| Social comparison is a process people compare theirselves with others. Scholars divided social comparison into three types, including upward comparison, downward comparison and parallel comparison. Because in China we usually emphasize putting an eye on the better people in order to make ourselves better, present study pay more attentions on upward comparison. There is always a dispute on whether upward comparison could increase or decrease subjective well-being.Our study based on high school students, explored the effect of upward comparison on subjective well-being and mediating effect of academic self-concept. It was divided into three parts: Study one is an experiment study, we design an experiment to examine the impact of upward comparison on subjective well-being and mediating effect of academic self-concept. Study two is a field study to discuss the moderating effect of achievement motivation. In study three, we use tracing analysis to examine whether the effect would be different in different time period. The results of this study as followings:(1) Upward comparison negatively impact people's subjective well-being. In other words, when people compare themselves with better one, their subjective well-being would decrease.(2) Academic self-concept has a mediating effect between the effect of upward comparison and subjective well-being, upward comparison influence people's subjective well-beings through it. However, there may be other mediating factors in this model.(3) Achievement motivation moderate the effect of upward comparison on academic self-concept. When people's achievement motivation level is high, upward comparison will influence academic self-concept less. While when people's achievement motivation level is low, upward comparison would strongly influence the effect.(4) At different time, there is no significant difference about the effect of upward comparison on subjective well –being, but upward comparison significantly affect academic self-concept. |
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