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Social Comparison and Information Transmission in the Work Context
Author(s) -
Fischer Peter,
Kastenmüller Andreas,
Frey Dieter,
Peus Claudia
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
journal of applied social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1559-1816
pISSN - 0021-9029
DOI - 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2008.00428.x
Subject(s) - psychology , context (archaeology) , social psychology , affect (linguistics) , information transmission , benchmark (surveying) , quality (philosophy) , work (physics) , contrast (vision) , transmission (telecommunications) , social comparison theory , computer science , artificial intelligence , telecommunications , epistemology , communication , mechanical engineering , computer network , paleontology , philosophy , geodesy , engineering , biology , geography
In the workplace, people can experience various types of failure and frustrations resulting in spontaneous social comparisons with other colleagues who are more (upward comparison) or less (downward comparison) successful. Upward comparisons especially have been shown to increase envy toward the outperforming benchmark colleague, which could negatively affect social interaction with this colleague. In line with this, our results consistently show that upward comparisons are associated with higher levels of experienced envy, as well as with a lower transmission rate of high‐quality information. By contrast, type of social comparison had no impact on the amount of transmitted low‐quality, work‐relevant information. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.