In 1954, the social comparison theory has developed by Leon Festinger (Ferguson,2009).The social comparison theory shows how people evaluate themselves and compare themselves to others .This theory states that individuals evaluate their own capacities and behavior in respect to different people groups. We compare ourselves the same as other people. In this comparison theory we tend to gang with group of people with the same capacity and behavior in order to evaluate themselves. According to ( Ferguson,2009) people look towards other they can relate to, and make relations between themselves as well as other people. Festinger estimated that the requirement for social comparison increases towards group consistency. Individuals are the same …show more content…
(Miller and Suls, 1977) had stated that people use social groups to accomplish their needs and to evaluate their opinions. There are two types of comparisons: Downward comparison which is includes looking down on individuals who look more awful than one's self and Upward comparison which is comparing between people who are socially better than other one(Olson & Evans, 1999) . These types of comparison result in unlike feelings, Downward comparison more often than not prompt positive dispositions (Wills, 1981, 1991) and high self-esteem (Morse and Gergen, 1970), while upward comparisons often bring negative feelings (Grove, 1991) what's more, low self-esteem (Morse and Gergen, 1970). It has been usually believed that upward comparisons may bring low self esteem and the downward comparisons may build emotions of self-esteem, then research has established that both sorts comparisons may dissatisfy or inspiring. Upward comparisons may bring expanded need to succeed and develop one's circumstance, while downward comparisons may bring down the needs of the person and decline their inspiration to keep on
People are always trying to show that they are better than everyone else and put down others to raise themselves to the top. Many different medias showcase this idea, however few explain why. Of Mice and Men, John Steinbeck shows that people who are perceived to be weaker then others are often alienated.
In order to comprehend this article, one must have a concept of self-esteem. Self- esteem is the personal evaluation of one’s worth as a person. Most individuals subject self-esteem as the “feeling that one is ‘good enough.” Also, individuals believe those with high self- esteem tend to believe they are superior to others, which is not necessarily true. Another inaccurate assumption on self- esteem interprets that talents and abilities are influential on self-esteem. Also, self- esteem is not
The astute reader may notice that this review does not include any papers that did not find a false consensus effect. The reason for this is not that this paper is not representative of the literature, but rather, that it is. The uniformity of the literature suggests that the phenomenon is fairly common. Some interesting arguments as to why this is are motivational or cognitive in nature. The motivational premise is based in the idea that people are motivated to believe that they have a place in their social environment. This argument is a based in self-justification, in that if many people share a given belief or behavior, it makes it easier to justify that this attitude or behavior is either right, or not as bad as it might seem.
Festinger’s first hypothesis states how people are driven to evaluate their own opinions and abilities because people want to be socially
What I learned about the social construction of difference conceptually means the differences in society that people perceive individuals are morally consist of gender and race, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and social class. Theoretically, according to Allan Johnson, social construction of difference, is created between two groups, one groups that has privileges and the ability to pass through society as “normal’. Some humans that are considered to be the oppressed are “non-normal and do not get the same privileges of the domain group. Johnson also uses the example of American woman who has not had any contact with white society. As of what the women knows, she is merely aware that she is an African American woman, not considered to be a black woman, in her state of
“Humans are not a rational animal, but a rationalizing one” (“Class 20”). This was asserted by the much acclaimed, significant, and influential social psychologist Leon Festinger as referencing to his theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Social psychology is “a branch of psychology particularly concerned with understanding social behaviors such as” incentive and compliance (Sheehy). Festinger’s contributions to the social and cognitive branches of psychology as well psychology overall prove themselves worthy to today. This theory specifically challenged many common notions that were seemingly already accepted by behaviorists everywhere during his time (Tavris and Aronson). Its reality awakens its verifications. Consecutively, its “enormous motivational power” affects many on a daily basis (Tavris and Aronson). In the final analysis, the theory of Cognitive Dissonance by Leon Festinger is fundamental to behaviorism while directly changing the way human beings across the planet think and do.
how we imaged others have judged us. The result of this process is negative or
The most basic concept in social psychology is conformity. Conformity is the idea that behaviour or a belief is changed in order to follow, or conform, to what is considered the “norm.” One of the oldest experiments to support this notion was conducted in 1935 by Muzafer Sherif (Song, Ma, Wu, Li, 2012 p. 1366). There are two different types of
By comparing ourselves with other people we categorize and label those who are similar to us as the in-group and people who differ from our-self are categorized as the out-group (Duff & Peace, 2012). We act in ways to favor our in-group rather than out group, this is called in-group favoritism. In-groups and out-groups are evident in many social environments, for example, children form groups with those who like playing similar games to them. In a study that explains in-group favoritism, an experiment was conducted by allocating individuals into groups based on the result of a coin flip (Billing & Tajfel, 1973). After having been told their group members, the participants then had to allocate points to members of their own group (‘in-group’) and to the members of the other group (‘out-group’). These members of the in-group ...
They hypothesized that parasocial relationships offer low self-esteem people an opportunity to feel closer to their ideal selves. Through the Rosenberg test, Undergraduate psychology students aged 19- 22 were evaluated in their level of self-esteem. Then, they were asked to identify their favorite celebrity and if they felt closest to celebrities who were similar to their ideal self. They found that greater similarity between the celebrity and their ideal self was associated with lower self-esteem.
Poeschl, G. (2001). Social comparison and differentiation strategies in social representations of intelligence. Swiss Journal of Psychology/Schweizerische Zeitschrift Für Psychologie/Revue Suisse De Psychologie, 60(1), 15-26.
The second motive that explains why people conform according to Deutsch and Gerard, (1955) is based on informational social influence. According to Festinger, (1950, 1954 in Hogg & Vaughan 2007) this type of influence is associated with uncertainty. Here individuals are uncertain and lack knowledge as to how to behave in certain situations. Festinger referred to this as social comparison in which individuals are not fully confident about their beliefs, attitudes and opinions and therefore yield to majority in order to be correct. This occurs particularly under ambiguous conditions and is clearly demonstrated in Asch’s (1956 in Hogg and Vaughan 2007) and Sherif’s (1936 in Hogg and Vaughan 2007) studies in which participants converged on similar answers particularly when the tasks became extremely difficult for them to be able to rely on their own judgments (in Bailey et al.
Often, when people see other’s posts, they play the comparison game. Are their friends doing more “cool” things? Do they have more friends or followers? Is their body better? The list goes on concerning the possible comparisons that can be made between people.
Social psychology essentially became the focus on the individual rather than the group as a whole. Many thoughtful ideas are collected in response to the studies of social psychology. Human cognition is understood to arise from interacting socially, highlighting the importance of socialization. We use social cognition to develop our explanations and our ideas on why a person’s behavior is/does what it is/does. As explained in class, we may have a student who never completes assignments and from that viewpoint, we determine that the student is a lazy person and more than likely does not care about the class.
The way we perceive ourselves in relation to the rest of the world influences our behaviors and our beliefs. The opinions we have of others also affect our behavior and how we view ourselves within different social contexts. Social Psychologists are interested in all aspects of interpersonal attraction and the ways that psychology can improve those interactions (“Understanding” n.d.). The social research being conducted “…can help us acknowledge how we form attitudes towards other people within our lives, and in the case that these formed attitudes could be detrimental, how to allow understanding in order to conform” (“Understanding” n.d.). Social Psychologists have studied interpersonal relationships for years trying to understand how they