The Effects Of Social Comparison On The Self-Evaluation In The Intergroup Context

Self-evaluation was one form of the self-consciousness, was the recognition and assessment of the person on oneself's metabolism, ability, characteristics, social status, and their social relationships. Wayment & Taylor considered that there were three types of information that affected individual's self-evaluation:objective information, personal standard information and social comparison information, and the research found that the effects of social comparison information on the self-evaluation were more useful in the field of laking of the objective information and personal standard information, or individual's unfamiliar with. The most important hypothesis of the social identity theory that was brought up by Tajfel in 1978,was that the social comparison had occurred not only at the individual level but also at the group level. Brewer & Weber(1994) defined the intergroup comparison to be that the individuals compared oneself to others in term of their group membership, or totally compared ingroup to outgroup. In the intergroup context there were two theoretical perspective that builded on social comparison, one was the self-evaluation maintenance, (SEM) (Tesser,1988),which focused on the evaluations of interpersonal relations and the individual self, while the second, the social identity theory (Tajfel & Turner,1986),focused on intergroup relations and the self as a group member.In intergroup context which kinds of comparison pattern the individuls used depended on that what kind of "identity" was significant when social comparison occured. "Individual identity" was significant when the comparison target was an ingroup member; the significant identity transformed from "I" to "we" when the comparison target was an outgroup member. From the view of the social identity, prior researches found that the effect of the social comparison on the self-evaluation depended largely on the relative intergroup status. The social identity theory also assumed that group identification was an important part of self-concept in intergroup context. The activating' concerns were different for high or low group identifiers. For the high group identifier, the intergroup context activated the group identity, the individuals were prone to intergroup comparison; for low group identifier, the intergroup context may enhance the identity of the individual level, so the ingroup identification would affect social comparison outcomes in the process of the intergroup comparison.Reviewing the existing research we found that there was lack of direct empirical research investigating the effects of group status on the self-evaluation in the intergroup comparison. In addition, in the existing intergroup comparison research, group identification was as an dependent variable, but in the social identity study group identification was as an independent variable, studies had found that high group identifier were more apt to compare to the outgroup members, group identification may also influence self-evaluation.Based on the former research, the present research investigated the effects of group status and ingroup identification in the process of the effects of the social comparison on the self-evaluation. The first study tested the effects of the group status, group membership of comparison target, comparison direction using the most Minimal-Group paradigm on the self-evaluation, the results showed that the self-evaluation of high status group members was higher than the lower status group members'; they reported higher self-evaluation when they compared to the ingroup members than when compared to the outgroup members; for the high status group members, they reported higher self-evaluation when they unfavorably compared to ingroup members than unfavorably compared to outgroup members.The second study further used the real group to discuss the role of ingroup identification, the results indicated that the self-evaluation of high status group members was higher than the lower status group members'; For high status group members, high identifier reported lower self-evaluation when they unfavorably compared to the ingroup members than low identifier unfavorably compared to the ingroup members; When unfavorably compared to ingroup members, the low identifier of high status ingroup members reported higher self-evaluation than high ingroup identifier of low status.This research has important theoretical and practical value. On one hand, this research will validate and supplement to the social comparison theory and the social identity theory in term of the investigating of the group status and group identification; On the other hand, this research can provide new evidence for future empirical study, help the individuals better understand their cognitive state when facing upward social comparison information, also can better guide college students to correctly and reasonably evaluate themselves, help them develop healthily.