Employee Social Comparison And Its Relationship With Work Pressure

Social comparison is that the individuals use others as a reference to evaluate their own situation. The comparison to other people is an important part of life, the individual evaluates the outside world based on the social comparison information, and to be affected positively or negatively by its results. Social comparison as a social phenomenon is complex. This study focuses on two aspects:social comparison orientation and social comparison effects. Social comparison orientation refers to the personality character on the need to do social comparison. There is two different outcomes generated in the process of social comparison:identification effect and contrast effect. Based on literature review, we research the relationship between social comparison orientation/social comparison effects and the job stress through statistical measuring methods. The specific research can be summarized as follows:Part I:the research of the relationship between social comparison orientation and job stress.Iowa-Netherlands Comparison Orientation Measure(INCOM) was used to measure the workerss' sensitivity to other person's information, it is comprised of 2 factors:ability comparison orientation and opinion comparison orientation. Job Stress Scale was used to measure the workers' tension and discomfort state caused by certain factors in the work context, it is comprised of 4 factors:Anxiety, fatigue, depression and low self-esteem. we choose 264 workers as subjects through the method of random sampling, which is included different type of enterprises, age and positions. The statistical analysis for data include Multivariate ANOVA, Correlation Analysis, Regression Analysis and so on, the results state as follows:(1)The ability comparison orientation is significantly higher than opinion comparison orientation. Ability comparison orientation exists significant difference among marital status, age and the type of enterprises, but no difference are found on opinion comparison orientation, the details is as follows:the score of the workers who are divorced or Widowed on Ability comparison orientation is significantly higher than that of the workers who are married or unmarried at the level of 0.01;The score of the workers of 40-49 years old on Ability comparison orientation is significantly higher than that of the workers of other age at the level of 0.05; The score of the workers of the Private enterprise on ability comparison orientation is significantly higher than that of the workers of joint-venture enterprise. (2) The social comparison orientation has a positive correlation with job stress. Ability comparison orientation has positive effect on job stress, but opinion comparison orientation has negative effect on job stress.PartⅡ:the research of relationship between social comparison effects and job stress.Social Comparison Effects Scale which is comprised of four subsidies is used to measure the four results generated in the process of social comparison:upward identification and contrast, downward identification and contrast. The Job Stress Scale is as same as the partⅠ. The results is as follows:(1) The score of the workers who are Senior managers on downward identification is significantly higher than that of the workers in other positions at the level of 0.05; The score of the workers whose length of employment is long on downward identification is significantly higher than that of the workers whose length of employment is short at the level of 0.01.(2) The upward identification has negative effect on job stress. the upward contrast, downward identification and downward contrast has positive effect on job stress.(3) The relationship between social comparison orientation and social comparison effects are studied. Correlation analysis shows that just the upward identification and the ability comparison orientation are not correlated significantly. The standard regression equations of job stress on social comparison orientation correspond with the standard regression equations of job stress on Social Comparison Effects, the details is as follows:the opinion comparison orientation and upward identification have respectively entered the regression equations for low self-esteem and fatigue, their functions are all negative; the ability comparison orientation and downward identification have respectively entered the regression equations for low self-esteem and depression, their functions are all positive; the ability comparison orientation and downward identification, downward contrast, upward contrast have respectively entered the regression equations for Anxiety, their functions are all negative.