Experimentally Testing the Tree-Factor Structure of Socio-Emotional Comparisons

Abstract

Evolutionary theories posit that comparisons to others are essential in determining one’s relative position in a social hierarchy. Social comparison information can help guide behaviour in several ways, but has been associated with different adverse psychological issues (e.g., depression; stress). However, a purely cognitive view of social comparisons ignores the emotional content that usually accompanies them. A novel construct named socioemotional comparisons (SEC) is theorized to bridge the cognitionemotion gap. SEC is defined as experiences of negative affect following a subjective evaluation of unfair or unjust disadvantage compared to another. These comparisons are represented by three factors: malicious envy, low self-esteem, and justice sensitivity. No study, however, has examined SEC’s proposed three-factor structure. In addition, the intercorrelation of SEC’s factors should not be better explained by confounding variables such as the experience of negative affect. This research attempted to validate the SEC construct through a series of experiments. I conducted three experiments, each manipulating a separate SEC factor. I then examined how experimental manipulations changed SEC scores, and whether these changes remained once negative affect was controlled for. Results showed that experimental manipulations of malicious envy did not significantly change SEC total or factor scores. Manipulations of self-esteem and justice sensitivity significantly changed SEC total and factor scores. However, once negative affect was controlled for, these effects disappeared. In light of these results, the nature and definition of the SEC construct, limitations of the present study, clinical and theoretical implications, and directions for future research are discussed.