Temporal Comparisons Elicit Greater Pride, Lower Shame, and Stronger Improvement Orientation Among Chinese Children

Upward social comparisons are widely used to encourage effort, yet they often lead to negative emotions. Temporal comparisons may support self-improvement while preserving positive self-experience. This study investigates whether temporal comparisons offer these potential benefits for Chinese children.

Two between-subjects experiments were conducted with Chinese primary and secondary school students (aged 8-16 years) in autumn 2024. We manipulated comparison type and comparison direction through reading-writing tasks. Study 1 (N = 632, 51% girls) used writing tasks involving comparisons with better or worse peers or past selves, alongside a no-comparison control. Study 2 added 285 participants (51% girls) who imagined and wrote about better or worse future selves, sharing the social-comparison and control groups from Study 1. After the tasks, participants reported pride, shame, improvement goals, and superiority goals.

Past-self comparisons elicited greater pride, less shame, and a higher improvement-to-superiority goal ratio than social comparisons and no comparison; Comparing with a better past self elicited greater pride and lower shame than comparing with superior others. Future-self comparisons elicited greater pride, less shame, and a higher improvement-to-superiority goal ratio than social comparisons; Comparison with a worse future self preserved greater pride than comparison with superior others.

Temporal comparisons, including both past-self and future-self comparisons, showed emotional and motivational advantages among Chinese children.