The Impact Of College Students' Social Comparison On Pro-social Behaviors

Pro-social behavior refers to an individual's behavior that is beneficial to others consciously in the context of social interaction,all behaviors that are beneficial to others and society belong to pro-social behavior.Pro-social behavior education is an important part of college students' moral education.As a kind of social activity,pro-social behavior is influenced by the process of interpersonal interaction.Social comparison is a common interpersonal interaction process in which individuals evaluate themselves by comparing themselves with others.Previous studies have found that the direction of social comparison has a certain effect on pro-social behavior,but the relationship between the direction and effect of social comparison and pro-social behavior has not been specifically examined.Social comparison not only affects the pro-social behavior of comparative objects,but also affects the pro-social behavior of non-comparative objects.Individuals show different pro-social behaviors towards others with different social distance.It is not clear whether social distance moderate the relationship between social comparison and pro-social participants of non-comparative objects.In this study,the influence of social comparison direction and effect on pro-social behavior and the moderating role of social distance in the influence of social comparison on pro-social behavior of non-comparative objects were investigated with college students as participants.The study was divided into three parts.In the first part,101 participants were compared with the students who ranked the first or last in the same grade and major through recall,so as to initiate the social comparison direction,measure pro-social behavior with dictator game,and explore the influence of the comparison direction on pro-social behavior.Study 2 discusses the influence of social comparison effect on pro-social behavior.In the context of upward or downward comparisons,193 participants were tested for similarity or difference to initiate assimilation and contrast effects,measure pro-social behavior with donation intention.Study 3 further explored the influence of social comparison direction and effect on pro-social behavior,when the pro-social behavior objects were not social comparison objects but friends and strangers.The main results of the study are as follows:(1)The direction of social comparison affects an individual's pro-social behavior.The upward comparison groupwas significantly higher than that of the downward comparison group;(2)The influence of social comparison on pro-social behavior was moderated by social comparison effect.When assimilation effect was observed,there was no significant difference in pro-social behaviors between upward comparison group and downward comparison group.In the contrast effect,the pro-social behavior of the upward comparison group was higher than that of the downward comparison group.(3)The influence of social comparison direction and effect on pro-social behavior of non-comparator was moderated by social distance.When pro-social behaviors were friends,no matter the assimilation effect or the contrast effect,the upward comparison group's pro-social behavior was higher than that of downward comparison group;When the objects of pro-social behavior were strangers,the upward comparison group's pro-social behavior of assimilation effect was higher than that of downward comparison group;In the contrast effect,the difference between the upward comparison group and the downward comparison group was not significant.This study not only innovatively discussed the interaction of social comparison direction and effect on pro-social behavior,but also further revealed the moderating role of social distance in the influence of social comparison on pro-social behavior of non-comparative objects.