of Coping: An Analysis of Social Comparison and Other Cognitive and Behavioral Mechanisms. J. Suls, R. Martin, H. Leventhal, Social Comparison, Lay Referral, and the Decision to Seek Medical Care. J.A. Kulik, H.I.M. Mahler, Social Comparison, Affiliation, and Coping With Acute Medical Threats. H. Tennen, G. Affleck, Social Comparison as a Coping Process: A Critical Review and Application to Chronic Pain Disorders. J.V. Wood, K. VanderZee, Social Comparisons Among Cancer Patients: Under What Conditions Are Comparisons Upward and Downward? E. Diener, F. Fujita, Social Comparisons and Subjective Well-Being. B.P. Buunk, J.F. Ybema, Social Comparisons and Occupational Stress: The Identification-Contrast Model. A.H. Ahrens, L.B. Alloy, Social Comparison Processes in Depression. H. Leventhal, S. Hudson, C. Robitaille, Social Comparison and Health: A Process Model.

Parent-offspring conflict in mate preferences

Prevailing evolutionary approaches to human mating have largely ignored the fact that mating decisions are heavily influenced by parents and other kin. This is significant because parents and children often have conflicting mate preferences. We provide a brief review of how parents have influenced their childrens mating behavior across cultures and throughout history. Then, by drawing on evolutionary reasoning, we offer a hypothesis for why parents and offspring may have conflicting interests with respect to mate preferences. Specifically, parents may have a relatively stronger preference for childrens mates with characteristics suggesting high parental investment and cooperation with the ingroup, whereas children may have a relatively stronger preference for mates with characteristics signaling heritable fitness. We review past research consistent with this hypothesis, and we report new results from an empirical study consisting of 768 participants from a variety of cultures that provided clear support for the hypothesis.

Culture, gender, and the self: Variations and impact of social comparison processes

Psychological differences between women and men, far from being invariant as a biological explanation would suggest, fluctuate in magnitude across cultures. Moreover, contrary to the implications of some theoretical perspectives, gender differences in personality, values, and emotions are not smaller, but larger, in American and European cultures, in which greater progress has been made toward gender equality. This research on gender differences in self-construals involving 950 participants from 5 nations/cultures (France, Belgium, the Netherlands, the United States, and Malaysia) illustrates how variations in social comparison processes across cultures can explain why gender differences are stronger in Western cultures. Gender differences in the self are a product of self-stereotyping, which occurs when between-gender social comparisons are made. These social comparisons are more likely, and exert a greater impact, in Western nations. Both correlational and experimental evidence supports this explanation.

Burnout and inequity among human service professionals: A longitudinal study.

In a composite sample of human service professionals (N = 245), longitudinal relations across 1 year were tested between equity in the professional-recipient relationship and burnout (i.e., emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced personal accomplishment). The 1st research question was whether inequity influenced burnout across time. The 2nd research question was whether longitudinal relations between equity and burnout were curvilinear, as predicted by equity theory. The results confirmed that inequity affects the central component of burnout (i.e., emotional exhaustion) and that this relation is curvilinear. Feeling more deprived and feeling more advantaged resulted in higher future emotional exhaustion levels. No indication was found for a longitudinal relation between inequity and depersonalization. A synchronous relation was found suggesting that personal accomplishment influences equity.

Social Comparison in the Classroom: A Review

This article reviews research conducted on social comparison processes in the classroom since Festinger proposed his theory of social comparison. It covers the theoretical framework of social comparison theory, and it is organized around the following themes: motives for social comparison, dimensions of social comparison, direction of social comparison, and consequences of social comparison. The overall picture is an emerging one in which pupils prefer to compare their performances upward—specifically, with pupils who perform better than themselves but who resemble themselves on related and unrelated attributes. Although the magnitude of the effects of social comparison in the classroom is not examined, the review suggests that such upward comparisons not only lead pupils to perform better but evoke negative affect and lower academic self-concept. Topics discussed include inconsistencies (especially with regard to the direction of comparison and the motives underlying social comparison in the classroom), practical implications, and directions for future research.

