The Effect Of Self-construal On The Mood After Social Comparison In The Relationship Context

Foreign studies have shown that the different self construction of individuals, theself assessment after social comparison will be different. However, after activating thedifferent self construction of the participants, most of the researchers gave they adescriptive materials about strangers or famous people, and then asked they tocompare with the people. The participants in this study were asked to compare withtheir friends. Firstly, task activation method was used to active the different selfconstruction of the participants. Then they and their friends were asked to do awords-recognition task. Finally all the participants were given the feedback that theirfriends’scores are higher or lower than themselves. In this study, we explore the effectof self-construal on the mood after social comparison in the relationship context.In this study, the research objects were62pairs of college students who werefriends (124people) in Jiangxi Normal University. The study contained2(socialcomparison object: positive vs negative)×2(self-construal: independent self-construalvs interdependent self-construal) double-factor complete random design to explorethat after underperforming or outperforming their friends, participants primed withdifferent self-construal whether reported different mood evaluation.The results of the study indicate that:(1) The target for comparison hassignificant effect on the mood evaluation after social comparison. Participants whooutperform their friend report more positive mood compared with participants whounderperform their friend.(2) After social comparison， self-construal has nosignificant effect on the mood evaluation.(3)The interaction between comparisontarget and self-construal are significant on the mood evaluation after socialcomparison. After underperforming their friend, participants primed with independentself-construal reported less positive mood as compared with participants primed withinterdependent self-construal. After outperforming their friend, participants primedwith independent self-construal reported more positive mood as compared withparticipants primed with interdependent self-construal.