Researches On The Undergraduates' Compensation Effects Of Self-Evaluations In Social Comparison

Social comparison process refers to the process through which people come to know themselves by evaluating their own attitudes, abilities, and beliefs in comparison with others.It is an important factor to affect self-evaluation. From a psychological point of view, human beings need to stay where they are and make more positive self-evaluations. Through social comparison, individuals maintain the good self-evaluation.1. What effect does social comparison make on the individual's self-evaluation?2. How does social comparison maintain the individual's good self-evaluations?"This research is intended to deal with two issues. One is reviewing the status quo of social comparison and self-evaluation available.The other is about compensation effect on the basis of the previous research. More exact, when people (in this study for college students) get the feedback under threat of self-evaluation during social comparison, individual self-evaluation will be carried out unconsciously on the compensation.This study conducted in the Chinese unique cultural context, examined the influence social comparison on students'self-evaluation.The study consisted of two experiments:college students were as the experimental samples and the compensation effect of self-evaluation was verified by means of quantitative analysis in various aspects.In Experimentâ… , by various information to form the different types of social comparison, the impact of various social comparisive types on self-evaluation was verified.In experimentâ…¡, by activating different scenarios of social comparison and testing whether in a different context (cooperation and competition), there were differences in the compensation effect in the different types of social comparison (upward social comparison and downward social comparison).By multivariate analysis of variance, the study concluded that:Experiment 1:The type of social comparison had an effect on self-evaluation. When faced with upward social comparison, students made the compensation self-evaluation, and the compensation effect existed in in the non-related fields.Experiment 2:Social comparison situation had an effect on students'self-evaluation. Compared with cooperation situations, college students tended to make compensation self-evaluation in the non-related fields after social comparison in the competitive situation.