The Effect Of Social Comparison On Cooperation And Its Mechanism Exploration

Social comparison is a social psychological phenomenon that compares its own situation with others.This study adopts experimental method and questionnaire method to explore the influence of social comparison on cooperative behavior,and examine the mediating effect of self assessment threat and the moderating effect of self-affirmation.The research is divided into four parts.The first study is to test the effect of social comparison on cooperative behavior preliminarily.Social comparison is manipulated through achievement recall,and the cooperative behavior is measured by questionnaire.In study two,social comparative direction and gap are manipulated through virtual intelligence test.The influence of different comparison gap on cooperative behavior under different comparison direction is tested.Study three explores the psychological mechanism of the effect of social comparison on cooperative behavior,mainly examining the intermediary role of self-evaluation threat.Study four further examines the moderating effect of self affirmation.Overall,this study explores how social comparisons in different directions affect the cooperative behavior in our daily life,which is enlightening to interpersonal interaction.The main results of the study are as follows:(1)Social comparison significantly affects cooperative behavior.The cooperative behavior of the upward comparison group is significantly lower than that of the downward comparison group.That is,upward comparison hinders the cooperation behavior of individuals.(2)Social comparison gap affects the cooperative behavior.Under the condition of larger comparative gap,upward comparison will reduce people's cooperative behavior.(3)Self-evaluation threat partly mediates the relationship between social comparison and cooperative behavior.(4)Self affirmation moderates the influence of social comparison on self-evaluation threat and cooperative behavior.