Evaluation of the Scales for Social Comparison of Appearance and Social Comparison of Well-Being

Abstract

People constantly compare their appearance and well-being to that of other individuals. However, a measure of social comparison of well-being is lacking and existing appearance-related social comparison assessment is limited to comparison tendency using predefined social situations. This limits our understanding of the role of social comparison in appearance and well-being. Therefore, we developed the Scale for Social Comparison of Appearance (SSC-A) and the Scale for Social Comparison of Well-Being (SSC-W) to assess upward and downward social comparisons with regard to (a) frequency, (b) perceived discrepancy to the standard, and (c) engendered affective impact during the last 3 weeks. In one longitudinal and three cross-sectional studies (Ns = 500–1,121), we administered the SSC-A or SSC-W alongside measures of appearance social comparison, body satisfaction, self-concept, social rank, well-being, envy, rumination, depression, and anxiety. Confirmatory factor analyses supported the expected two-factor model representing upward and downward social comparison for both scales. Overall, upward comparison displayed the anticipated associations with the measured constructs, whereas downward comparison showed mostly small or nonsignificant correlations with the validators. The SSC-A and SSC-W are efficient measures of social comparison for appearance and well-being with good evidence for their reliability and validity in our samples.