Equity, Normative Disapproval and Extramarital Relationships

This study examined the extent to which inequity, normative disapproval and marital dissatisfaction were related to involvement in extramarital sexual relationships. The study was conducted among 82 married men and 132 married women with a mean age of 41. Of the sample, 30 percent had been involved in extramarital relationships. The results showed that among men as well as women, normative disapproval, and to a lesser extent, relational dissatisfaction were related to the desire to become involved in extramarital sexual relationships and to actual involvement in such relationships. Fear of contracting AIDS was not an important factor in this context. Only among women was inequity associated with extramarital behaviour and inclinations. The effect of inequity was independent of the effects of relational dissatisfaction, sexual dissatisfaction, normative disapproval and exchange orientation.

Social comparison orientation: a new perspective on those who do and those who don’t compare with others.

Social comparison as an individual difference characteristic Social comparison – how we use others to make sense of ourselves and our social world – is a focal human concern. Indeed, scholars have long recognized the importance of social comparison for human adaptation and survival. As Suls and Wheeler (2000) have noted, theorizing and research on social comparison can be traced to some of the classic contributions to western philosophy and to pivotal work in social psychology and sociology, including work on the self, adaptation level, reference groups, and social influence. In many respects, it is a fundamental human social interaction process. Nevertheless, it was not until Festingers (1954) classic paper that the term social comparison was proposed. According to Festinger, “There exists, in the human organism, a drive to evaluate his opinions and abilities.” (p. 117) Although they generally do not like the term “drive,” most social psychologists would probably agree that the desire to learn about the self through comparison with others is a universal characteristic of humans. As P. Gilbert, Price, and Allan (1995) noted, social comparison is phylogenetically very old, biologically very powerful, and is recognizable in many species. Indeed, it has been suggested that the process of social comparison has an evolutionary basis, and stems from the need to assess ones power and strength compared to that of ones competitors. In the course of evolution, this tendency to compare oneself with others has undoubtedly increased as humans came to live in larger groups.

Do social comparison and coping styles play a role in the development of burnout? Cross-sectional and longitudinal findings

The present longitudinal research among 558 teachers focused on the role of upward comparisons (with others performing better), downward comparisons (with others performing worse), and coping styles in relation to burnout. Assessed were identification (recognizing oneself in the other) and contrast (seeing the other as a competitor) in upward and downward comparison. Cross-sectionally, downward identification and upward contrast were positively related to burnout and negatively related to a direct coping style, whereas upward identification was negatively related to burnout and positively related to a direct coping style. Downward identification was positively related to a palliative coping style. Direct and palliative coping styles were independent predictors of burnout: those who reported using a direct coping style had lower levels of burnout and those who reported using a palliative coping style had higher levels of burnout. Longitudinally, the use of a direct coping style was associated with a decrease and downward identification with an increase of burnout over time.

Individual differences in intrasexual competition

Intrasexual competition implies viewing the confrontation with same-sex individuals, especially in the context of contact with the opposite-sex, in competitive terms. After constructing the items for the preliminary scale and after conducting a pilot study, in two studies with a total of 706 participants from The Netherlands and Canada, a 12-item scale for individual differences in intrasexual competition was developed that was sex neutral, and that had a high degree of cross- national equivalence. In The Netherlands, sociosexuality, sex drive and social comparison orien- tation were independently related to intrasexual competition. In Canada, intrasexual competition was strongly, and independently of the Big Five, related to social comparison orientation, but only among women. There was no effect of birth order, but sibling rivalry did correlate with intrasex- ual competition. Among men, intrasexual competition was more strongly, and differently, related to the Big Five than among women. Among women, intrasexual competition was predicted by a lack of agreeableness, and among men by a high level of neuroticism and extraversion.

The presence of a woman increases testosterone in aggressive dominant men

In line with the challenge hypothesis, this study investigated the effects of the presence of a woman on the testosterone (T) levels of young men. An informal contact with a woman of approximately 5 min resulted in an increase in salivary T among men. These effects occurred particularly in men with an aggressive dominant personality. In addition, higher salivary T levels were related to a more aggressively dominant personality, being sexual inactive for a month or more, and not being involved in a committed, romantic relationship. The most important findings of this study are that the short presence of a woman induces specific hormonal reactions in men, and that these effects are stronger for aggressively dominant men.