Social comparison orientation and trait competitiveness: Their interrelation and utility in predicting overall and domain-specific risk-taking

Abstract

In accord with Festinger (1954) and Garcia et al. (2013), we investigate the understudied link between social comparison and competition. Specifically, in two correlational studies using university undergraduate (N = 298) and adult worker (N = 645) samples, we used path models to test relations between two types of social comparison orientation (SCO-ability and SCO-opinion), trait competitiveness (TC), and both overall and domain-specific risk-taking. The findings were largely consistent across studies, with some variation within risk-taking domain. SCO-ability positively predicted TC, but the reciprocal relation was not observed. SCO-ability positively predicted overall risk-taking and risk-taking in the ethical, gambling, and health/safety domains across studies (and social-investment risk-taking for adult workers). TC was also an independent positive predictor of overall risk-taking and ethical risk-taking (and social-investment, gambling, and health/safety risk-taking for adult workers). Mediation analyses showed that TC partially mediated the relation between SCO-ability and both overall risk-taking and ethical risk-taking across studies (and social, gambling, and health/safety risk-taking for adult workers). SCO-opinion exhibited few consistent links to risk-taking. This research furthers integration of the social comparison and competition literatures, and expands the literature on antecedents of risk-taking behavior.