Theory of Social Comparison

1. While Festinger’s (1954) theory may come across at first as a fairly elementary idea—of course, in social situations humans are apt to compare themselves to one another and it's a part of healthy social development as a child—the added component of self-regulating the social groups we compare ourselves to and formulating opinions and assessments about ourselves and our abilities based on these comparisons takes it a step further. Some of the attributes that I find myself submitting for comparison to various social groups are my intelligence, appearance, and tastes. My general reference points for each of these, respectively, are my collegiate peers, my friends, and individuals belonging to the same sub-culture(s) as myself. The common thread between each of these reference groups is that I gravitate toward and compare myself to members of these groups that are close to my same age. What this tells me about social comparison is that I (and humans in general) have the desire to either fit in with or excel above my peers—insomuch as I desire to be as smart as or smarter than my peers, as attractive as or more attractive, and have the same tastes or tastes considered to be more unique or refined than those of my peers (the latter often being determined by staging comparisons to the tastes of more mature age groups).

2. Attributional style refers to the ways in which an individual chooses to make sense of the events that transpire in his or her life (Peterson & Steen, 2009). Peterson and Steen (2009) describe those who possess an optimistic attributional style as having the tendency to categorize these events as “external, unstable, and specific…” (p. 315). Conversely, those who possess a pessimistic attributional style explain happenings in their lives as being, “internal, stable, and global…” (Peterson & Steen, 2009, p. 315). I consider myself to be an optimist, meaning essentially that I don’t automatically cite myself as the cause of my own misfortune; it is not an inevitability that bad things happen to me, and there are actions I can take to improve unfortunate feelings and situations. An example of my optimistic attributional style was my reaction to when my phone was pickpocketed outside of a restaurant. This incident occurred to no fault of my own—I had not forgotten my phone inside or left it unattended—it was simply the handiwork of a skilled criminal. I did not step back and say, “of course this would happen to me,” I did not dwell on the crime or the loss of my phone; I moved forward immediately, and even mentally congratulated the guy (or girl) that had pulled it off.

3. Entman posits that the media play an extremely influential role in determining what issues should be at the forefront of public consideration during an election (1989). For the American people, unfortunately, the celebrity of a candidate such as Donald Trump is generally given more attention than what the candidate actually stands for politically (i.e. appearance, fashion sense, personal scandals etc.). However, the media is only partly to blame for this as it is up to the people to research the information that is not put front and center in the news. It is the fault of the people, that they are satisfied with assessing the qualifications of a candidate based on the often paltry, irrelevant, and biased figures represented in the media.

4. It is of the utmost importance that individuals routinely consider attribution in social behavior in order to avoid Fundamental Attribution Error. Tetlock (1985) explains that even when there are reasonable social explanations for others’ behavior, humans are still at risk of misinterpreting one another based on unfounded assumptions that reflect more on the observer than the individual performing the action. I think a wonderful example of how chronic and permeating the Fundamental Attribution Error is among my peers in modern society, is text message interpretation. Because there are no tonal clues present in a text message, the recipient is left to interpret a message based on how they can only assume the sender intends it. Countless times, I have sent a text message to a friend with absolutely no ill feelings, and received a reply asking if I am angry with him or her. I have found that much of the time, this means that my friend has said or done something that they are afraid may have had negative consequences on myself or my opinion them.

References

Entman, R. M. (1989). How the media affect what people think: An information processing approach. Journal of Politics, 51(2), 347-370.

Festinger, L. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human relations, 7(2), 117-140.

Peterson, C., & Steen, T. A. (2009). 29 Optimistic Explanatory Style. Oxford handbook of positive psychology, 313.

Tetlock, P. E. (1985). Accountability: A social check on the fundamental attribution error. Social Psychology Quarterly, 227-236.