Social comparison threat and coping: affective, cognitive and behavioral outcomes in response to false...

Social comparisons shape our behavior. The general comparative processing model (gComp) suggests that evaluating one's attributes against salient upward social standards elicits motivational appraisal ranging from threat to challenge, each typically associated with corresponding pessimistic or optimistic coping responses. This, in turn, manifests in specific affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses. To our knowledge, this is the first study to provide an initial experimental test of gComp assumptions.

Participants completed a 2-back task framed as indicative of academic performance. They were randomly assigned to high-threat (n = 67) or low-threat (n = 62) conditions, receiving false social comparison feedback on their performance relative to that of previous participants. Outcome measures included affect, cognitive responses (i.e., rededication, distraction, reconstrual, commitment), and a behavioral choice (i.e., task repetition).

Participants in the high-threat condition reported significantly higher increases in negative affect (p < .001), greater rededication (i.e., downplaying the task's importance; p = .011), and lower commitment (p < .001) compared to those in the low-threat condition. However, no significant differences were found for the behavioral outcome measure (p = .149).

The findings underscore the potential of a process-based approach to social comparison to advance our understanding of how comparative feedback shapes affective, cognitive, and behavioral responses.