Leveraging Upward Social Comparison in Social Media to Promote Healthy Parenting

ABSTRACT

Children’s health is heavily influenced by parenting practices that promote healthy eating and physical activities. The present study examined how upward social comparison in social media may facilitate parents’ motivation to perform healthy parenting practices. We conducted a 2 (social comparison direction: upward vs. downward) x 2 (similarity: similar vs. dissimilar) experiment. The results indicated that parents who saw upward comparison targets, that is, other children with better eating and exercising practices on social media, were more likely to assimilate their own children with them than parents who saw downward comparison targets. This, in turn, increased the parents’ self-evaluation and positively impacted their intention to engage in healthy parenting practices in the future. The study expands the research of social comparison to the domain of comparison of extended self. The empirical evidence demonstrates the positive impact of upward social comparison through assimilation and self-evaluation.

Acknowledgments

This work was partially supported by the National Science Foundation under grant #1622659. There is no potential competing interest.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation [1622626]; National Science Foundation [1622659].