Arthritis Patients' Reactions to Unavoidable Social Comparisons

Abstract

Seventy-two women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) were randomly assigned to view a depiction of a woman having either very mild or very severe RA and coping either quite weal or quite poorly with the illness. Subjects rated the woman's arthritis severity, her coping with RA, their own arthritis severity, and their own coping with RA. These ratings provided an indirect assessment of how subjects evaluated themselves relative to the stimulus woman. In addition, subjects compared their RA severity and coping directly with the stimulus woman's. In the direct comparisons, subjects who saw the good coper did not acknowledge her coping superiority, despite having done so on the indirect assessment. No effects were obtained for the severity condition. These findings suggest that individuals extract self-enhancing information from social comparisons, even when the comparison target and dimension are constrained and the target's status is superior