Social Comparison in Coping With Occupational Uncertainty: Self‐Improvement, Self‐Enhancement, and the Regional Context

Abstract

When operationalized as a conscious mental action and put in the context of coping with occupational uncertainty, social comparison serves primarily self-improvement.

Social Comparison Orientation Associated with Psychological Well Being: The Mediated Role of Self-efficacy

“…Self-efficacy indicates a person's own belief of in capability successfully reach the expected goal or achievement [3], so an individual who has a high level of self-efficacy has a stronger belief to change their less performative situation in the upward comparison while an individual who has a low level of self-efficacy might feel frustrated for lack of belief to get better. This finding was also applied to the job context that people who believe their effort can control the outcome tend to use more upward comparison, and people who do not think personal effort can control the outcome tend to use more downward comparison [2,4]. Self-efficacy is a powerful variation that determines the SOC and buffers the negative impact of SC.…”

“…Another interesting finding is that the comparison has a more powerful effect when people compared with local or intimate social circles with unfamiliar domain [2]. The uncertain about circumstance induced people to make more social comparisons to obtain information [4,5,6]. In other words, on the domains that are more unknown and abstract, people tend to compare themselves with others to gain a clearer picture of situation.…”

“…In other words, on the domains that are more unknown and abstract, people tend to compare themselves with others to gain a clearer picture of situation. For example, in a longitude study of how people coped with occupational uncertainty, participants compare more frequently in high unemployment rate regions to ensure their situation is not deviant, which temporarily brings a boost of self-esteem for finding people sharing a similar situation with them [4]. That is, social comparison also helps people to identify themselves in terms of socially normal or abnormal.…”

The effect of intra-workplace pay inequality on employee trust in managers: Assessing a multilevel moderated mediation effect model

“…Higher managerial pay may also attract more competent managers who are better at engendering trust and cooperation. Furthermore, low to moderate levels of pay inequality can signal the potential for upward mobility and career progression especially if promotion, reward and recognition principles are transparent (Godechot and Senik, 2015;Pavlova et al, 2018;Yu and Wang, 2017).…”

Pay Referents and Satisfaction with Pay: Does Occupational Proximity Matter?

“…For example, employees with a selfenhancement motive will make comparisons with those who earn a lower salary than themselves so that they can feel better about their own salary. On the flip side, positive effects can also occur with a self-improvement motive which manifests when someone makes upward comparisons with those who have higher salaries (Lockwood and Kunda, 1997;Pavlova, Lechner and Silbereisen, 2017;Wood, 1989). Employees who are making these upward comparisons become potentially pleased with the pay comparison, not because they discover that they make less than the comparison target, but because the comparison target motivates them to earn a potentially higher salary for themselves.…”