Elsevier

Computers in Human Behavior

Volume 32, March 2014, Pages 253-260
Computers in Human Behavior

How do people compare themselves with others on social network sites?: The case of Facebook

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.12.009Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We examine social comparison behavior on Facebook.

  • A positive correlation between comparison orientation and social comparison frequency (SCF).

  • Significant correlations between self-uncertainty/consciousness/esteem and SCF.

  • A positive correlation between SCF and the frequency of having a negative feeling.

  • A positive correlation between Facebook use intensity and SCF.

Abstract

The social comparison theory and its subsequent studies say that comparing with others can influence an individual in several ways (e.g., evaluation of oneself, influence on self-esteem/self-confidence, and efficient decision making) and people compare with others when they are confronted with information of others. With the popularity of social network sites, many people acquire or are exposed to information of others on social network sites, which implies that people are likely to frequently engage in social comparison behavior on social network sites. The present paper examines social comparison behavior on social network sites (especially on Facebook) using a college students sample. We find that an individual’s personality characteristics (i.e., social comparison orientation, self-esteem, self-uncertainty, and self-consciousness) influence the person’s social comparison frequency on Facebook. A positive relationship between Facebook use intensity and social comparison frequency on Facebook is found. In addition, we find a positive association between social comparison frequency on Facebook and the frequency of having a negative feeling from comparison. Other findings are also reported in the paper.

Introduction

People often compare themselves with others (e.g., friends, parents, teachers, celebrities, and so on). Comparing with others can influence an individual in several ways. According to the social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954) and its subsequent studies, through comparison with others (i.e., social comparison), people evaluate their opinions and abilities (Festinger, 1954), emotions (Schachter, 1959), and personality traits (Thornton & Arrowood, 1966); and people also try to enhance their self-esteem and self-concept by comparing with others (Gibbons & Buunk, 1999). Furthermore, people can feel positively or negatively about themselves through comparison with others. How a person feels about herself through social comparison varies depending on several factors, such as the person’s personal traits and who the person compares with (Buunk et al., 1990, Buunk and Gibbons, 2006).

People compare with others when they acquire information of others (Mussweiler, Ruter, & Epstude, 2006). In this regard, Mussweiler et al. (2006) mentioned, “Whenever people are confronted with information about how others are, what others can and cannot do, or what others have achieved and have failed to achieve, people relate this information to themselves.” This implies that social comparison takes place in our everyday lives almost all the time, because people are easily exposed to or can effortlessly obtain information of others through various routes; e.g., by directly interacting with others and by consuming media.

These days, one of the most commonly used means for interacting with others and acquiring information of others is the Internet. The Internet provides diverse sources from which people can obtain information of others such as email, instant message, and blogs. As people spend more time online and have been able to access the Internet ubiquitously, people likely engage in social comparison behavior more frequently on the Web than before.

On the Internet, social network sites (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) are one of the places where many people visit to interact with others and to see what and how others do. Thus, it is likely that people frequently compare themselves with others on social network sites, which also indicates that social network sites are an important venue where people can evaluate themselves (e.g., opinions, abilities, and emotions), develop their own identities, and where people also can feel happy/unhappy or satisfied/dissatisfied with themselves from comparison with others.

Even though many people likely engage in social comparison behavior on social network sites and the influence of social comparison on an individual can be significant, little research has examined social comparison behavior on social network sites. Accordingly, in this study, we examine social comparison behavior on social network sites, especially Facebook, based on the social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954) and its subsequent studies. Specifically, we examine the effects of an individual’s psychological characteristics (i.e., social comparison inclination – the extent to which individuals pay attention to and base their own behavior on the way others behave, self-esteem, private/public-consciousness, and self-uncertainty) and Facebook use (i.e., Facebook use intensity and number of friends) on how often the person compares herself with others on Facebook and how the person feels from the comparison.

For this, we use a college student sample. A sample of college students has been chosen because students tend to more frequently engage in social comparison behavior than adults (Stipek & Tannatt, 1984), students are susceptible to peer influence (Garnier and Stein, 2002, Maxwell, 2002), and Facebook use among college students is pervasive and conspicuous (Ellison, Steinfield, & Lampe, 2007), which makes it easy to examine their behavior on Facebook.

