Premium
New directions in social comparison research
Author(s) -
Buunk Bram P.,
Mussweiler Thomas
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/ejsp.77
Subject(s) - psychology , social psychology , social identity theory , social identity approach , social comparison theory , context (archaeology) , social cognitive theory , social cognition , social philosophy , social environment , social competence , social group , focus (optics) , identity (music) , social change , social relation , cognition , sociology , social science , paleontology , physics , optics , neuroscience , acoustics , economics , biology , economic growth
This article notices that social comparison theory has developed from being a focused theoretical statement on the use of others for self‐evaluation into a lively and varied area of research encompassing many different paradigms, approaches and applications. A recent ‘renaissance’ in social comparison theory is described in which links were established with social comparison work from before Festinger's (1954) classic paper, and in which various new methods and theoretical models were developed. More recently, an ‘enlightment’ of social comparison theory seems to occur in which an integrative effort is made to link social comparison processes to more general principles that underlie our psychological functioning. Four trends in this enlightment are described: (1) the movement of social cognition to the centre stage of social comparison research; (2) the interest in more biological perspectives, including evolutionary theory; (3) the focus on the role of individual differences such as social comparison orientation (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999) in moderating the responses to social comparison; and (4) an emphasis on the social context of social comparisons, in particular the influence of social groups and social identity. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.