The person who out performs me is a genius: Maintaining perceived competence in upward social comparison.

Abstract

People have many ways of protecting themselves against unfavorable social comparisons. Sometimes, however, the unfavorableness of a comparison is too unambiguous to deny. In such circumstances, people may indirectly protect their self-images by exaggerating the ability of those who outperform them. Aggrandizing the outperformer is conceived to be a construal mechanism that permits inferior performers to deflect the self-esteem threat of being outperformed while maintaining believability. The tendency to exaggerate an outperformer's ability was demonstrated in a context in which subjects learned they had been outperformed by a confederate on a perceptual intelligence test. Subjects' and observers' ratings of the confederate's intelligence showed that subjects consistently rated the confederate more favorably than did observers. Using a similar methodology in which subjects outperformed confederates, another study showed that subjects exaggerated the ability of the people they outperformed. The conditions in which these effects are most likely to be obtained are discussed. 9arison From the time Festinger (1954) had the foresight to note what in hindsight appears obvious-that people define their social characteristics by comparing themselves with others-research in this area has emphasized the antecedents of social comparisons. The primary question has been whether people compare themselves with superior or inferior others. The most common methodology in this research has been to provide participants with absolute performance feedback and ask them to rank their preferences for viewing the scores of superior or inferior performers (Latane, 1966; Wheeler et al., 1969; Wills, 1981). This rank-order paradigm allows participants to select comparisons they feel will be most illuminating or self-enhancing. However, people are not always afforded the luxury of orchestrating their comparisons. Instead, comparisons are frequently foisted on people, such as when siblings are compared by their parents, students by their teachers, and employees by their employers (Wheeler & Miyake, 1992; Wood, 1989). Thus, the antecedent side of the social comparison process-the selection of a comparison target-is often preempted by sources outside the comparer's control. When comparisons are predetermined, the focus of social comparison research shifts from the antecedents to the consequences of comparison process.

Different selves have different effects: Self-activation and defensive social comparison

“…In social comparison research, the concept of self-threat and its influence on social comparison have also received considerable attention. However, most studies have assessed the effects of self-threat either on social comparison choice (Taylor & Lobel, 1989;Wills, 1981;Wood, Giordano-Beech, & Ducharme, 1999) or on strategies to minimize threatening comparisons (Alicke, LoSchiavo, Zerbst, & Zhang, 1997;Brown et al 1992;Gibbons, Benbow, & Gerrard, 1994;Tesser & Cornell, 1991). As a result, very little is known about how threatening information about the self moderates the effects of social comparison on selfevaluation.…”

Personalized and Generalized Comparisons: Causes and Consequences of Variations in the Focus of Social Comparisons

“…People can frame social comparisons in ways that make them less threatening. For example, people tend to inflate upward comparison targets' abilities, presumably because thinking that superior others are extremely able protects the belief that the self is very able (Alicke, LoSchiavo, Zerbst, & Zhang, 1997). However, comparison focus may moderate which thoughts are self-protective.…”

Self-enhancement and self-protection: What they are and what they do

“…Interests can be advanced, regressed, reversed, or maintained at their current level by specific events and outcomes (Alicke, LoSchiavo, Zerbst, & Zhang, 1997). For example, a person with an interest in viewing himself as a chess expert can have this interest advanced by winning a chess tournament (primary control).…”

“…Manipulations used in this capacity include providing low versus high performance feedback, furnishing negative versus positive personality feedback, reminding people of their mortality versus a different negative stimulus (e.g., dental pain), supplying objective data to indicate that people's behaviours or characteristics are either worse versus better than others', conveying social criticism versus praise, or introducing superior versus inferior comparison others (Alicke et al, 1997;Campbell & Sedikides, 1999;Pyszczynski et al, 2004;Sedikides & Gregg, 2003).…”