Bram Buunk

Social Comparison, Stress, and Coping

In recent years, basic research and theory on social comparison activities has been applied to understanding the coping processes of people undergoing stressful events. These investigations have both elucidated coping and highlighted issues that need reconsideration in traditional social comparison frameworks. These issues include the predominant motives that guide social comparison activity; the role of cognitive processes in the creation of targets and the selection of dimensions for evaluation; the limits imposed on available social comparison information by stressful or victimizing circumstances; the role of similarity in social comparisons under threat; the inherent meaning of upward and downward comparisons; and the divergence of evaluative versus information-seeking comparative activities. Implications for theoretical integration and for understanding coping and social support are discussed.

Social support and occupational stress: A causal analysis

This study is aimed at gaining insight into the role of social support provided by coworkers and supervisors in the reduction of job-stress. It is emphasized that, despite the inclusion of social support as an important variable in theoretical models of job stress, research on this issue is plagued by a lack of conceptual clarity, disagreement on definitions, and divergent operationalizations. Furthermore, there is little strong empirical evidence for the role of social support in alleviating job stress. Moreover, because of the use of cross-sectional designs, causal interpretations are often impossible. In this study, an attempt was made to assess the causal direction of the relationships between social support, stressors and strains, by employing a longitudinal panel design and LISREL analysis. Subjects consisted of 2034 employees of 21 Dutch companies from the eastern part of the Netherlands. All filled out a questionnaire on organizational stress and social support, and underwent a medical examination. Parts of the sample participated in two follow-up measurements. The results showed that individuals from the highest occupational levels as well as those from the lowest perceived less social support than other individuals. Furthermore, the respondents consistently reported that coworkers provide more support than supervisors. Only in the group with the lower occupational level did social support have a causal effect upon most stressors, indicating that social support indeed reduces role ambiguity, role overload, role conflict and job future uncertainty. However, there was not much evidence for a causal effect of social support by the coworkers upon the stressors.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

Cross-Cultural Differences in the Elicitation of Sexual Jealousy

This paper focuses on cross‐cultural differences in sexual jealousy. It is assumed that cultures differ (a) in the incidence of sexual jealousy, (b) in the range of acceptable strategies for coping with a jealousy situation, and (c) in the behavior evoking sexual jealousy. We addressed the last aspect. Subjects were 2,079 students from seven industrialized nations: Hungary, Ireland, Mexico, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, the United States, and Yugoslavia. Results showed that in nearly all of these nations, kissing, flirting, and sexual involvement of one of the partners with an interloper evoked jealousy. On the other hand, dancing, hugging, and sexual fantasies led, on the average, to a neutral reaction in all nations surveyed. Nevertheless, there were striking cross‐national differences in the relative value attached to a particular behavior. Furthermore, there were cross‐cultural sex differences. In all seven nations, women became more upset when their partner kissed someone else, and men reacted r...

Social comparison, equality, and relationship satisfaction: Gender differences over a ten-year period

The central questions in the present study are (i) when comparing themselves with the partner, to what extent do women feel more deprived than men in their relationship with regard to relational inputs and life outcomes; (ii) do these perceptions affect relationship satisfaction among men and women in similar ways; (iii) have these patterns changed in the period 1977–1987; (iv) to what degree do comparisons with the same-sex others affect relationship satisfaction? Three studies were conducted in samples that were all heterogeneous with regard to age, length of the relationship, and educational level. Study 1, conducted in 1977, indicated that, compared to their partner, women felt more deprived and men more advantaged with respect to relational inputs and life outcomes. Further, being deprived and advantaged compared to the partner was accompanied with less satisfaction than being equal, whereas being advantaged was more satisfying than being deprived. However, being advantaged with regard to life outcomes was less rewarding for women than for men. Study 2, a replication of Study 1, 10 years later, indicated that this pattern had not changed over the years. In Study 3 it appeared that comparisons with same-sex others have a strong influence on relationship satisfaction. In general, most people consider themselves as better off than others, and the better off they feel in comparison to others, the more satisfied they are with their relationship. This seems to apply more to men than to women.

Romantic Jealousy and Romantic Envy A Seven-Nation Study

Factor analyses and Procrustes rotations of the responses of 1194 female and 877 male university students in seven countries to a 69-item Likert-type questionnaire revealed cross-cultural commonalities and differences for romantic jealousy and romantic envy. However, when mean ratings of the questionnaire items were categorized as indicating agreement or disagreement with the items, the evidence for cross-cultural invariance of jealousy and envy was less impressive. The stronger cross-cultural invariance found with factor-analytic data was interpreted as evidence that the issues of concern in jealousy and envy situations are similar across nations. The weaker invariance found with the ratings of the items was taken as evidence that events arousing those issues of concern differ across nations.

Attitudes towards nudist and public beaches: some evidence of dissonance reduction and gender differences.

Attitudes towards recreation in bathing attire and nudist beach recreation were studied using a semantic differential encompassing 17 concepts. Respondents were 333 public beach visitors (166 males...