This paper is organized as follows. In Section 2, prior literature on Facebook and social comparison is reviewed and hypotheses are developed. Section 3 explains methods and measurements. In Section 4, the results are reported. Section 5 discusses the results and concludes the paper.

Section snippets

Prior studies about Facebook use

Facebook is one of the most popular online social network sites among college students. According to survey data in 2008, approximately 90% of undergraduates use Facebook (Steinfield, Ellison, & Lampe, 2008). Accordingly, Facebook is an important place for social life among college students (boyd, 2007). Most college students use Facebook everyday to interact with their friends and have a large number of friends on Facebook. According to a study by Pempek, Yermolayeva, and Calvert (2009), the

Sample

Data were collected from a purposive sample of 199 college students in two communication classes at Michigan State University through an online survey, which was administered in February, 2011. The students were given an extra credit for their participations in the survey. As mentioned in the introductory section, we used a sample of college students, because they tend to more frequently engage in social comparison behavior than adults (Stipek & Tannatt, 1984), students are susceptible to peer

Results

In order to test hypotheses from H1 to H4b, correlation coefficient values are obtained. The results for hypotheses H1 to H4b are reported in the gray cells of Table 1. All hypotheses are supported.

We have found that a person’s social comparison orientation is positively correlated with her social comparison frequency (SCF) on Facebook (H1, correlation coefficient = 0.47, p < 0.01). A person’s self-uncertainty, measured by four different constructs (i.e., self-concept clarity, intolerance of

Discussion

In this study, we have studied how college students compare themselves with others on Facebook. Specifically, we looked at the relationship between Facebook use and social comparison frequency; how an individual’s psychological characteristics influence the person social comparison frequency on Facebook; and how an individual’s social comparison frequency is related to the frequency of having a negative feeling from comparison on Facebook.

We first found that an individual’s social comparison

Limitations

One of the difficulties in social comparison research is the fact that people are reluctant to admit that they have engaged in social comparison (Buunk & Gibbons, 2006). In this sense, it might be possible that the actual comparison frequency of college students on Facebook is higher than what they reported.

Another weakness of the present study is that we did not take into account the valence of postings (i.e., whether a posting contains positive or negative content) that the respondents had

References (51)

  • D.A. Thornton et al.

    Self-evaluation, self-enhancement, and the locus of social comparison

    Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

    (1966)
  • S. Zhao et al.

    Identity construction on Facebook: Digital empowerment in anchored relationships

    Computers in Human Behavior

    (2008)
  • F.E. Aboud

    Children’s application of attribution principles to social comparisons

    Child Development

    (1985)
  • D. Abrams et al.

    Comments on the motivational status of self-esteem in social identity and intergroup discrimination

    European Journal of Social Psychology

    (1988)
  • D.M. Amoroso et al.

    Effects of anxiety and socially mediated anxiety reduction on paired-associate learning

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

    (1969)
  • Bachrach, Y., Kosinski, M., Graepel, T., Kohli, P., & Stillwell, D. (2012). Personality and patterns of Facebook usage....
  • D. Boyd

    Why youth (heart) social network sites: The role of networked publics in teenage social life

  • Burke, M., Marlow, C., & Lento, T. (2010). Social network activity and social well-being. In Paper presented at the...
  • R. Butler

    Age trends in the use of social and temporal comparison for self-evaluation: Examination of a novel developmental hypothesis

    Child Development

    (1998)
  • B.R. Buunk et al.

    The affective consequences of social comparison: Either direction has its ups and downs

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

    (1990)
  • A.P. Buunk et al.

    Social comparison orientation: A new perspective on those who do and those who do not compare with others

  • B.P. Buunk et al.

    Social comparisons at work as related to a cooperative social climate and to individual differences in social comparison orientation

    Applied Psychology

    (2005)
  • J.D. Campbell

    Self-esteem and clarity of the self-concept

    Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

    (1990)
  • J.D. Campbell et al.

    Self-concept clarity: Measurement, personality correlates and cultural comparison behavior

    Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology

    (1996)
  • Costa, P. T., & MacCrae, R. R. (1992). Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO PI-R) and NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO...
  • Cited by (0)

    View full text