The Effects Of Implicit Versus Explicit Social Comparisons On Different Self-evaluations

Social comparison is a common phenomena which can be seen everywhere. People do comparison with others in such a high frequency that it almost became a very natural reaction to the environment. Comparison is defined as an activity which people compare one's opinion and ability with other people. Festinger said in his social comparison theory that, when people feel uncertain about themselves, lack of objective standard to make a judgment, they will try to decrease the uncertainty through comparing.Social comparison can be seen as a process which comparison information is encountered, analyzed, and then used to make self-evaluation. Though the conclusions made from comparison is not necessarily correct, they have influences in people's affection, cognition and behavior.According to the status of comparing people to the comparing target, in upward comparison, comparing target has better performance on some comparing item than comparing people, in downward comparison, the condition is reverse. The consequence of the comparison in upward condition can make people feel bad about the result or make them feel hopeful to improve themselves. In the downward comparison, the comparison can make the comparing people feel good about their conditions, but it can also remind them the possibility of becoming worse. If one's self-evaluation comes to be close to the comparison target's, comparison has an assimilation effect on self-evaluation. Exposure to a "star" teacher can induce higher evaluations of competence and motivation in aspiring teacher. If self-evaluation is driven away from the comparison target, comparison has a contrast effect on self-evaluation. Some researchers found applicants'self-esteem decreased after viewing another applicant who is well dressed and competent, and self-esteem increased after viewing a disheveled and disorganized applicant. College women's self-evaluation of attraction lowered after being exposed to photographs of very attractive women.Several studies have identified several factors which moderate direction of the self-evaluation effects, such as self-certainty, self-esteem, the attainability of the comparison, the closeness and shared membership between target and self. But the way comparison is instigated has been given little attention in understanding the self-evaluative consequences of social comparison. Social comparison can be instigated in two different ways, implicit and explicit way. Explicit comparison can be said to occur when a person is provide with a comparison target and a comparison is explicitly asked for,("are you paid more or less than your faculty member X?").Implicit comparison means relevant comparison others are identified immediately in the absence of an explicit directive or force to compare. For example, a colleague's paycheck has been mistakenly placed in your mail box, the difference between your salaries become distinct without a explicit directive of comparison. In a study concerning comparison way, researchers find the way social comparison is instigated influences whether assimilation or contrast effects emerges. Studying the way social comparison is carried out can help understanding the different results from studies using different study paradigm.In the present research, a between-subjects design was made to explore people's self-evaluation in explicit or implicit condition. The self-evaluation includes evaluation about personality in Experiment one and evaluation about school performance in Experiment two.In Experiment one, subjects are asked to read an article describing a student who is either an excellent student who is very intelligent or an unintelligent student who act badly in school performance, In implicit condition, subject answer questions about right-now affection, then evaluate oneself on some attributes relevant to school performance. In explicit condition, subject was told to compare with the student described in the article on school performance, then, answer the question "your school performance is better or worse than the student". After that, subjects in explicit condition do self-evaluation on the attributes. At the end of the experiment, subject answer the question about how they like the student described in the article.In experiment two, the self-evaluation is about the explicit social performance. Subjects taking part in the explicit condition was told to read an article and compare with student described in it, but in implicit condition, subjects just read the article. Then subjects under implicit condition evaluate their school performance, but the explicit group makes self-evaluation after compare with the target on it. At the end of the experiment, both groups were asked to tell their affection and how important the school performance is.The result is, in experiment one, the way social comparison is instigated do influence whether assimilation or contrast emerge. Self-evaluation shows an assimilation tendency when comparison method is implicit. That is to say, self-evaluation is lower after downward comparison than that after upward comparison. Self-evaluation shows a contrast tendency when comparison is instigated is implicit way, that is to say, upward comparison brings higher self-evaluation than that brought by downward comparison. However, in experiment two, explicit condition brings contrast effect on self-evaluation of school performance; implicit comparison way makes no difference between upward and downward comparison.