Motivated dimension manipulation in the processing of social comparison information

Abstract

Social comparisons allow individuals to gain knowledge of their traits and abilities. Individuals frequently have self-enhancement goals when processing self-relevant information. This study provided an initial test of the hypothesis that individuals engaging in social comparisons would manipulate cognitive representations of themselves and comparison targets in ways that allowed them to self-enhance. Participants were presented with upward, downward, or no social comparison information about their intelligence. They then completed a task, designed for this program of research, which assessed how participants altered cognitive representations of social comparison information. Results showed that participants altered cognitive representations in ways associated with greater perceived similarity to upward comparison targets and less similarity to downward comparison targets. This effect was moderated by self-esteem, suggesting that the process of manipulating cognitive representations of self-relevant information may serve self-enhancement motives. Understanding the cognitive processes involved in social comparisons is an important step towards accounting for the interplay of motivation and cognition in determining the outcomes individuals experience from social comparisons.

Acknowledgments

Preparation of this article was supported by a University of Minnesota Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship to MTK.

The authors thank Melissa Hansen for her assistance with data collection for Study 1, and Ellen Berscheid, Rick Gibbons, Jennifer Hunt, Alex Rothman, and the members of the Snyder lab group at the University of Minnesota and the Kiviniemi lab group at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln for their helpful comments on the studies and earlier drafts of the manuscript. Portions of this research were presented at the 1997 annual meeting of the American Psychological Society and the 2005 annual meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology.