The Effect Of Social Comparison On Cooperative Behavior Under Shared Negative Experiences And Its Mechanisms

Cooperation is essentially an interpersonal interaction behavior and is usually influenced by social comparison.The central purpose of social comparison is selfassessment,especially when people experience negative emotional events and often compare their outcomes with those of co-experiencers to improve their self-evaluation.Previous research has generally concluded that shared experience of negative emotional events helps to promote cooperation,which we can view as a parallel comparison,where the same degree of negative outcomes lead to a sense of shared destiny for each other,and cooperation arises driven by this psychological influence.However,negative consequences resulting from the same negative event are not always consistent,and there is a lack of research contexts that use shared negative experiences to examine the influence of the direction of social comparison in individuals’ assessment of negative outcomes on cooperative decision making,as well as to explore the psychological mechanisms underlying this influence process.To address the above questions,three studies were conducted in this paper using an experimental approach.Study 1 explored the effect of social comparison on cooperative behavior in a shared negative experience context.Study 1a used a negative context of an organizational employee being reduced in salary in the context of an epidemic and used a one-factor(social comparison: upward comparison,downward comparison,no comparison)within-subjects experimental design to initially examine the effect of social comparison orientation on cooperative behavior between individuals and comparison subjects.Study 1b used the negative context of investment failure with a 2(social comparison: upward comparison,downward comparison)× 2(cooperative subjects: comparison subjects,non-comparison subjects)mixed experimental design to focus on the effect of social comparison orientation on cooperative behavior between individuals and non-comparison subjects.Study 2 explored the psychological mechanisms by which social comparison influences cooperative behavior in negative contexts,using a research situation in which a writing task received negative feedback and a one-factor(social comparison: upward comparison,downward comparison)between-subjects experimental design to examine individuals’ cooperative engagement with comparators and the potential mediating role of empathy and interpersonal bonding.Study 3 further examined the moderating effect of social distance using a study situation of financial loss with a 2(social comparison: upward comparison,downward comparison)× 2(social distance: near distance,far distance)betweensubjects experimental design to examine whether social comparison has the same effect on individuals’ affective attitudes and cooperative behavior when they face interaction objects with different psychological distances.The findings were as follows:(1)Co-experiencing the same negative emotional event,individuals’ cooperative behavior depended on the reference object chosen.Individuals cooperated significantly more with the downward comparison object than with the upward comparison object.(2)The effect of social comparison on cooperative behavior generalizes to noncomparison objects when the same negative emotional event is experienced together.Individuals were significantly more cooperative with non-comparers after the downward comparison than the upward comparison.(3)In the context of shared negative experiences,empathy mediates the psychological process of social comparison influencing cooperation.Compared to upward comparisons,downward comparisons significantly increased sympathy for the comparator,thus promoting cooperation.(4)Social distance plays a moderating role in the effect of social comparison on empathy in the context of shared negative experiences.Proximity objects weakened the negative effect of upward comparison on empathy.This study enriches the research related to how to promote interpersonal cooperation,reveals the prerequisites for a common suffering and more alliance,and also provides lessons for people to manage negative emotions and organizations to use negative motivation effectively.