The Overpowering Effect of Social Comparison Information

Abstract

If people's goals and evaluative standards were aligned, then individuals with mastery-based goals should, theoretically, primarily rely on temporal comparison information (i.e., on how they performed relative to before). In contrast, individuals with performance-based goals should rely on social comparison information (i.e., on how they performed relative to others). However, across three studies, we explored a misalignment phenomenon we call "the overpowering effect of social comparison information" (TOESCI). We found that, irrespective of individuals' specific achievement goal (performance-based vs. mastery-based), there is a consistent, dominant reliance on social comparisons over temporal comparisons in their performance self-evaluations. These findings suggest that one's goals and evaluation criteria do not always align-that explicitly endorsing mastery-based goals does not necessarily lead one to rely on temporal comparison information over social comparison information. Only after receiving an explicit reminder to consider their mastery-based goal did participants align their goal and performance self-evaluation criteria.