| According to the social comparison theory that was brought up by Festinger in 1954, he considered that the individuals all have the need and the driver to evaluate one's ability and opinion. When the objective standard is not enough to evaluate oneself, one may get the need of self evaluation through comparing with the others who are similar with them. When the social comparison information threatened one's self-evaluation, the person would use the different strategies to reduce the threat because of different drives. There are different strategies they would use, such as:avoiding the comparing, choosing the new comparison dimensionality; choosing the new comparison in the same dimensionality; depressing the levels and amount of the comparison; depressing the importance of the social comparison dimensionality. In the self-evaluation maintenance model(SEM) which was introduced by Tesser, he pointed the strategy which was used to weaken the influence that came from the worse performance. Tesser considered that, when the individual compared with a closed person on the dimensionality which was importance, and the dimensionality brought the comfortless feeling, the self-protection would appear. The self-protection involved:depressing the importance of the social comparison dimensionality, changing one's behavior, standing off the mental distance with the closed person. And the easiest and the most direct method was depressing the importance of the social comparison dimensionality. In the SEM, the key factor that brought on the contrast effect or the reflect effect was self-esteem. The present study in the social comparison found that in the different conditions, the different performance would appear between the high self-esteem(HSE) and low self-esteem (LSE)individuals. It may relate to the difference between the high self-esteem.The heterogeneity of high self-esteem dimensioned that the characters between the high self-esteem were different. Kernis defined the different HSE to be secure HSE and fragile HSE. In his opinion, the fragile HSE had the positive self feeling, but was frail and voluntary to the self-threaten. The fragile HSE would use the self-protection and self-improve strategy in practice, but the secure HES would not.When the people evaluate themselves, there are two comparison standards:one is absolute comparison standard, and the other is contrast comparison standard. The person would choose one comparison standard to evaluate himself based on the fact, and receive the better feeling.The present research combined the explicit SE and the implicit SE, review the influence that the different self-esteem and the social comparison direction towards to the importance of the comparison dimensionality. The first study used the math as the comparison dimensionality, the result was that:The evaluations towards to the comparison dimensionality between the participants in the upward social comparison and in the no comparison was not significant; there was no significant difference among different esteem people; the person evaluating the importance of their comparison dimensionality themselves was significant than they evaluating the others'.In the first study, the math was special, in order to review the generalizability, in the second study, we used the color estimate that was general as the comparison dimensionality to review the influence that the different self-esteem and the social comparison direction towards to the importance of the comparison dimensionality. The result was that:The evaluations towards to the comparison dimensionality between the participants in the upward social comparison and in the no comparison was not significant; there was no significant difference among different esteem people when they did not take part in the social comparison; in the upward social comparison, there was no significant difference among different esteem people when they evaluating the importance of their comparison dimensionality themselves; there was significant difference among different self-esteem people when they evaluating the importance of the comparison dimensionality of other, and the different self-esteem participants evaluated the importance of the other's was:secure HSE, inconsistent LSE, consilient LSE, fragile HSE; the person evaluating the importance of their comparison dimensionality themselves was significant than they evaluating the others'.The third study acceded the absolute comparison standard, review the different self-esteem person choose the absolute or the contrast comparison standard when they received the two comparison standard at the same time. The result was that:the absolute comparison standard would not influence the person's evaluation to the comparison dimensionality.The three studies indicated that:The evaluations towards to the comparison dimensionality between the participants in the upward social comparison and in the no comparison was not significant; When the person in the upward social comparison, the fragile HSE would use self-protection to keep the high self-esteem, and the secure HSE would not use the strategy. The person evaluating the importance of their comparison dimensionality themselves was significant than they evaluating the others'.The person would use the contrast comparison standard to evaluate the comparison dimensionality. |
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