The science of social comparison and feed envy

TEST_YOURSELF · How well do you know this science?

1. 01 According to Festinger's 1954 theory, when do people rely most on comparing themselves with others?

   Only when they have low self-esteemWhen objective standards for self-evaluation are missingOnly in competitive settings like work or sportNever — comparison is a learned modern habit

   Festinger proposed that humans have a drive to evaluate their opinions and abilities, and when objective, non-social standards aren't available, they evaluate by comparison with other people — preferably similar others. source ↗

2. 02 What is 'downward comparison' in Wills' 1981 account?

   Criticizing yourself to stay humbleScrolling to the bottom of a feedComparing yourself with worse-off others, which can restore well-being under threatComparing your present self with your past self

   Wills' downward comparison theory holds that people experiencing negative affect can enhance subjective well-being by comparing themselves with a less fortunate other — passively or actively. Feeds mostly serve the opposite: upward targets. source ↗

3. 03 What did Jordan and colleagues (2011) find about how we perceive other people's emotional lives?

   People accurately estimate how others feelPeople overestimate how much others sufferPeople underestimate how common others' negative emotions areEmotion perception only fails between strangers

   Because negative emotions are suppressed and hidden more than positive ones, people underestimated the prevalence of peers' negative experiences — even for well-known peers — and lower estimates predicted more loneliness and rumination. source ↗

4. 04 In Verduyn et al.'s 2015 experiments, which way of using Facebook lowered how people felt by the end of the day?

   Posting too many updatesMessaging close friendsPassive use — scrolling without interactingUsing it in the morning instead of at night

   Participants cued to use Facebook passively showed declines in affective well-being that active users didn't — and the effect was carried by envy, in both a lab experiment and a field replication. source ↗

5. 05 What happened in Hunt et al.'s 2018 trial when students limited social media to about 10 minutes per platform per day?

   They felt more isolated from friendsNothing changed versus normal useLoneliness and depression dropped significantly within three weeksTheir grades improved but mood was unchanged

   In the randomized experiment, the limited-use group showed significant reductions in loneliness and depression over three weeks compared with usual use — evidence that cutting the comparison dose changes outcomes, not just correlates with them. source ↗